UCI 1.12 CHALLENGE DE HESBAYE - TROGNEE Race Report

In my last post i said that come the following day we would set sail for Trognee, and it turned out not to be far from the truth, it was the first real day of "belgian Weather", wind and rain, and lots of it. It was also fairly cold at about 7 degrees C with wind that made it feel like it was zero.
Unlike Ghent Ieper which started from a soccer stadium with heated change rooms Trognee was a small farm town with a tent a tiny heater at one end and a large drum on a gas burner with buckets instead of showers for after the race. Despite the horrid weather conditions our DS Dieter Lefevre, son of Patrick Lefevre (the owner of Quickstep Protour team) was feeling that we had a good shot at winning the race.
Peter Horn, the teams veteran at 24 in his 6th year at the team and i pushed our way into the front of the grid at the startline and found ourselves on the back of the lead car through the neutral, but as soon as the flag dropped it was on for young and old, and with water and mud covering the road it became impossible to se much in front and Nat Thompson one of the first year Yanks, fell in an early fall, breaking his shift lever requiring a spare bike, unfortunately having the same pedals as me and much shorter legs it meant he struggled to ride my spare bike which was given to him by mistake, but after another quick bike change he was back in the bunch on his spare bike. Unfortunately he didnt last long and was involved in another fall breaking his jaw and being taken to hospital.
struggling in the conditions and having a few issues with my position on the bike i found myself too far back when it came to the crunch, with the bunch splitting into several echelons with mine being the 4th, and the one that would not get back on. race over.
Fortunately Paavo (the Fin Nat u23 RR champ) Peter Horn (US), and Roderick Muscat (Malta) managed to make a break of about 15 riders with 30km to go to the finish, and being the best represented team in the break went on to take 3rd and 10th for the day, bringing home a nice trophy and some prize money.
ok Finances chechk Belgium trip cost $?,??? (not telling) minus 30 euro prisemoney = still $?,??? but hey there is still pleanty of time to change that ;)
Tomorrow im off to Waragem for an amateur u23 race, with 150km 4 steep KOM's 2 of which, the kwyermont, and the platerberg (spelling?) being cobbled. the pro race Dwars door Vlaanderen is on tomorrow as well on a similar course to my race so hopefully i wil be able to catch up with some of the pro's for a pic or two after my race to make up for the lack of pics in my last few posts.