It's raining again

I know, I shouldn't complain, because the last four days have been really nice. Three of them were 30 degrees-ish and even yesterday wasn't too bad. But it's raining now.

The Giro has finished and I am feeling completely brain dead, as is normal. It's been a staring into space (and rain) morning, but I had better do some work. Good race - it would have been very amusing if Rujano had won! That dude is seriously small.

Punctured a tubular on Saturday as we turned to go up the back of the Molenberg. Dang. Had a spare, but no valve extender. Dang again. Rode 10 km on the flat to Oudenaarde and got the guys at the bike shop to sort it out. So training was truncated.

Sunday: didn't bother with Berchem as I didn't want to face 170 km on very little sleep before the final day of the Giro. So it was the usual Schelde loop with the boyz. There was no wind, and we went up the Trap Op in the fastest ever (well, since I started recording it last year) time of 4'54, an average of 36.7 km/h by my reckoning. The first part to the Haaghoek turn off was in 3'00, which is the same as the pros did it in the E3 Prijs earlier this year. It was mainly due to Alain Lagaisse, who really lit it up at the bottom. I was in my 53x16 and wondering why I was pedalling so fast. We slowed down a bit when we got to the flat part in the middle.

Unfortunately on the way back, there were a couple of guys waiting for the bunch and I think one of them broke his seatpost as we were coming up. He crashed, then his mate who was looking around also crashed. Half of the bunch stopped, and half of us continued, as 15 people can render assistance as well as 30, especially as it was on a fairly main thoroughfare. Hope the guy is OK! Andy Gannon told me a nasty story about a mate of his that broke a seat post on Beach Road in Melbourne. He said he nearly lost both legs as a result. Ouch. I'm somewhat glad I have my solid Eddy Merckx seat post now instead of that carbon one.

The final sprint was good - you could have thrown a blanket over Andy, Schiemsky and I. I think Andy got it in the photo finish and bike throw :-)

Must work.