Racing Update...

Ryan and the guys are out racing right now, but I’m inside sniffling. :( When my good friend Judd from UC Davis joined the All Stars last week he brought a cold with him. Unfortunately, Elliot (the All Stars coordinator) and I have had to suffer through it since. Elliot caught it a day before I did and is back out on the bike today. So I am hopeful that all will be better by morning. For now I’m sleeping a ton (14 hours last night) and laying on the couch watching the live Tour de France coverage (being aired on 7 of our 15 channels every day). Mostly—I’m feeling pretty crappy. :(

Yesterday was the Polkapelle race about 5km from our house. Being sick, Elliot and I bundled up (it was a rainy day out) and hopped in the car to go get some photos of the team. Arriving at the race I was heart broken that I wasn’t in it. I love racing in the rain. We drove behind the race in the motorcade for a couple laps and pulled to the side of the course to get some shots of the passing riders for a couple more. The guys were caked in road grime and looked like true warriors. The other American team racing here in Belgium showed up to this race—we haven’t seen them since our first race here. They all seem to be from Colorado.

Unfortunately all was looking really well until about the 10th to go when everything seemed to fall apart for the yanks. Elliot and I were parked at a good vantage point out in one of the fields and saw the front of the race coming around the corner. We noticed that a group of 6 strong riders had worked their way off the front. Then we saw Ryan in a solo effort to chase himself onto that group. He successfully bridged up to them and we got excited. Then the new group of 7 approached a corner and we saw Ryan pull off the road and stepped of his bike. Uh? He was inspecting his crank arm until he threw his hands in the air in frustration. Damn! He began pushing his bike further up the course to where we were standing. The peloton passed by, and a few seconds after that two of our riders along with two of the other Americans—they had all slipped off the pace.

It turned out that the insert in Ryans crank arm that holds his pedal in place had become separated from the crank and was about to fall out. It was a good thing he stopped pedaling when he did, if he had kept going and his pedal fell off—yikes! The ‘insult to injury’ part was that the attacking that separated the first six riders as well as Ryan’s efforts that allowed him to bridge up to them proved to be too strong for most of the rest of our guys. What a pisser!!!

In the end the breakaway that Ryan had to abandon went on to win the race. Judd and Jason stayed in the race until the end for our squad and got pack finishes.

Ryan and I raced off to the bike shop to make sure we could get a replacement crank set for him before the shops closed. $150 euro later we had a suitable replacement and went home so I could install everything for him before passing out.

So like I said, the guys are out racing now. I opted to come over here to Scott, our director's, house for internet use. Hopefully we’ll find that it was a better day at the races today and that I’m healthy by morning. Our next race is Tuesday and I hope to be there.