Life is Good: Not your typical race report...

So I haven’t written a good blog in a while but good things come to those who wait, am I right?

So this trip was on of those trips that people hate to hear about. I know this because, when you and the group you went with start to indulge in some good memories, it ends up being one giant inside joke. It’s not necessarily meant to be kept “inside,” but when you say one word and everyone is in stitches, well, you know how it is.

This trip was full of laughter and fun and plenty of material for inside jokes. Now you say, well if course it was! But, it’s not very often that you bring together 4-5 women who don’t really know each other, with headstrong, competitive, type-A personalities and have zero personality clashes and drama! I had so much fun with every single girl on the trip.

Sarah Coney was my roommate for 3.5 weeks. We were in rooms where the beds were so close you can go to sleep holding hands! I think we must be kindred spirits, I’m not even sure what that means, but if I were to define it, it would go something like “A person that you don’t want to strangle when they have been in your personal bubble for more than a week.” I think the Webster’s dictionary should add it in.

There were so many little things that made this trip great. We stayed in a place called Tielt-Winge AKA: Tingy Wingy. A small town in Belgium with a grocery store and a bakery. Now put 8 cyclists there and what do you get? A grocery store that just doubled their daily sales rate. In between races we trained together, shopped together, ate together and whatever else you do during the day, together. That being said, shopping and eating took up a large part of the day. The life of a cyclist only made better with good friends.

Now for the blog at hand, the euro trip. We started it off with the Lotto Belisol Tour. We arrived for the team presentation being the only team in full on kit. We had to laugh, a nube mistake. We than made our way to the dorm style/prison style living with plastic bedcovers and toigt little bunk beds. Always good the be reassured that no one will know if you have a bit of an accident in the night.

I’m not going dive into the race report too much, but it was pretty funny doing the triple-T. When the DS has to confirm whether the long-car-honk means stop or go, that pretty much sums up how it went. We had our fair share of mistakes but we looked fast and felt fast so we had checked off 2/3. We went into the race nerves a bounding and got through with a couple flats, minor crashes, and just a couple explosions up the “muur van geraardsbergen,,” to give you an idea, I kept thinking “Where is my climbing harness and chalk?” A 20% grade up rough cobbles feels like 30%. Enough said.

Now for beautiful southern France. Leading up to the French games we enjoyed beautiful sunshine and humid air. We went to bed stretched out, star-fish style, sweating through our bed sheets. We all thought, great, acclimation, good prep for the hot race to be. I’m just putting it out there but it was probably the worst day on record in Nice for that time of year! It just poured. I’ve never been so wet during a race or even a ride for that matter. We were riding through rivers and so were the motor bikes beside us, just perpetuating the wetness. A whole lot of wetness going down. Li-ter-all-y ! Half the women’s field crashed! It was a little slippery to say the least but despite the rain and the chaos, it was in a beautiful setting. So that was racing in Nice, with an abundance of “expect the unexpected.” It’s a good life moto to have. To round out our trip we decided to forget the horrors of the day and go out on the town. A send off if you will, we went out eating and dancing with some locals and arrived back at the Games residence in time for an hour nap followed by the long flight home. It was a memorable trip and hopefully not the last.