Houffalize World Cup # 2

Wouldn’t you know it, for the entire week we had beautiful warm sunny weather and come race day it had dropped to about 8 degrees was pouring with rain, not the most appealing race weather! I find racing in cold wet weather itself not so bad it’s just the time you need to take warming up getting saturated then sitting around and getting cold waiting for the race to start. It also makes for a huge clea up job after the race, soaking clothing, getting all the grit and mud out of the bikes drive train etc.

As predicted the start loop was absolute mayhem, the 19% street climb was real hard, I pretty much died about half way up and fell back through the field, then the decent down to the course was incredible, at some points I was at a complete stand still as the entire field tried to fit single file into the narrow single track, meanwhile the riders at the front of the race were half way round the course, such is world cup racing!

This is the view from the start loop over to the main climbing sections of the course. The track went up this slope on two different tracks and also down on two different tracks, The organisers like to have it all in a compact area as it is good for the spectators!

Due to the amount of steep climbing the course (290m each lap x 4) it was always going to be tough in the dry but the rain just took it to another level. The steady rain that we had overnight and prior to the race had really changed the way I raced the course, cornering was tricky and quite hard to stay on the bike without loosing traction, the gears I were using were totally different as there was so much more drag due to the mud.

So I ended up being pulled off the course 1 lap down, due to my lap times falling below 80% of the leaders lap time. This is always a frustrating result, not having the opportunity to finish the race can be quite disheartening, but out of 125 starters only 70 odd managed to get through to finish the race.

Having finished my race I always look forward to watching the men’s race, perhaps it’s because I know how much it hurts!! The men have an even tougher fight on their hands, they had 250 on the start line, it was pretty impressive to watch them come up the start climb!