Hi everyone,
I'm in Belgium now, well settled in and into my third week of racing and training. The town we are based in is called Teilt-Winge, which is a small town in a mostly flat part of Belgium, there are ten of us living in the apartment, mostly athletes and a few support staff also. Time is going by fast already with only another 6 weeks before we go into track camp in Bordeaux.
After arriving in Belgium we had three days of training before starting our first tour, the Tryptique des Ardennes, which is a three day tour raced in and around liege. During the 3 days, we experienced hot weather, heavy rain, steep descents and some of the most famous climbs in Belgium. I didn't finished the tour, after loosing contact with the main group on the last day, but gained some good benefits throughout the tour, which was a hard tour to begin, with 6 Professional continental teams racing.
Our next race was a one day race called GP Criquelion which was on Sunday, a completely different type of race compared with the first tour. The race was 6 laps of a 22km circuit and then 4 laps of a 10km circuit, much like a massive criterium. I missed making the race winning break, but I rode well to finish this race in good bunch positioning.
Training has been progressing well, i'm progressing into some hard specific track efforts to bring my form up. My next race is the GP de Wilde which is a tough one, that's coming up on sunday.
Westley Gough
