Rider Report: Puck Moonen at Le Samyn RR

Part of the international line up of coached riders at trainSharp, Puck Moonen reports on her race at Belgian semi classic Le Samyn

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Rider Report: Puck Moonen at Le Samyn RR

trainSharp coached Puck Moonen rode her first race (Le Samyn ) with Lotto Soudal last Wednesday. Here is her report on the race:

As it was my first race for Lotto Soudal I was pretty nervous. I ate well in the morning at home, but couldn’t eat any more when I arrived at the race. Especially when our DS told us the course changed with slightly less kilometres (100 instead of 112), but more cobbles.

17 out of 24 teams were UCI Protour and Worldtour teams with incredibly strong riders present, making a huge peloton of 196 riders total. It would be full gas from the start and hard crosswinds and pouring rain meant we should be alert and on the front, all the time.

I stayed at the very front for the first 30 kilometres and it did pay off, as around 60 riders were already dropped and out of the race. I struggled getting into position before the first cobbled section and found myself being too far in the back.

The next few sections went a bit better but eventually on the second last local lap, the peloton started to break up. I was in the middle group but we managed to return to the first group a few times. Eventually we were dropped for good as the peloton shattered just before the final.

On the very last local lap, I had to let go of my group on a cobbled section and covered the last 22 kilometres accompanied by a rider from Lares. All riders behind us got taken out of the race and we were the last ones to finish. I got a 94th place and was pretty satisfied. The DS had only set one objective for me that day: finishing the race or at least getting as far as possible.

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