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Incourt, 1.5-40-10This race was only one week after the middle distance race in Eupen. I had been feeling well during the week, really having the feeling that Eupen was the intensive training that I needed to get back into the swing of things. In short, I was very positive that I was going to do a better race. Yes, it worked, I had a much stronger race than last week, but still not quite like I had hoped. I had put myself completely at the left of the starting line, trying -as always- to make sure that I would not get caught up in the "fight" when the gone goes. Bad decision, very bad one indeed. The First buoy is more to the right than the starting line, and the starting line is not perpendicular to the direction to swim in, so I actually gave myself a pretty large disadvantage to start with. On the positive side though, this allowed me to catch people all through the swim. Incourt is a nice race. It probably has the clearest water for swimming in Belgium. This was originally a sand quarry, and is now only used by divers (can't blame them). Very scenic indeed, but it does mean that once you get out of the water, you have to run up a pretty steep slope to get to your bike. It gives the race an extra touch :-) On the bike I was feeling good. Catching quite a few people at first and then I was all alone. I did figure that I could not be in the lead because there was no load car in front of me, and I hadn't seen Miguel Janssens. Still, I thought I would catch him eventually and that not to many people would be able to ride this hard. Guess I was wrong, halfway through Eric Thijs passed me, saying that I was riding pretty fast (kind of a stupid remarks if you ask me - especially as he was going faster). He did not manage to get rid of me (all at clean distance of course), so we entered the bike parc together in second and third place. Once into our running shoes, Eric immediately started pulling away from me, and he would catch the leader and win the race by quite a margin. I could not get into any kind of rhythm on the first lap, but the second was better. I was passed by two swift running athletes (one of them just a few hundred meters before the finish), but could not manage to shift to a higher gear. Anyway, I was a lot stronger than last week, so things are going in the right direction. |
