Most of my teammates beeing at the world’s in Varese (congratulations to Tatiana, 4th in timetrial, Monia, Sioban, Natalia and Lorenza for their good results and team-work!!) we had problems to find riders for this race. So it was me with my daughter Trixy and our friend Monique Ludovicy who took the start in Noyon. The first lap of 26 kilometers was not too fast and the bunch passed together over the line. The first serious attack came at the beginning of the second lap from the Lotto rider Emma Silversides. No one went after her and she got up to 1’ advantage. In the climb, the bunch was split into several parts and I found myself in one of those little groups. As the french commissonars immediatly blocked, we couldn’t get back by jumping from car to car and we had to chase behind the cars. This worked really good until the moment when the group became to good and no one wanted to do the work anymore (4 people in a group of 20 working is not much at all!). Nevertheless we joined the cars at the beginning of the third lap, but there were new attacks in the front, the cars blocked us again and we were off again!

In the last lap I had enough of working for nothing and tried to break away from that group several times. I always got a few seconds advantage but the girls who couldn’t work a tiny little bit before suddenly chased after me and caught me back every single time.

In the sprint for the 15th place I only finished 6th (all the couch patatos woke up for the sprint!) and made 20th place overall. Not brilliant, but for one who had already finished with her season in the head, it’s quite acceptable.