After my crash in Flandern and the 10 days of antibiotica, the premises for this race were not the best. On top if it all, my son Fränz crashed with his dirt-bike and ripped all three tendons in his left foot so I had to spend a lot of time in the hospital instead of sitting on the bike and train.

For the Drentse 8 of Dwingeloo I had mental problems (no, I not trying to say that I’m mental) to continue and I have to admit that I was rather intimidated by the huge bunch so I rapidly found myself at the very end of it, where you feel the accelerations the most. I decided to quit the race and keep my strength for the following days.

On the second day, the bunch broke into several parts after the cobblestone sections but before the first passage on the VAM-Berg it united again. Until the passage of the finish line after 100 km of race, I had no problems to stay in the bunch, but then my legs began to cramp badly due to the fact that I’m not yet fully used to the distance. I stopped on our second passage of the line to save some left over energie ( I thought that 3 more VAM-climbs would kill me) for the World-Cup.

The World-Cup race started terribly fast and the bunch was stretched into a long line pretty much all the time. Just before the first cobbles my team-mate Catherine Hare (one of our leaders) got a puncher and I stopped alongside her to give her my wheel.

I struggled in the cars for quite some time, but as soon as the Bezeenwagen got behind me I knew that the game was over and I went directly to the third cobblestone section in order to help and encourage my team-mates if another would get a flat tire.

Catherine was really unlucky that day because she got another flat after that, this time Corinne Hierckens helped her out and brought her back to the bunch. She literally sacrifized herself and quit the race after that.
But that good thing is: Neither she nor I were left unpaid for our “sacrifizes” as Catherine finished on 17th place and made some World-Cup points, Karin Aune and Alice Marmorini too saw the finish line but got no points unfortunatly.

As result of the ride on the cobbles, I got a rather serious tendinitis in my left shoulder that still handicaps me a lot more than I expected. It won’t be an easy ride on Wednesday in the Fleche Wallone.