Ronde

Well Chris and I have been here in Brussels for a couple of days now and it has blown by. Well except for yesterday....

Chris and I had signed up for the Ronde Van Vlaanderen Cyclosportif ride and needed to be at the start in Brugge at 7:00am. The Ronde provided a bus from the finish in Ninove to the start. which Chris and i had signed up for since we are staying in Brussels and it is a shorter train ride in the morning and closer to home after riding 267 KM. Well it turns out that there is no train from Brussel to Ninove that early in the morning. So we get up at 3:15 am for a 4am start to ride the 30+K that it takes to get to Ninove before the bus leaves at 5:30am. We actually get out the door by 4am and it is fairly warm for that time in the morning here. about 6c. We make it out of Brussels (which is hard since there are no street names! and if there are there are two Flemish and french. very confusing) and we get on a highway. N8. and we start setting a fairly good pace. Then the rain starts! and i mean a driving heavy rain. we pull over and put on some rain gear. this is when we learn that we have only covered 13k and we have about 30minutes to get there. Two person TT mode in the rain on a highway. Good times. We make it there with 3min to spare somehow. Now we get to sit soaking wet on a bus for an hour and a half with the air conditioning on! I did bring some extra clothes but they are all wet now too. soo it goes....

We get out of the bus and ride into brugge. It is a madhouse!! i think that 12,000 people started today. we are looking for the start and for where we drop our bags. Nothing is in English. (obviously) and we cannot read any signs. so we follow the people and end up at the main square. it is beautiful! the large sign in stand for the pro race is set up and people are waiting in this long line to just walk across it. insanity.

We drop our bags and head out for 264k of fun. we roll out of town and it is so exciting! rolling from small town to small town. fairly flat and just has this feeling, i don't know, i could just hear Phil calling the race in my head. I will tell you all about it later. But lets just say that we did over 300k on 4 hours sleep. We have to go and try and catch the finale in Ninove!