I am so excited to be back here in Belgium, I have forgotten how nice it is since I was here last in January. We have been living in a B&B for the last 2 days but we are moving back to what was initially supposed to be our base, the base in Tielt-Winge, tomorrow. Our team of 4 riders will be racing two Kermis's this weekend, one of 88km and the other of 96km. We have to ride as our Trade Teams (aka Rocky Mountain for me) because the rules state we can't race provincial level races in our National team kits. I am not 100% sure what exactly a Kermis is but here is my brief understanding or what it is:
-a group of bars on the same street get a bunch of theme rides and a festival going where a bike race is the main event
-the length of the laps are based on the time it takes to drink a beer to keep spectators at the bar
-they happen all over the place, Saturday's Kermis is a 20minute drive and Sunday's is 30 min
-they are both provincial level races (Antwerp has a population of 450,000)
-it costs 3 Euros to race and prizes go between 10 and 30 riders deep with a pool of 4000 euros
-as a provincial race they expect between 80 and 100 riders
These are just the aspects that I have been told, but tomorrow I will really get to find out what hardcore Belgian racing is about!
P.S Yohan want's me to put it out there that he is all right and his bikes are working quite well, he seems to have a fear called Idon'twannatalktomineparents phobia. Hopefully Robert and Guylaine are reading this. He has decided he wants to do a write up or two about his experiences here on my blog. You can expect that later during the trip.
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