Middag Humsterland

It may sound like some sort of crazy place you may never visit, and you would be right. Almost at the top of Holland, Humsterland is in the middle of nowhere, Middag means starts at midday, just in case you were wondering. I awoke to loud banging on my door, my great ideas of a small sleep had come to a finish. My sleep was one of those good jetlag ones, where you could have had a band playing in my room and I would not have heard it, it could have continued for many more hours. But it was over, I had five minutes to get fed, clean and out the door, I had minutes to spare. We hit the road, with a nice team of 5 racing for the day, Loes Makerink coming from Montreal with us as well, so at least there would be one on the same time difference as me. Another chance to direct a race, this time hopefully my bad luck stays in Montreal. National road champs for the kids was on, so JP was out to support his son and daughter, both got a good chance of winning their age groups. We had a driver today at least, and translator for the race radio, so it was not all bad.


The beautiful open flat countryside of Humsterland.

The team was looking good, Mirjam, Loes G, Loes M, Trine and Luise, we raced hard, right from the word go. Loes M was having a bad day, with a mechanical happening about an hour into the race, I decided to change wheels, this I just got her back on to the bike and crash, right in front of us. But Loes managed to keep clear, pulling most of the crash up to the bunch. Then just as she got back to the bunch, front flat tire, damn it, but we fixed it and she powered back up to the front of the bunch and just attacked. She was feeling good, seems like little sleep, jetlag and a plane ride is good for her legs, at least I could sympathize with her (or is that the wrong way around).


Sometimes we got to see some of the front of the race.

Nothing much else happened, Mirjam was in a solo break for about 1.5 hrs, but got caught, then we had Loes G out alone for a while, then just on the finish line we made some attacks with Mirjam, but she was caught, leaving Loes M to sprint for third place. Not bad really.


I love these long shots, it's all I get sometimes so you got to love em.

Now off home for the night, and then packing in the morning for a week in Spain for the Tour of Bira (just over the French border near Bordeaux, Basque area), a change of team, and a 1359km drive.

Next up Tour of Bira, Tour Zeeland, Dutch nationals.