Day 20 - Stuck in Traffic

Written by Stephen Hall with Brett Schnitzerling & Glenn Harris

We slept well and truly through our alarm this morning, not even Tim having breakfast less than 10m away could wake Glenn or myself. A few hours later we eventually rose and thought about the day ahead. I sat down with my computer and started to plan my next 3 months of training and goals for the end of 2010/early 2011 season. I'm excited to announce that as of today I am planning to race in the Tour of South China Sea in December. My father Murray Hall has been to the tour several times in a management role and assures me it will be a very rewarding experience. As soon as I return I am also competing in the Australian University Games held in Perth from the 27th to the 1st October. The 90km road race is held on the Tuesday in Pickering Brook while the Criterium is held on Friday at Perry Lakes. I have been looking forward to competing in the AUG ever since I got back on the bike in April this year. After studying my program I lost track of time and had to get a move on getting my things together for the race in Nieuwerkerken. Glen decided he wasn't going to race, so only my bike was packed in the car. I sat down for a pasta/tuna lunch made by Brett and then we were in the car and on the road. Nieuwerkerken is at least 120km away so we left reasonably early to ensure we'd get there an hour before race time. We hadn't even got 20km away when we got on the freeway to find it at a complete stand still. Despite our best efforts to detour we couldn't avoid the traffic and we decided to write the day off when we were still 80km away an hour before race time.

I was bitterly disappointed to miss today's race as it was set to be my last here in Europe before returning home. However we had a quick look through the list of races when we got back to the apartment and found a kermesse tomorrow in Maldegem. Maldegem is about 150km away only a short trip out of Brugge. We were running out of time but Brugge was on our list of things to do before we left so tomorrow we'll kill two birds with one stone by leaving in the morning with the car packed, spend most of the day in Brugge and then drive down to the race. My mood improved dramatically and after lunch we all went for a ride to Geel for a coffee and cecemel before cruising home down the canal. We fooled around and had a few sprints along the water. It was a beautiful day once again and the sun had just started to fall when as we rolled the last 5km home. Glenn and I played a few games of chess and I improved my record to 3-0 as Brett cooked up another feast for us all. Tomorrow will officially be the last race for us here in Belgium. Brett is going to sleep with fingers crossed that his cold will improve while Glenn and I will try and get a good nights sleep before a solid 120km in the gutter tomorrow.