Joe Dombrowski's Euro Cross Camp Diary: Azencross at Loenhout

Today was the Azencross at Loenhout. This is a GVA (Gazet van Antwerpen) series race that takes place in the northern part of Belgium; just a few kilometers from The Netherlands. The race is pancake flat, absolutely zero elevation change. However, the race is well known for it's interesting slew of course features which include a motocross-style whoop section, four high rise bridges, and huge dirt mounds which can be doubled at speed as jumps... the course definitely keeps you on your toes.
 
The weather in Belgium has been totally uncharacteristic of the typical drizzly, cloudy, and mild winters. The first ten days of my stay were fairly normal, warm and cloudy, but dry. It has remained dry, but the sun is shining (and is supposed to all week) and the air is cold (28 degrees at the start today.) This odd weather pattern has affected the course conditions as well; rather than the standard Belgian mud, we have had dry fast courses. Today this was especially true on the frozen flat ground of the Loenhout course. In fact, the average speed of the leaders in the Elite race today was 25 mph!
 
So after about an hour and a half of driving the first wave, us juniors, arrived at the venue. We all piled out of the van and immediately sook shelter in the warming van due to the extreme cold. After an abbreviated warm up due to a hour long wait at registration I found myself sitting in the staging area waiting for my call up. The first fifty or so riders had gotten called up, including all the Americans, and I still had not heard my name. Once again, the UCI officials over here screwed up the start grid; I wasn't even on the start list! Geoff saw this and instructed me to just roll up once they started calling up names fast towards the end of the list. I wasn't dead last on the start grid, but I definitely got the shaft on a potentially decent start position.
 
As the announcer boomed in Flemish over the mic, we all sat tensely waiting for the start. The start at Loenhout is done with a "stop light" system over the start/finish area. The green light can go off anytime so you have to really watch in order to get a good start. The light turned green and we were off, I maintained my position into the grass and began working my way up. About halfway through the first lap the course made a right-hander onto pavement, some kid tried to pass me on the inside line but slid out and took me with him into the course barriers. My sunglasses and chain were both off and the field was streaking by. When I eventually remounted I was sitting in dead last along with my crash buddy.
 
The rest of the race I slowly but surely worked up a few positions, but remained largely unsuccessful overall. I finished 54th in the end. Not a very good result, but with this many races, I have to expect a rough one eventually.

Tommorow is an off day, I will be trying to recover well as I have my final two races over here back-to-back on Thursday and Friday.
 
I did manage to find a video of the final lap from today's race. Its a great finish, you can check it out here:

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Comments

[Jesse]

That course was crit like...not technical at all. The belgium are pansies.

[Bryan Burns]

The venue is impressive. The number of people at the event...the amount of advertising on the course...the obstacles (albeit flat relative to others, as you mentioned) and the length of the course. all impressive to me.

[Joe Dombrowski]

Bryan,

The races here are simply amazing; they will frequently draw 20,30, even 40,000 spectators. They are always televised, and the level of sponsorship is huge.

The courses are also top notch, the bridges, whoops etc. Really fun for the rider and spectator. They are certainly way more technical than anything I have seen in the U.S.; especially those with more dramatic elevation change.