Kenall Ryan from Belgium

Hey team,

Sorry I haven't been on top of things lately with emails. I know Kit has made the time to send emails to you guys, and I've been slacking majorly.

Well I just wanted to update everyone on the latest in Belgium for me. Tomorrow is going to be my last day here and then I'm flying home Monday. Tomorrow is also my last race. So the plan is to race hard, do a jam packing session of bikes and clothes, try to get sleep, and then spend all the next day at airports! Fun stuff.

So far my results for racingon the road are 10th in the Kermesse in Belgium(a Kermesse is basically a Circuit race), and I DNFed in my second Kermesse, because I flatted and when you flat there's no pits or wheel support, so if you flat your out of the race. For the track racing in Holland at the Apeldoorne Velodrome the results I know of are that I was 5th in the Madison with Coryn and 4th in the Miss n out. I'll have to check the results on the website and find out what my placings were. But I do know that in the 2km Pursuit I was only 6 seconds behind Coryn's time. My time was 3:48, hers was 3:42. The worlds qualification standard is 3:33.

Anyways, today I did a race called Saint Antonius, and it was by far the sketchiest race of my life. All four of us girls got started in the back of about 80 riders(this is not a pro womens race by the way, this is a junior womens race) and had to make our way through all the traffic to get to the front. Of course the Belgies strung the field out from the get go. It was single file, and we had dropped half the field the first lap, but it all came back together the following lap. The rest of the race was just a bunch of repetitive attempts to make a break away, none of them stuck(I was being evil and tagging the attempts, and then countering, they didn't like me very much for that), then until 2 laps to go one rider was off the front and she held it all the way to the end. In the field sprint I was right behind Kaitie Antonaeu, one of my teammates, coming out of the last corner, she ended up 12th and I was 15th. Anna Young, my other teammate pulled out during the race, not sure when, but she said her back tightened up and couldn't go on. Coryn was "almost killed", her exact words, she was bumped into a gutter that she couldn't get out of because it was so steep, and she finished in the back of the pack.

It was truely a great experience racing out here, I enjoyed myself thoroughly and I just wanted to thank NOW for putting the money together to give me the chance to race in Europe and show USA Cycling what I can do. Thank you SO much, I'll send an email tomorrow about my result.

Hopefully it goes well.

Sincerley,

Kendall Ryan