Two wins in a fortnight

On Tuesday night me and Novie lined up for a fairly local race for us, Booischot Kermesse, around 10km from our house here in Belgium. It was my 3rd race since the Ras in Ireland, but to be honest I don't think my body had fully recovered, until this race in Booischot.

Was a 6pm start, a long time to wait around during the day, doing nothing.... 120km, 16 laps of 7.5km. A flat, fast course. Around 120-130 starters. Race started fast, nothing much managed to get away. I decided to sit near the back, if not last wheels sometimes (whoops) for the first 8 laps of the race. Saving the legs, doing as little work as possible. With 8 laps to go, a small group was away. Me and Novie moved to the front, I rode the front hard for about 500m. Strung out the group, thenalmost straight away, Novie went full gas, I followed, we pulled 1 big turn each, 2-up, and rode across about a 30second gap, in around 3km. We were hauling ass.... The group was about 7 riders, and they were surprised to see us there, out of no where! Unfortunately, they sat up and didn't want to work anymore. The bunch soon caught us.

It seemed nothing would stay away today, so I slowly drifted back through the bunch, saving the legs again. With 4 laps to go I started to move up again, I hadn't seen Novie for a while. He had a bit of bad luck. On a dodgy corner with cobbles, another rider lost their bottle. Novie had to dodge it, lost his line into the corner and ended up hitting the kerb on the exit of the corner and hit the deck. A few grazes on himself.

There was a few attacks getting near the end of the race, and just after we passed through the start/finish line with 2 lapsto go, a rider attacked, so I decided to follow. We quickly got a gap. I drilled it, swung off to let the other rider do a turn on the front, he was suffering a bit. To be honest he was slowing us down a bit, so I did majority of the work on the front. Probably 80%, sitting around 48-50kmh. 1 lap to go and we still had a gap, but behind us there was a group of 10 chasing, the bunch had split up big time.

1 lap to go, 2-up, about 10seconds to 10 chasers.

He asked me if we should wait for the chasing group, I said "nah f**k that, lets keep going" haha I was pretty keen. And confident I'd beat him in a 2-up sprint if it came down to it. A few km later and the group was about 5 seconds behind, so with 3-4km to go, we sat up and joined the chasing group of 10 riders. I sat on the back, for about 1km, recovered a bit, had a drink then got ready for the final 3km. There was a few attacks, but surprisingly not as many as I thought, and surprisingly my legs were still pretty good! With 1km to go, there was a right hander then a slight left hand bend all the way until the finish line. Out of the right hander, I was 3rd wheel. A rider attacked on the left side, I jumped across to his wheel. Left around 2-3 bike lengths, 500m to go and I was still in the same position. Waiting for the right time to jump past him, or jump onto a rider if they got the jump on me. 400m...... 300m..... I kicked, went past the front guy, finish line came into view, 200m.... still on the front, 150m.... I see a front wheel start to come on my left as I looked down, 100m..... I managed a slight kick again and put a bike length into 2nd place. 15m.... I threw my hands in the air, 2nd win in 2 weeks. Stoked.

Win in Booischot

Novie rolled in for 14th place. Next up we have have Thüringen Rundfahrt in Germany, a 7-day U23 Tour, one of the biggest U23 Race's in Europe each year, with the best U23 teams in the world. It's a bloody hard tour, with plenty of climbing. For us I think we'll have to target some stages, especially the Team Time Trial, and see how the week pans out!

Consists of:

- Stage 1 - 170km

- Stage 2 - 22km Team Time Trial

- Stage 3 - 143km

- Stage 4 - 142km

- Stage 5 - 11.7km Uphill Time Trial, eeeek...

- Stage 6 - 193km

- Stage 7 - 162km.

Sancho