Day 10 - 26 and Sunny

Written by Stephen Hall with Brett Schnitzerling & Glenn Harris

Since we arrived in Belgium 10 days ago we've only had to endure one day of bad weather. We were treated once again this morning with beautiful blue skies and a forecast of 26 degrees. As usual we sat down at the breakfast table for our standard meal of oats & honey to get us through the day's training. We still had the fantastic 'chocolate coffee' on our minds from Thursday's visit to "La Bas" so we decided to head to Diest and do it all over again. Stijn & Brenda looked after us for the half an hour we were there before we finally worked up the courage to get back on our bikes and head home. The two hour ride back was entertaining as Glenn twice tried to kill me. Once by pushing me into traffic to avoid taking out a senior citizen on the cycle path & secondly by deliberately kicking my front wheel out from under me at 40kmph. Luckily I have the reflexes of a cat and managed to keep myself upright (I also didn't make fun of Glenn for the rest of the ride).

The fridge was looking pretty miserable after it's 10th day in action so we popped into the super market for some more bits and pieces. Belgium is cycling mad so the fact that 3 blue lycra wearing Aussies marched into the store wasn't that unusual. Although the 500m roll back to the apartment with loaves of bread, litres of milk & cans of tuna hanging off the hoods wasn't our best idea. We topped up on all of our vegetables & meats so the salad roll today was far more interesting then yesterdays lousy sandwich. After lunch we had planned to go to the bike shop in Geel and collect a few things to get our bikes running properly. Brett had a skype date with his girlfriend so Glenn and I went alone however, we must have sat on the couch for 10 minutes too long as we arrived at Van Eykes just as the doors were closing. Instead we drove around the corner and sat outside a cafe for a coke and a hot chocolate.

Dinner time eventually rolled around but we all seemed to have caught the 'i couldn't be bothered' disease so we drove to Turnhout to have dinner at a restaurant called La Cinema. We were careful not to go too wild with our food selection as we have a very big day of racing tomorrow. The food was beautiful and we played it safe with either pasta or steak and salad. After dinner we hung around for awhile and had a chat before we realized the time and began the journey home. Tomorrow's race in Montenaken is set to be our hardest yet with Glenn (having ridden the course before) informing us that the race will be very difficult and attract a large field of talented bike riders. By the third lap we should know whether it'll be the day for Arbitrage Wormall to take the win or the day we hang on for dear life.