Belgian Racing

For the past two weeks I have been living in Tielt-Winge Belgium at the Canada house with 6 of Canada's best juniors. We have been training and racing together for much of the summer and they are a great bunch of guys. I am lucky enough to have my personal coach and team Canada coach Luc with me for the trip, and our mechanic Logan is also doing a great job. The atmosphere here is great, we training together during the week and no matter how hard we beat each other up in training, we all laugh about it at the dinner table.

Weekends are for racing here, Last week we did a double weekend of racing and this weekend is the same for most of the guys A relatively small race on Saturday, followed by a bigger one on the Sunday. Last weekend was a Belgian Kermesse, usually a short circuit with many laps. We do not race as team Canada for the Kermesse races, we all have our local colors on, for me that being Oakley Atlantic Racing. The guys did a great race last Saturday getting 4 riders in the 9 man winning move. We had a plan, but it failed to have much effect and we ended up with 4th,5th,6th, and 8th, the other two finished in the pack, I was in 6th after trying my typical move from 2 Km to go.

Sunday, September 7th was a big day, one of the two UCI races we would attend on our trip, La Phillipe Gilbert des Juniors. The race was over very difficult terrain in the hills of the Ardenne region, with a hard finish up La Redout. The start line had just over 200 other juniors, including the Team GB riders attending the World Championships. I had a terrible start and was caught behind two crashes within the first 15 km. The pack was difficult to move around in, but once I had my confidence I was just fine moving around. I was at the front with most of the Canadian guys after the first few climbs and managed to get second on the first KOM point behind a Belgian rider. I was in the pack all day as only a few moves stayed away for any time at all. The one that did stick went at 65 km into the 127 km race. Canada had missed the break but our team was pretty deep in the red zone. We slowly started to lose riders after the 75 km mark. The unrelenting climbs were taking their toll. over the top of the biggest climb of the day I was the only Canadian left. The pack rocketed down to the bottom of La Redoute. I was at the back of the pack going into the climb and was just let go as we hit the finish line, 44th place for me of 75 finishers, not a bad finish but due to some misinformation about the distance of the race I was not a feature in the final despite feeling pretty good.

This past week has been a good one for training, two sessions for me behind the motorbike doing intervals with some of the guys and one long day to explore our area here in Belgium, and what an area it is, beautiful scenery here. We had a Kermesse today as well, (Sat, Sept 13th) It was a very flat race with just over 100 starters, The race was almost like a crit, with 19 laps of a 4 km lap, It was a fast race averaging just under 48 km/h and with some lap averages hitting close to 53 km/h. It was definitely not my kind of race, having said that I was doing my job to cover break-away attempts and I featured in 3 of them pretty early in the race. However we failed to be in the one break that stayed away, and as a result we were put to work, I did a few turns at the front but I was not on my best day, the guys did a great job in the final to form a lead-out train to bring back the break but they just fell short and sprinted for 6th place on the day. Tomorrow is a another big day for the guys, another UCI level race, I however will not be taking part, Luc has said that since we can only start 6 riders, and we had one of our riders join us mid week this week, He has chosen to sit me out as the course does not suit me, he would prefer that I continue to train hard, I am was happy to do so, If the course had suited me for Sundays race I would have been really upset, but these flat races are doing nothing for me I find. So I have another day of motor pacing tomorrow followed by a long ride. Selection for the World Championships will be finalized after tomorrows race. Ill be sure to follow up with the verdict.

Thanks for reading,

-Edward Walsh