As we drove off the train in Calais it was just like home from home, chucking it down with rain! This continued as we crossed over the border into Belgium, plus the wind! Trucks looked like they were being driven on an angle in the crosswinds!
Thankfully by the afternoon it had cleared up so once we'd settled in to our digs at The Chainstay in Oudenaarde (this is one cool place by the way, thanks Greg and Holly!), we headed out for a recce of the OhN climbs. This first ride in Belgium was really special as it included the Paterberg, a famous Belgian cobbled climb, and some cobbled roads. Asked whether I enjoyed the cobbles my answer was "loved them...I think!". No amount of riding on the pothole ridden mud caked roads in Scotland can prepare you for your first cobbles experience. There's definitely a technique to riding them, other than just grinning and bearing it!
Surprisingly I managed to get a decent enough night's sleep before what would be the biggest race of my life. I was actually pretty excited, although I'm not going to lie, I was pretty nervous too!! Arriving at the velodrome in Gent and seeing the team buses from Giant Shimano, Specialized Lululemon, Dolmans Boels, Orica AIS, Wiggle et al, it hits you just how big a race it is and who you'll be racing against, pretty cool feeling!
I tried to shut all that out though and just focus on going through my pre-race prep to get my head into race mode. Mark, Nick and Gary took care of everything, bikes, numbers, timings so all we had to do was get ourselves ready, eat and sign on. Standing on the podium in Scotland kit with my teammates was one very very proud moment! It definitely adds a wee bit extra motivation and drive to race hard, do the job you've been given and the best performance you possibly can!
The neutralised section was nice and steady on fairly wide roads with a few turns to negotiate before the flag was dropped and the race was on. I focused on holding my position and moving up when I could. See a gap, get in it. See a gap, get in it. A split second hesitation and it's gone so you always have to be on the ball, never switch off. It was a bit twitchy in the race to start with, not helped by the roads being a little bit damp and some unnecessary braking. And that's where my story of the racing ends...next thing I feel something swipe out my bike and I'm on the ground. The domino effect of a crash meant that girls behind were coming off on top of me and landing on my head. All I could think of was I wanted to get out of there so just remember getting to my feet and heading over to the gutter so that no one else could land on me! My next thought was "ok I'm out of the crash now, I should go get my bike and get back in the race". Then quickly realised it was a bit sore to do that so I lay down on the grass and that was it, race over. The feeling when the realisation hits you that it's race over is the worst ever. I was (and still am to be honest) totally totally gutted. The first race of the season, racing for Scotland, in Belgium, was over after only 5km. And knowing I could've done nothing about it is also pretty hard to take. My first get down, stay down.
A big thank you to the race doctor and medics for looking after me. Not sure I was very comprehensible for most of the time between crashing and the hospital. I do remember Gary at one point on the journey to the hospital saying "I think we'll be here for a while" and thinking to myself we must've hit a traffic jam or something. But no, the ambulance had broken down! Only minutes from the hospital! Thankfully there was another one right there to take us the last wee bit of the journey.
Some scans, dressings and neck brace later I was all patched up and ready to leave hospital only to go and faint as I was within touching distance of the outside. This meant a 24 hour stay in hospital for observation. Big thank you to Gary for chatting to me about his racing career, loved hearing about some of his highlights and definitely helped distract me.
It's always good to find a positive in things so I guess this had to be arriving on the ward just in time to watch the last 20km of the men's Omloop het Nieuwsblad. The nurse looking after me was a cyclist too so he found it on tv for me and we watched Stannard take the win, legend!!
Next afternoon and I was breathing a big sigh of fresh air relief at being released from hospital when my personal escorts Gemma and Nick came to get me. I was really looking forward to getting back to the house to see my teammates Lucy, Kerry, Jane, Kayleigh and Claire and hear all about their race experience. It was ace to see them pretty buzzing about how the race had gone and I was super proud of them hearing their race stories. It's also quite hard with the "what if" and wondering what my race story would have been if I hadn't crashed...but that's bike racing. There are the highs and there are the lows and this is just one of the lows. I'll be back on the bike real soon!!!
Bye for now,
Jools.
No comments:
Post a Comment