7:30 – Quietly, I rise from bed. Tiffany will sleep until our alarm goes off at 8. I do everything with slow, exaggerated movements to avoid making noise. The bones in my feet crack as I walk. Have they always done that? My alarm goes off at 8. Tiff does not stir. Do I wake her up? I set another alarm for 8:01 and do not shut it off this time.
10:00 – Pre-race preparations are underway in the team camper. Everyone jokes about the 10 gels they will eat for lunch. We perform a radio check and everything appears to be working properly. I work through my dressing routine. The only outlier in my routine today is the congestion I feel in my sinuses. I don’t know how it will affect my race today, but hope for the best.
10:50 – The Oudenaarde town crier screams good luck to us in Flemish and English. The pair of lungs on this man is impressive. Five minutes pass before the start gun is shot. The peloton makes its way onto the fabled Flanders roads.
14:30 –My body has made the last 3 hours a living hell and will no longer exert itself. I have contributed what I could to my team in this feeble state of existence and can no longer keep up with the main peloton. I find the domestique grupetto. We leave the course and head straight back to Oudenaarde. Upon arriving at the team camper, I cannot help but let a few tears slip down my cheeks.
19:01 – Alena and I take the train from Gent-St-Pieters to Brussels-Zaventem. She runs through the airport, albeit slowly due to the eight new stitches in her arm, to catch her flight. I take a shuttle to an airport hotel. What do I order for dinner? A feel-good burger and fries. Bubble bath for dessert. None of it makes me feel physically better, but it puts me to sleep.
Alexis Ryan (USA) on Muur van Geraardsbergen at Ronde van Vlaanderen – Photo by Sean Robinson/velofocus.com 
