Flanders is hell. Flanders is beautiful.

The terrain and environment are terrible for cycling: the wind howls, the roads are bumpy, cracked or cobbled, the air is damp when it isn’t raining and rarely does the sun shine. But the roads are packed with cyclists. There is a race nearly everyday somewhere in Flanders that crisscrosses the bleak open muddy farm fields. The Flandriens know, feel, and live the sport.

The last time I rode the cobbles in Flanders I ended up unconscious in the hospital with three broken vertebrae. And now, two years later I was back in Belgium for the Three Days of West Flanders. I was scared yet excited; scared to crash, scared of the consequences yet excited to be back to cycling’s center, to be racing on the roads where Merckx and Maertens and Van Looy triumphed, through the fields where so many soldiers died and where a war was won, to a place that is hauntingly grim when it is gray but where the sky turns magical when the sun finally pierces through the clouds.

The crowds don't mind

West Flanders is a short stage race that became a pro UCI race when a couple of local Kermesse races combined. The courses generally loop around the Flemish countryside and finish up on 10-20km loops around a small village where the finish line is drawn. The stages still have a little of their Kermesse flair as they start and finish in towns that are having festivals in the center square with dodgy looking circus rides and hotdog, beer and chip stands in abundance. The aromas wafting across the finish line are alluring and enticing, especially while racing under gray, cold rainy Belgian skies.

The crowds on the roadside don’t mind a little rain or gray and come out to cheer us on. As we race through towns, the bars empty out into the streets — drinkers with pints in hand — to yell encouragement. One stage, while in a three hour long four man breakaway, it was the townspeople that entertained me, as I pushed, slogged, into a blasting headwind; I was amazed at how many of them knew my name, yelling either “Allez Michael!” or “Hop, Barry!” In my homeland, Canada, few people would recognize Boonen or likely even Lance Armstrong if he rode through town, yet in Belgium it seems the hairdressers, the florists, and even the black leather-clad (motor) bikers all know the peloton by first name.

The Belgians idolize their champions, the Boonens and Van Petegems, but encourage, understand and even adore every cyclist. As we drove to the start one day in pouring cold rain I understood why. We drove passed numerous people out for a ride, fighting the gale and slashing rain, as they pedaled to get their bread, to work or simply went for a ride. Every Belgian seems to know what professional cyclists live, because they were born cycling.

As we ascended the Kemmelberg — a cobbled climb as famous for the crashes that take place on the descent as the heroics on the ascent — I felt childhood excitement and had adult fears. The Kemmel' is where our ancestors fought and died for our freedom in WWI; 500,000 men died in battle and shells are still being unearthed today. It is a miserably beautiful wooded hill, where heroes have made their mark and where men have fallen for a goal.

Dreams overcome fears

I feared the Kemmel because rain slick cobbles are never easy to negotiate on a bike, because the race was beginning to blow to pieces and I needed to be near the front, and because those two factors combined to make a course, a road and a peloton dangerous. However, the childhood excitement overcame all of that and, up and over, the peloton was splitting and I was in front, racing and living my childhood dream in Belgium.

In Flanders, I began to find my legs again, and felt like a bike racer, animating the race in breakaways and racing in the front to gain more strength. There is a moment when the power starts to come back and each pedal stroke has strike in it and the kilometers pass a little quicker, even when the rain is thrashing down. In the coming months my program will intensify as I near my spring targets.