I didn’t race in Belgium as planned, because of our dog having some health issues, and decided to only do this relay-race on Sunday with my daughter Trixy and her boyfriend Josselin, who is also a cyclist and came to visit us from France.

I did the start as well as the first hour out of six and managed to stay in a small group just behind the leading dozen. Trixy took the next turn and hour, she had to keep the speed on her own, being too fast for most of the riders but to slow for the strong elite men passing her. After her, Josselin took the third hour and he luckily met Pit Schlechter (one of our best U23 riders) with whom he stayed and did a wonderful job, bringing us forward in the classification.

The second part of the race was almost a copy of the first, only with changed weather conditions: it had started raining while I was doing my second hour. Some of the turns had gotten slippery and tricky, but none of us three was bothered by it and we didn’t crash.

We finished excellent 5th in the overall (86 teams on the start) and 4th in the «Open» classification, we were the first mixed team (women and a man), all those in front of us being exclusivly men.