Sunday brought with it cold, snow, wind, and a challenging day on the bike. But it was a day on the bike – so this is a good thing. Nothing worse than wanting to ride and not being able to ride. With thanks to Jos for picking me up and navigating the slippery snowy roads and driving me to the cyclo-cross race in Tervuren.

I really wish I could give you a riveting blow-by-blow race report of the action. But I can’t. You see, this race course was a couple of notches above my technical skill level. In North America, this would have been a mountain bike race. Ya, it was like that. After doing a couple of warm-up laps, I really didn’t want to race. But Jos and Nikki Harris (2nd place on the day), convinced me to just get on my bike and try it. I knew this was the only solution. So I did it. It wasn’t pretty. It was slow. I was all over the brakes (went through a set of brake pads!). But I did it. This is good. Next year I’ll be ready for this race – I’ll know what to expect, I’ll have the technical skills to actually “race” this race rather than simply ride it. So, in the end there were some successes to take from this day. I have written a race report.

I guess this experience allowed me to take another bite out of the elephant. I’m sure I learned a few things from this race experience, lessons that will become clear over the next few days/weeks.

The rest of the day was pretty good. Easy drive home. Lots of good conversation with Jos. Chilled out here for a bit, got to talk to my dad. Nice dinner out at our favorite little cafe. Then the last two episodes of The Amazing Race (which I think I slept through…). All in all, a good Sunday. It is now Monday morning and I’m looking forward to a good week of training and the potential for some races this weekend. This weekend is the National Championships weekend for every country (except Canada and the U.S.), so there isn’t much racing available to me and Marc.

As usual, Luc was out cheering me on and snapping photos. So here are some more excellent photos, with thanks to Luc: