A lot of pain on the cobbles, that ended with a visit to my doctor on the next day !

The pain resulted from the inflammation of some tissue just between leg and pelvic bones, I had been enduring for weeks, and this time a medical visit was unavoidable ! Result : 10 days of antibiotica, 5 days of anti-inflammatories and some days without bike !

As for the race in Maastricht, I wasn’t prepared for the cobbles, having been told it was just a 100m of it, the rest beeing nice covering ! Maybe that person just meant 100m of very bad and bumpy cobbles…. Furthermore it was a very small selected group on start, so that I was off the group just after afew laps, fortunately just before the first crashes in the slippery turns…

I wanted to stop because of the pain, but as the public comes to such races for spectacle and the speaker just praised my « heroism » to be still competing at nearly 50 years, I felt myself obliged to go on and was stopped 3 laps from the end together with some other riders, having just been lapped by the flying dutchwoman, Marianne Vos , who added another victory to her brilliant palmares !

Now I hope I will not loose too much in my preparation for Trophée d’Or and hope this nasty inflammation will soon be passed.

My next races will probably be the 13th and 14th august in Belgium.