Marshals For Week of:
07 Dec 2008

2008-04-13

G'day,

Here's one of those annoying stories from the peloton, where if you don't even know what that word means, you will be bored after the first sentance! But for me, its life in Belgium on a bike and it sure beats working.

Me after my first race in Belgium! Leonie Burford - looking a bit cold and wet

I guess that sums it up ok... a bit of a shock and how cold and wet I was at the time!

Just got back from racing today too. Had to catch the rain from Enine to Gent then stopped to ask directions to Everghem 4 times! It was only 12km from Gent!?!? Too many streets. Eventually I get there and find out that 3 other girls from my team were racing (I thought it was only me- so yay, now I know 2 ppl in the race!)

I had to sign up for a Belgium racing licence, how exciting... not, I had to wait 30mins along with all the Dutch girls, leaving just enough time to kit up and do a 3min warmup. 140 odd starters, in a 13lap x 6km course... dead flat, but with a massive head wind on the second half of the course and about 5x90deg turns. A light shower of rain, dampened any ideas of fast corners for me! I'm not quite confident on my different bike yet and just plain chicken!

But alas, (Jeff Gray would be proud). It was a full diesel engine effort! There was a group of 3 that broke away right at the start, then another 3. I jumped to the 2nd group, then across to the next 2 who had been dropped, then across to the lead rider. This all happened in the first 4km of racing! 3 riders plugged away behind us, trying to get up but never made it. So for 75km, me and who else, but Emma Davies Jones had a two-WOman break all day. The peloton brought it back to 30secs at about 30km in, but then we drove it harder out to 50sec. By three laps to go, it was at 1m15sec.... 1 lap to go 1m40s! Woohoo, but I stuffed up the sprint big time and was caught in front coming out of the last corner, (I was still in shock that I was even sprinting for the top two places), so I stupidly lead out a pursuiter from the corner, swevering from side to side of the road trying to flick her off my wheel, but not luck and drag raced to the end and just got pipped before the line! But hey Race #2 and 2nd place aint too bad.

The social side to the story- I've now got a training partner Emma Johannsen (sp?), who I randomly meet along the canal on my first week here. She told me she had another friend Emma, who I should meet to go training with too. So where do I finally meet her- in a break! hahaha For those not in the know... which was also me, until 2wks ago- emma and Emma are both world class athletes, so who else better to train with! One was 4th at worlds, the other Top 10 in the Road World cups! Now would be a great time to apply the rule ''When in Rome..' hehehehe

Well time for more pasta, washing, bedtime. Ready to do it all again tomorrow... well the racing part-don't know about the whole 75km TTT?!

Cheers all,

Leonie.... doin it for Australia!