Start with a recovery day

I decided at 3am, when I was wide awake!, that I would definitely not try and race today I certainly wasn't over the journey and time difference. Quite disappointing really , usually I have slept for 10 or 12 hours on my first night in Europe and that has reset the old body clock and I'm good to go from there. Not this year apparently. So it was a leisurely start to the day, Breakfast at 8am - no rush, extra cups of excellent coffee. Then I spent time re assembling my bike which went together painlessly although some sort of work stand would have made it much easier. Finally ready to ride by mid day, my plan was just to ride today, no pressure just spin out for 2 or 3 hours just to get my legs going and the travel out of my body. The weather is magnificent warm and sunny, perfect riding conditions. I decided on a bit of exploring to start with, new roads through the lanes and fields, its amazing how quite and tranquil it is in the fields, I even found a new stretch of cobbles only about 3/4 Kms from where I am staying. As I've probably mentioned before, the problem getting out in the lanes, is that the roads wind around the fields in an extremely haphazard fashion and its very easy to lose all sense of direction, getting one lost very quickly. Having done one exploring loop and coming out (roughly) where I intended I decided that the second loop would include one of my favorite canal rides, which I did. Having hit the beautifully surfaced canal I actually started to feel quite good and pushed on a bit without making any specific efforts. My usual rides of gnarly country roads made the perfect hot mix surface a real dream, so sitting between 35 and 40kph surprisingly easy, the upshot was my 3 hour ride delivered up a TSS of 160 ( for those familiar with the measure and jargon), which both surprised and pleased me. So all in all good first day. I can't race until the weekend when the weather forecast is showing 39C, so that should be a challenge. So for the next couple of days I'll do some specific training drills just to keep my legs ready. Maybe a trip to the bike shop to pick up some 'special orders' if I can found the right stuff. One thing that I haven't been able to work out with this blog software is the text editor. When I put the blog together it has paragraphs which we all know help make the page easier to read. Trouble is that when I then 'publish' what I have prepared all the paragraphs are removed leaving just a single large paragraph! I'll keep working on it.

Arrived in one piece - so did all of my luggage.

Arrived in Brussels to a beautiful, sunny, 30C day. No complaints about that. The Qatar Airways flights were great, both legs seemed to be on new planes, or new to me anyway, very comfortable spacious seating so no complaints there then. I guess its the nature of air travel these days but airports are continually expanding and changing, Brussels is no exception. So when I thought I knew where I was going and where everything was I was wrong! It's not major but after flying for 24 hours you want it all to be as painless as possible. Brussels airport has added new baggage carousels in an annexe! and changed the oversized baggage arrangements but without significant signage, however my bike arrived OK this time and I was through Customs in a flash only to pile up in a queue at the car rental desk. I was a not going to stress, I only have 30 mins to drive, that was until a certain section people decided that they weren't going to join the line they would go straight to the front! Did cause some aggravation with the majority who had and were waiting in the line for their turn. Probably the most amusing aspect was the American family that found themselves in the middle of a very multi lingual fracas for the few minutes it took to sort itself out. There facial expressions were a picture. I eventually got my car and after finding my way out of the dramatically revamped temporary parking structure with no exit signs, I hit the freeway. It's always a bit of challenge when your heads a bit zingy from lack of sleep/body clock time differences to jump into a manual gear car on the wrong side and function at 120kph. I found its the mirror that's always in the wrong place for a day or two, you just get so used to looking up and left to see the rear view but all you see is sun visor! Just as well I'm used to using side mirrors frequently! My welcome at the hotel was as effusive as ever, hugs all round. Which is nice I'm spending a month here and its so much better than being an anonymous face. So I'm now ensconced in 'my' room, the one that I always have since it's the room that offers up the best features. There is a race tomorrow or I can wait until the weekend, right at the moment I think the weekend is the best option, I always like to have a couple of days to recover rom the journey, check out my bike and get back into it. The days when I could just get straight into a race are long gone!

Getting ready

Well having been encouraged by public demand to repeat my attempts at blogging the unfolding story of my 2015 trip to Belgium to attempt to race with the 'Top Guns' there this is the first post with two days to go to my departure date. Actually I probably need to own up that it was five people that said that they would like me to write a blog again and one of them was my wife so strictly speaking doesn't count as a 'fan'! At this point I'm ready to go, at least my bike is prepped, new tyres, new handlebar tape, all cables oiled, gears tweaked etc. etc - you get the idea. Mind you I have to partly disassemble it again to get it into its hard shell travelling case.

My clothes are strewn across a spare bed ready to be packed and my carry on stuff is separated ready to go. Even though I try to take as little as possible I always seem to bring back stuff I didn't actually wear, but I suppose if I hadn't had it I would have been looking for it, life can be a little perverse like that! However I really needn't worry anyway I've calculated that I have a 75Kg baggage allowance, not that I want to be lugging that much weight around the airport!