I mentioned yesterday I would have a late night. Well, it turned out that I had missed another race taking place today. So here I was ready to race 80kms at a slightly lower speed at 19:00, when Luke says to me at 13:00 "Are you coming to the race, mate?" in his Aussie accent. "Ja swaer, later" was my response. Nope, 145km race at 15:00. We leaving in 10mins.
We rode 20kms to the race and I knew it wasn't going to happen. My legs were still trying to recover from the last 2 weeks' punishment. After 500m of racing it was confirmed, but I managed to race 50kms before my legs stopped responding. I used the rest of my time to hand out bottles on a hot day.
My legs feel better tonight and I have my compression pants back on - hoping they will do the trick after not using them the last 4 days.
Tomorrow I am heading down to unknown territory: Wallogne, the French part of Belgium. I hope I make it back alive... I am also planning (being the operative word) on stopping in at Meryl's family in Melin en route home. Bit of a round trip in the French province should prove interesting. The race is the usual 1.12B 120km race but the Southern part of Belgium has some hills in it. Will see about that... Oh, I did a cobble stone climb close to our home - it is unreal. I have new found respect for the riders racing over cobble climbs.
We are scheduled for a heat wave the rest of this week in Europe, so some nice summer days to look forward to while Cape Town is being washed away by the cold fronts.
I must go sleep now. It is 1am and I am still eating pasta and nuts. Arg, I can't feed my body enough food!
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