Discovery

I had 3km intervals to do today, I thought the best place to go was the canals. Its a massive canal about 40m across that stretches through part of Belgium. It's a good place to train because on both sides there are roads for cyclists where no cars travel, so its quite peaceful and flat, perfect for sprinting and intervals. I chose to ride in the direction of Gent, which is about 40km from where I begin in Sint Jose.

Anyway, I was racing tractors (the tractors here are like formula 1 cars) down the canal and concentrating on my intervals when in the distance a group of eight cyclists dressed in a dark uniform approached. At first I thought they were a local Belgian team, but then I noticed the Discovery logo on their jerseys, I was really excited and before I knew it they were past with no time to recognize any of the riders. Secretly I wanted to turn round and say "Hey Hincappie, Danielson, I'll sprint you to that sign there," but unfortunately I knew that wouldn't happen and I would probably beat them (I wish).

That put a smile on my face, and five minutes after that I arrived in Gent. I took an hour of my ride to explore some of the hidden streets. It's a really big city with lots of beautiful parts and its fair share of concrete catastrophes. I decided to take a secret path into a forest and found a massive castle, I stood staring at that for a few minutes. I then decided that it was time to get back home. I've found that in this region of Belgium the wind always blows in from the west, so my whole ride home was spent fighting the western monster.

I've now seen Discovery, some of the Phonak, Quickstep and Saunier Duval team and organizers. The Giro d' Italia apparently starts near here this year, so hopefully I'll be able to complete my collection of team sightings for this year, it sounds nerdy but it motivates me to the teams out riding.