Do I learn?

Well, after my fun day at Paris Roubaix recon I woke up feeling like junk. My hands were swollen, my body felt like I had been hit by a car and it truly hurt to sit on my butt. Hoping that I was not the weakest link in the group I headed on down to the breakfast table to talk to the other guys and alas, the others felt just as I did. What a relief. I cannot begin to explain how excited I am to not be racing tomorrow as it has been raining all afternoon and the general saying is not if you will wreck on the cobbles in the rain but how many times you will.

So being pretty tired yesterday we decided to do a fairly relaxed 3 hour ride and I was taken off to the rolling hills a few hours away. This is what greeted me.



What is this you ask? This is the Paterberg of the famed Tour of Flanders race. It is another one of the classics of the Spring bike racing calendar and while the cobblestones of Paris Roubaix are flat, these cobblestones are all uphill. Feeling like junk, I should have probably just stayed on normal roads, but when presented with the opportunity to ride on such famed ground my mouth began to salivate and I had to take it in. I guess I don't learn to well. Did they hurt? You bet that they did, but I found it somewhat pleasing at the end to finish each sector. While I did not ride all the sections, my respect for the racers that battle on these roads has risen considerably this week.

So, tomorrow morning I am flying down to Spain for a stage race this week. Extremely excited to be getting out of grey, wet Belgium and down to sunny, hot Spain.