Where to start? Well, I have heard that the beginning is a very good place to start. In this case the beginning of the season, after the first race. It was pretty much a disaster. For the first 2 months, I was either sick, or really sick. It was just a major downward spiral rectified by a short trip back home for 5 days. It was the best thing I did. Since then my form,moral, and general existence went from dismal to encouraging.

A few good but by no means great races later encouraging went to positive. Therefore, we took a trip to the Ardennes to race to give us a little change in scenery and race style – Pan flat to actually hilly. I managed to break into the top 10 for the first time all year with an 8th.I have never been happier with an 8th place. After 3 months of misery I needed it. I then began to regain hope and ambition and started thinking I could actually win these races. With that I had a few more top 10’s and a 2nd by about 20cm (picture below). Its worst photo of my life. I wanted nothingless than to win that race. But extra motivation will surely help to reverse those places in that photo.

That is a very quick, but to the point, summary of the last couple o fmonths! Which brings us to the weekend just gone. It was a cup of Belgium race, in which my teammate Jo Maes is currently in the lead of overall. Needless to say, we raced for him. He was 2nd on the day and managed to hang on to the overall lead – even extend it. The race itself was a nice combination of hills, rain, crosswinds, and no cobbles, or so I was told! We barrelled down a 70-80kph decent with a road 50 metres wide, then, took a hard left onto a cobbled decent 5 metres wide. So, not only were there cobbles, they were downhill and very wet. Someone lied! It was pretty scary! I was fairly disappointed with my result, but a hard 170km in the legs can only be a good thing.

Here is a picture of Jo winning his first race of the year in April. Just so you can see what he looks like! Hopefully he shall not mind.

Thats all for now. I have to go and buy a white board marker. Its urgent.

Matt