Sliced bread still goes mouldy

The SwaboLadies cyclingteam were present at the first time UCI 1.2 course “Dwars door de Westhoek” in Belgium om July 18th.
I managed to find my way to Swift (our cycling club house) with my Leiden road map placed firmly on my handlebars (it is times like these that I wished I had of spent more money on the bigger/better Garmin to get me around). The Team Director; Hans and Stella were picking me up from Swift for the 3 hr trek in the car to the little remote corner of Belgium, known as de Westhoek (it is almost in France). Today we had a UCI 1.2 one day race complete with bergs and small narrow dangerous descents, some wind and some cobbles..err…rocks. A little bit of something for everyone!

Dwars door de Westhoek – UCI1.2 Belgium, July 18th
by: Davina Summers
fotografie: Bart Hazen

I was keen to see fellow Aussie, Miffy Galloway today. It was going to be great to see a smiling Aussie face! The Dutch are really nice, but everyone loves an Australian.
All the usual pre-race prep and team presentation were completed. We had a seven SwaboLadies racing today: Guusje Vrehen (NED), Sofie Horik (NED), Stella Blom-Visser (NED), Emily Collins (NZL), Tracy Best (NZL), Davina Summers (AUS), Miffy Galloway (AUS). The field of 140 riders was solid.

The first hill (and biggest) started about 15k in, I was not looking forward to it. I expected that the race would start really fast, but it was fairly steady into the start of the climb and there was a few twitchy wheels. The five climbs were consecutive from about 15k to 50k. We were warned of a narrow and technical descent after the first climb, even still, girls took chances and as expected came off.

I remember riding past this one girl who was screaming (in a language that I could not understand), so I am not sure if she was letting us know that she was there (as the path was so narrow) or that she was very badly hurt. Girls started dropping fast, and after the final climb there was 1 girl away solo and we were a bunch of about 60. The pace dropped off a bit allowing about another bunch of about 30 behind to roll back on. I took this opportunity to feed and get some bottles for my teammate in the bunch, Emily.

We approached the circuit part of the race (~9kms round) for 7 laps and the pace was on. Another rider went off the front, I actually thought about going with her, but was actually suffering quite a bit so decided to stay put. I thought both riders away would get pulled back, but they were one each from the two dominate teams and there was not enough incentive for the bunch/remaining teams to chance.

The circuit was solid, with a massive cobbled section of about 1km (I thought my bike was going to break every time we went over it and tried my best to work out how to ride on that sort of road, cyclocross or mountain biking is really not my thing) and this cobbled section was the final section for the sprint finish…insane. A few turns into narrow streets/paths and a massive headwind section. It was awesome, love it, in a crazy sort of way.

I did my best to position for the finish, but it is still a work in progress…I finished 18th in the bunch. A great day of racing with the SwaboLadies. Unfortunately, Miffy had a bad day and crashed hard during the race, we visited her at the First Aid post and she was taken back to Holland for x-rays on her elbow.