Thrills and spills

Temptation rears its ugly head many times a day when you’re a cyclist. The list of things you can do is significantly shorter than the list of don’ts.  With this in mind I found myself in the beautiful student city of Leuven on Thursday night with the aim of enjoying a nice meal and watching the European football on one of the big screens.  Sure enough temptation caught me off guard when I found myself chatting to a few of Leuven’s students who were enjoying a post exam season blow out.  Before I knew it I was sat with a group of 15 or so, dusting off my GSCE French, Spanish and Flemish with one of the local beers in my hand and listening as they wet my appetite for the night ahead.  I had planned a reasonably early finish but as everyone else was heading for Leuven’s various clubs and bars I was invited to tag along.  Forgive me if I skip the several hours of dance moves and resurrected chat up lines but to cut a long story short we all enjoyed a thoroughly good night and met some great people.  It had been 6 months since I had even drunk alcohol but the Belgian drinking culture is vastly different to England’s.  Almost everyone drank a few beers, had a good time and went home sober enough to pass their exams the following morning in some cases!

My test was to come on Saturday evening in the village of Sint-Katherine-Waver.  The race started at 6pm and promised 106km of blustery conditions, long exposed straights and a reasonable field.  I took a dive off the front on lap 1 and was joined by a nifty group of 4.  Within a couple of kilometres of riding through what felt like treacle we were reeled in as the headwind took its toll.  I sat in the slipstream as the field was stretched on the crosswind sections, watching carefully to make sure I could always ride across the echelons.  My legs were incredibly average after a hard week of training and as we entered the last 20km I could see the elastic that had held the peloton together beginning to snap.  My housemate Chris put in a big turn of speed as the break threatened to pull clear and I used that as my springboard, attacking in the crosswind section so as to avoid dragging half the peloton with me.  After a little over a minute of full throttle I had reached the back of the swelling break and with around 25 riders clear it seemed as though this was to be the winning move.  We had less than 10km left but as the sole representative of my team it was not my job to drive the break.  I gambled that the Ardela team with 5 riders would drive the break and this largely worked out.  With 5km to go we still had around 10 seconds on the peloton as I squeezed the gels in.  My legs were feeling the night’s exertions big time by this point and my prayers for a bunch gallop offered me my best chance of getting up there.  With just 2km remaining the Ardela boys let 2 riders slip off the front.  This was like bait to the break, if I sprinted across now I risked bringing the rest of the break with me and having nothing left for the sprint.  This time I gambled and lost as the 2 riders hung on to win by just 2 seconds.  I gave it my best in the sprint but the wind sapped my strength leaving me to come away with 15^th on the night.  It was a case of what could have been but I welcomed my second top 15 of the season and a return to the first page of the results. 

Sunday was to be a similar affair with 130 riders lined up for my 28^th race of the season on a tricky course in Halen.  I started with heavy legs having finished a 70 mile race no more than 17 hours beforehand.  Peter Van Petegem was in attendance in the crowd, helping to whip up the anticipation.  By the half way mark I was feeling significantly stronger than at the start and I began to plan more than just hanging on until the finish.  The course had many pinch points and I feared a crash from the start but as a racer this is never more than a fleeting thought in the back of your mind.  With three laps to go I approached the finishing straight.  Suddenly the front wheel went from under me, without warning I was hurtling into the tarmac at 40kmp/h with nothing more than a polystyrene helmet and some lycra to protect me.  I went down hard, taking gouges out of both knees and taking a knock to the head in the process.  The art of crashing is entirely involuntary, all I saw was tarmac, sky, a blur of riders, more tarmac and finally sky as I ground to a halt at some poor spectators feet.  I was helped straight away by the ambulance crew and various spectators.  As I clung on to the stretcher as the ambulance hurtled round the streets, the young paramedics bandaged me up like a mummy.  The crew dropped me off at the finish line were my bike was propped against the railings looking very sorry for itself.  The reaction of the old boys said it all, the word ‘kaput’ was thrown in for good measure as I saw the handlebars snapped in half, the frame cracked clean across the head tube and the front wheel resembling a rugby ball.  This was insult to injury. 

It has been two days since that grim crash, retrospectively I consider myself relatively lucky.  I fell within 2 feet of a barbed wire fence and avoided breaking any bones.  My knees resemble a tin of corned beef but time will heal them.  As for the bike… the damage is about two thousand quid’s worth and at this point of the season that kind of hit is about as welcome as a hog roast at a veggie convention.  I have a few days of enforced rest now but I must give my special thanks to the ladies who patched me up in the ambulance, the spectators who took my bike to the finish and to my landlady who has taken it upon herself to make sure I get back up and riding soon.  One final word of thanks must of course go to the Dave Rayner fund for helping to fund my ambitions out here in Belgium.  A quick mention also to my trusty mechanic at home, Joe who I know is currently ill, so fingers crossed for a speedy recovery! 

At the lack of pictures from this weekends races I had a look back at the archives to find this beauty, sadly this is the last time you'll see me atop this awesome machine...