This is a story about a guy with a dream, the dream of getting paid to ride my bike. Though the dream would never become a reality I came close, this is the story of the best day of my life on a bike.

A little background, a mountain biker for 10 years I became frustrated with not being able to dedicate myself to the sport. So after my 3^rd season racing in the professional U.S. mountain bike ranks, I quit my job, picked up and moved to Belgium for four months to be a part of Bernard Moerman’s Cycling Center. After 3 months and a progression from not being able to finish a race, I learned and trained enough to have one of the best days of my life on a bike.

Here is how it went down.

The Knokke-Heist Kermis 29.5.05

The course was pretty ridiculous, as most are in Europe. Being a Kermis they take a bit more freedom in deciding what will work for racing bikes around. This particular course was one of the ones that scared me before the race even got started. It was crazy, there were two sets of hacked up railroad tracks and a million corners, but the worst was a 90 degree corner off of the start-finish stretch, it came off of a normal sized European road (maybe 8 guys abreast) and funneled immediately onto a brick side street narrower than a bike path (at most two abreast), that corner proved to be dangerous with a big crash four or so laps in that would split the group, but hey I wouldn’t know, I was off the front.

My Move

My motivation was really high to be the first guy through the first corner and keep myself out of trouble for the first four laps of the race, then reevaluate and go from there. One of my teammates had the same idea, he was third through the first corner and I was fourth. From the gun the two of us and four others drove the pace and created a split that had maybe 20 sec. Two laps later one of our teammates bridged, and I snapped, just started barking orders; it was really weird - I am not sure I have ever taken charge like that before at anything in my life. I was telling the guys to go easy because the break had way too many of us (Americans from the Cycling Center), and there was no way they were going to let us go. Another lap and we had another teammate in the group, but when he bridged he brought half of Belgium with him. This kid has a hard time with teamwork so the plan was to let him do his thing at the front, have two of us helping him but only doing 50% efforts, and have the last guy just sitting on. It went like this for a while.

Every lap of the race had a prime and my teammates and I were constantly at the front but missing out on the primes. This one guy was even telling us not to sprint for the primes, and then I got pissed, and I plotted for a half lap of how I was going to tear his legs off in the next sprint. And I tried, I have never burned that many matches in a sprint,  it was an attack like they always explain but cannot teach, it was so violent and so committed no smart racer could have ever consented, but I was fueled by emotion. I didn’t win (second), but the sprint and the effort I put out instigated an immediate and huge gap. We went with it, for 16 laps and almost a hundred km’s. I can say that it was one of the hardest things I have ever done in a bike race. Rotating for over 2 hours with two Belgians, one who was a national champion, and one who had at least 40lbs of muscle more than I do, pull for pull, with the rest of the race breathing down our necks. It kind of fell apart with a lap and a half to go, one of them attacked and I gave it all I had to go with him and I just didn’t have the legs. Then it was like a nightmare, the other Belgian wouldn’t pull through and I was freaking out about getting caught, I wasn’t getting splits. So I put my head down for the hardest 10k of my life, and got beat in the last 300 meters. We ended up having more than a minute over a small group of 10 or so chasers. Rough but it was still about the coolest thing ever.

To the Victor Go the Spoils

I was exhausted, I could barely stand after stopping 100 meters after the finish line. I got huge bear hugs from two of my teammates; one of them almost crashed trying to hug me before his bike stopped moving. Johan, the team’s coach, was really happy and trying to explain that I had to clean some of the goobers off my face before I went anywhere. Then these old guys came up to me, asking about the race in surprisingly good English, theorizing on how many primes I took and exclaiming that they thought I was going to win the race with a solo attack. I had to excuse myself as I heard my name over the PA system. And I stood on my first European podium; they gave me a heavy pewter plate. Back to the car, some dry clothes and a Coke later, and back to the now empty podium for a couple pictures, they tear these things down incredibly fast. And it was to the bar, to collect our spoils. When they handed me the envelopes I started looking through them for the ones with my number, and the guy says "No, no, all yours." What?!!  I had 19 envelopes in my hand; it totaled almost 200 euros, not too bad for the hardest 3 hours of work of my life. Not to mention a pretty good day for a mountain biker with a little engine on his first trip to Europe.