This was the first race of the season for our junior squad in Belgium. Making the trip across the channel was me, Brock and Jake and Dan as team manager for the day.

We all had to meet at around 8 o’clock at Crawley to start the journey off. We were making good time up on the way to Folkestone but there were two crashes in quick succession on the motorway which forced us to take a diversion.

We finally arrived at Folkestone late so we had to get on a later train at 11:20 as apposed to the 10:20 train we hoped to get on. On the other side of the tunnel we managed to get to De Klijte in just over an hour. By the time we had signed on and got out bikes ready and numbers pinned on we only had about fifteen minutes before the race began.

All three of us were able to be on the front row or the second row on the line for starting but when two of the neutral cars had to pass through it lead to Jake and Brock being shot further back but luckily I managed to hold my position in the first row.

The race started as expected… like a rocket. I managed to be in the first ten round a very quick right hand turn just after the line. As the race left the town the roads got narrower and on either side there was the usual drainage ditches which Jake Managed to have a go in later in the race.

The course itself was not too bad there was a brief hill (if you can call it that) which seemed to split the bunch up significantly. After about 3 and half miles Brock had a technical where his seat dropped down. He tried to ride with it but it got a lot worse and was forced to pull out.

I started having chest pains during the first climb and unfortunately I got dropped from the leading bunch and continued with a smaller group. I was then finished after four laps.

Jake continued the race but had to do some cyclo-cross where he was pushed into the ditches and out into the muddy fields from touching two people’s handlebars. Jake got off his bike and ran carrying it back onto the road where then he managed to get back onto the bunch and go straight past them using some good time trial skills. Jake then went on to finish 24th

From my perspective we all did averagely. It was the first race out there of the season and I have never raced in Belgium before so the experience was new to me. Next week when we are racing in the Open Omloop Zarren we will be more prepared and hopefully have a good amount of time to fit in a better warm up.