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Snerf's slant: The 2004 Nicole Freedman Diary
Sprinter, 2000 Olympian and a founder of the Basis women's team, Nicole Freedman - known as Snerf to her friends - is one of the US circuit's great characters. Her goal for 2004 is to make the Olympic team for Israel and failing that "to see one of my developmental teammates win their first NRC race and subsequently take all their prize money."
April 4 - Tour of Flanders
Please see Cyclingnews coverage. It is far better than anything I could write. It also has the added benefit of accuracy. Best team finish, Marion Clignet, 12th. Number of hours driven and/or flown 13. Personal race: "not so good" (translation: horrible). Three of us back-of-the-packers were routed off course and took a true "Tour" of Flanders. How strange that two full men's and women's fields, 360 racers in total plus a million plus spectators, could just vaporize, leaving three of us touring Belgian backroads, numbers affixed to our backs, to match the bold "L's" stuck to our foreheads.
April 5-7 - The Eye of the Storm - Wait Between the Races
When I offered to write for Cyclingnews, I thought, "how perfect" to take advantage of the occasional slow downtime between races. At the time, I could not have predicted that:
1. Time is actually stopped in certain parts of Belgium, making for vast amounts of time to write but nothing of interest at all to write about;
and
2. Write all you want. There are no phones or Internet to transmit this information to the outside world.
We arrived at the Bruegelhof horse farm, our home for the next four days, late in the evening. The Bruegelhof boasts a natural farm experience. Six to a room, no phone or Internet, very little toilet paper for that matter, but three new cows. Unable to sit through one week of farm life condensed into 30 minutes on Little House on the Prairie, how much counseling will be required after four days of "Bruegelhof the Natural Experience."
We share the facility with a teen horse camp (the horses, not the teens) - 20 kids aged 7-13. They sleep two to a suite beneath us. Sleep, perhaps is the wrong word here, for as night approaches they apparently do training drills where they run around their rooms, pulling each other's hair, screaming and jumping on beds. Unfortunately teammate Leah is not here to "take care of the matter."
Intriguingly, upstairs, in our six-to-a-room configuration, 40-year-old former world champion teammate Marion Clingon has yet to jump on her bed, pulling her teammates' hair.
It is furthermore a bit strange that we are six to a room and the kids are two to a room. Perhaps, as future equestrians, they are from a more privileged class. They have already demonstrated superior intelligence, having realized at quite a young age that they can get the horse to do the work for them on rides.
The riding in Belgium is completely flat. Resistance is derived, not from the wind as popularly believed, but from the manure and mud stuck to the road which grabs at your wheels. "Come here, my precious... "
While a bit messy, this is not a problem. We have a sweet, unassuming 20-year-old volunteer mechanic on his first trip to work on our bikes.
It rains every day. I finish a ride to discover our baby-faced mechanic waiting outside in a mound of sludge. "Please, take care of my Javelin. I can't bear the thought of all this dirt on my normally immaculate machine," lies Nicole. A recent Stanford University microbiology study revealed 18 previously undiscovered life forms clumped to my bottom bracket and brakes on a typical winter day.
During our stay we quickly get into a routine:
Wake up.
Panic attack - "I can't get up this early. I will have too many hours to kill
until bedtime."
Try unsuccessfully to fall back asleep.
Breakfast.
Lie in bed. Stare at ceiling.
Ride - 1-2 hours
Lunch
Nap
Address Bed Sores: Soigneur comes in to roll us over to dissuade oncoming bed
sores
Continue nap
Dinner
Bedtime
Till we rise from slumber,
Nicole
