April 24th – leaving one of the sunniest days yet in Limoux I set out to fly from Caarcassonne to Bruxelles via RyanAir, an experience in itself. Like cattle to a trough, my fellow passengers crowded the exit to the tarmac in anticipation of the unassigned seating free-for-all that was promised once inside the plane - this all well over an hour before boarding was to commence. I was admittedly a little taken off guard when a half-pint grey haired old woman began elbowing her way into line in front of me! After an uneventful flight we lowered through the clouds and into a grey rainy Belgian evening. Slopping through puddles on the tarmac and breathing in rain-cleaned crisp air I felt at home… France is sweet, but Belgium is truly the heart of the early race season, rain and all!
Michel the soignieur, complete with a little hand-drawn paper sign that read “MORIAH CANADA”, greeted me at the airport – in my shabby French we were able to communicate the necessities and have some broken conversation. As we were pulling away from the airport Michel stopped the van abruptly, backed up and made quick conversation with a fellow who was standing with his thumb out. Culturally, I am accustomed to not ever consider offering a stranger on the side of the road a ride, but based on what I could make out of the brief conversation between the two and appearance, it seemed OK. All in the adventure! Or so I told myself.
By the time we arrived at the house it was getting dark – the team has been staying in a rented house in a tiny town about an hour and a half from Bruxelles. Some of the girls had already gone back to Canada or the US as I was coming in for the last weekend of the project. Remaining were Felicia, Alex, Errine and Betina. We would race both Saturday (in Luxemburg) and Sunday (in Belgium), but Felicia would fly back to the US before Sunday’s race start and Joelle will join us in her place.
team house & pics from the morning ride
Friday morning – after a leisurely morning of coffee and bike assembly we ventured out on a portion of the Liège-Bastogne-Liège (pro men’s race which would occur on Sunday) course which passed right in front of our house. There was positively nothing flat about the roads branching from our little town; but with the sun out and the roads dry I was pretty stoked for my first ride in Belgium! The architecture and
scenery notably different than southern France – I quite liked the clean-organic appearance and tidiness of it.
In the afternoon we packed up the vans and car and drove to Luxemburg where we checked into the race hotel, ate the pre-race dinner provided by the hotel, had pre-race rubs and chill time before turning in early. I also received my new national team jersey which sports the L2RCP logo – without the funding from this group the spring national team project would not have been possible. With very few riders competing in Europe at the international level over the past two years, Canada had fallen considerably in the UCI rankings. As the number of starters a country is able to enter in the Olympic road race is based on the country’s UCI standings, we ended up entering the last stretch of point accumulation window in a sorry state. Fortunately the CCA has been able to bring on investors, and this spring the Canadian women have been able to score the necessary points to bring Canada back up into the top 16 nations, thereby ensuring the maximum of three spots in Beijing, and a maximal opportunity to medal.
In European fashion race start times were 1:30pm both days. Saturday morning was brilliantly sunny with promises of being the warmest race day yet of my season. The morning was spent eating a buffet style breakfast at the hotel – bread, cornflakes, museli, yoghurt, apple sauce, fresh fruit, tea and coffee…. and croissants for the staff. After a plentiful breakfast, team meeting and sitting on the curb in the parking of a neighbouring McDonalds restaurant to poach a few minutes of free wireless, it was time to eat again. It actually gets tiring how much eating goes along with bike racing. European bike-race custom seems to be an early pre-race lunch of plain pasta. When I say plain, I’m not kidding. Monstrous vats of squishy white over done spaghetti noodles, jugs of olive oil, white baguettes, and if you’re luck a little grated parmesan. I don’t normally eat a lot of white flour, in fact I do my best to actively avoid it… but in Europe its next to impossible…. the survival strategy I adopted was to cover all the white food in a blanket of black pepper, at least that way I could pretend that everything I was eating had some colour.Back to the racing - its always a little harder to write about races that you are not satisfied with… so I will keep the words brief and post a few pictures instead. UCI racing in Europe is definitely hard, the courses are difficult and the girls are tough! I did learn some things, so all was not lost.
pics of getting ready to race, racing, buildings, etc... looks like i didn't get the memo about wearing the new shorts in our team presentation shot, oops!later,
Moriah
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