After 30 odd hours of travelling I arrived in my home for the next few weeks Oudenaarde Belgium. I passed the time on the flights, mostly by sleeping but also the every few hourly stretching session at the back of the plane kept my sanity. My first impressions of the place were just simply in ore of all the old buildings and the scenery.
The first few days training wise have been very easy and just really to get the body use to training again after the long travel time. It was certainly an eye opener to ride on the right hand side of the road instead of the left, but I eventually got the hang of it. Defiantly the highlight so far of the trip was being able to ride up the famous cobbled climb Koppenberg which about 2 km down the road from where I'm staying. The climb is one of the main climbs in the tour of Flanders, one of the biggest one day races in the world. It gets up to 25% gradient at some points which is massive to ride a bike up. Below is a video that I found online of climbing up Koppenberg
One of the many rooms in the seeming endless bike shop
The town itself of Oudenaarde is quite a cool little town, the town square has a very old cathedral at one end and a towering castle like building at the other end, there are lots of little cafe type shops dotted all around the town and the occasional bike shop too which are good to have a look through when you have a spare few minutes, although one bike shop that I went into was a labyrinth of different rooms all interconnecting with each other that seemed endless
First ride in Belgium
The first day on the track is tomorrow and I can't wait to ride on the famous Gent velodrome which hosts one of the biggest 6 day races in the year. I'll let you all know how it goes!
