Departing Belgium with a few hours in the car ahead is never exciting and when it raining you never seem to have any good thoughts going through your head about the upcoming race. As the hours ticked over, the rain kept on coming down, then bang………the rain stopped and we arrived at the hotel. Lunch was on the table and the extremely "good tasting" French pasta was served up. I couldn't wait to get into it. As I had expected the pasta was just rubbish. French racing is rather filthy and when you’re a foreigner getting up the French teams it can get rather dirty. There was a bit of anger released in one or more stages throughout this tour. It got a few riders upset and as they were mumbling some French at ya someone else was yelling something else back at them, it was great.

With the first stage underway, everyone was putting in the attacks and as fate had it Beveren missed the break and we had to chase. We pulled the break back at the bottom of the climb and everyone seemed to float on passed me up the climb. I was rather tweaked but managed to get over the climb in the middle of the peleton. I was lucky it was still raining and everybody was taking it easy going down the other side, so I thought. As I came round one of the corners I saw a nifty black bike washed out on the road and a rider picking themselves up, and who would that be??? But one of the NZ track team riders. We got a rider in the break on the finishing circuit and he pulled up 2nd and took one of the jerseys. The second day went off without a hitch. We had 3 riders in the break and I managed to kick back in the peleton to have a chat with some of the other kiwi fellas in the race. As I was doing that I found out that the Italian team had missed the break and they spent the next 160km chasing to pull back the break (stink for them). It came back together within the last kilometer and the sprinters had another stage to fight over.

The last three stages I found myself in the break or trying to go across to the break. I imploded in one of the stages trying to ride across a 5min gap with three other riders. We had missed the break so we were attacking up the road to get a rider away and it was me to get away. It got down to a minute and then it was BOOM, with 10k to go, lights out, it was not so much fun.

Having no one up there on GC we needed to saver something from this tour so we out on the attack again in the last stage. I got in the break again feeling rubbish after yesterdays effort but lucky I had another one of my team mates with me. With a dirty finishing circuit I knew I was never going to enjoy the last lap. As they attacked up the climb I jumped on their wheel and just watched them ride away but once I got to the top of the climb it was all on. My team mate and I rode back over to the 4 riders that got away and I launched my team mate to the back of the group with a kilometer to go and he finished up 3rd in the sprint and I was 7th with some lactated as legs.