Greetings

We have a spent a little bit over a week at the EurocrossCamp in Belgium. It has been very cold, around freezing the whole time. On the rides the roads are either slushy, getting really wet, or super icy, making it hard to stay upright. We have spent time preparing for racing either at the house or out riding.

The first two races I did in Belgium were last Saturday and Sunday. The first race was a local race on an icy farm field and the second race was the Kalmthout World Cup race near Antwerp. On Saturday’s race most of us from the Eurocross Camp had enough UCI points to be called up to the front row. I had a great start and lead the race in the beginning; then I had a mechanical and dropping back a little to finish in third place. At the World Cup, I was called up in the 3rd row, didn’t have a great start but I had a blast in the race. I finished in 44th place, the first American. It was really fun racing with people from all different countries, an orange Dutch guy there, a small blue, red, white French guy there. Fighting against the best of all the different countries. The course was fast, icy, muddy and hilly.

Today is Christmas Eve, we woke up at 8:30am and went for a ride. I did a prep ride along the canal in town. The canal has a pretty cool bike path, but it’s icy and slippery which, is actually great cyclo-cross training combining handling and power. This afternoon there was a trip to the Tour of Flanders Museum. Today we had a special Christmas Eve dinner with the table set very nicely. Some family of the people who are in charge of the house joined us for food and it was a good time. We had a toast (only an Aquarius orange drink for us; champagne for the staff), dinner, and cake for dessert.

Bjorn