The

Oh, Well, good-a-a- everyone and welcome to Life in the Peloton.

This is another episode.

I'm sitting here with Lionel to preview this episode, mate.

Welcome to the preview.

Hello, Mitch.

How are you doing?

I'm doing well, actually. I've recovered. I had the opening weekend. I'm back into racing.

I'm into the full racing calendar right now. I've had the Het Volk or Het Newsblad.

I keep calling it that race. I don't know why. It's something wrong with me.

Het Newsblad, Kern and Brussels Kern, just a couple of days ago. The week before that,

I had Hoodvar, which certainly really shocked the system. This weekend was a shock, but not as much

as I thought it would normally be. Back on the Cobbles. I mean, Het Volk, for listeners who are perhaps

a bit newer to cycling, it's been called Het Newsblad for a number of years now because the Hett Newsblad newspaper, which runs the race now, took over the old Hett Volt newspaper, which founded the race, I think just after the Second World War. So like a lot of races, stage races and one day races, started by newspaper people. So, yeah, if people

are a bit unsure of why it's got this strange name, Omloop Het Newsblad, basically means circuit

het newsblad. But it goes around all of the Flandryan climbs, doesn't it? It's a, they call it

a sort of mini tour of Flanders. And, well, it's not all that mini, is it? 200K, cobbles, climbs, a tough day out. It's a very tough day out, and typically it has very bad weather, because it's sort of that month before or three or four, three weeks before the classics normally kick off and it's just that

little bit earlier it's spring well spring is just sprung but it's typically freezing cold and

raining and i tell you what we stroke a luck card this year because it was sunny it was 10 degrees

in sun and it really changed the racing i'm not going to say say it was easier, but it just made the elements much better.

And you weren't fighting the elements.

You were just fighting the race, which is hard enough in itself.

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