Days off here in Gent aren't so interesting, but there's no reason it should be uninteresting for you. Before I left there was a debate on whether you spell the city Gent or Ghent. I still haven't cleared it up. The signs in the road say Gent but I've also seen it in other places as Ghent. What is important is that if you speak Flemish, you say it as Hent.
I got the idea to come to Gent AND Ghent (I've already been to both) from Ido Syrkin, my coach and director of my Israeli team, Triple G. I'm guessing that many of you have heard of Triple G by now because I do talk about it a bit. He has spent a bunch of time racing in Gent while he was trying to make it as a big time cyclist. I was hoping to meet up with the team here in July but with the baby coming it wasn't in the cards.
Ido has really turned my racing around. I feel like I owe a ton to his coaching and insight. The past two years I have made significant gains in all sorts of aspects of my riding. If I had come to Belgium in 2006 I don't think I'd last a lap in a kermesse (that's what they call the races in Belgium, unless they're really big ones. The word has some relation to the word circus). He gets all of the people on the team into the same shape and it's a pretty full roster, mostly under 18 riders finding their way.
The purpose of the team is to make good kids through cycling. It's a really great idea; racing is not easy. It teaches you to suffer but through suffering there is a reward at the end. It enables you to handle whatever life throws at you. And it's fun too. I got to see it first hand last year. Ido takes a ton of his time outside of work on the vineyard on his kibbutz to run the team.
He also sees it as an opportunity to bring people to northern Israel. Holding races in the Galilee brings people from all over Israel and the world to see the sights. Unfortunately, too many people spend all their time in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and never get to see the rest of the country. It is especially important after the second Lebanon war to help revive the economy. This year's North Arrow Road Race, held in May, ran past the spot that two soldiers were kidnapped from in 2006. It was dedicated to them in the hope that they are returned safely to Israel, along with a third soldier kidnapped near Gaza.
In an effort to maintain a quality program and in the hopes of expanding the program to even more kids in the Galilee, I've been trying to raise money stateside with Craig Abrams, a former teammate in the US and long-time friend. There are links at the ride side of this page to the team's English page along with a link to donate to the team. The team is already a registered non-profit in Israel and we're working on it in the US. To be completely honest I haven't been so successful raising money but I'm waiting for the dam to break and really help all of the kids on the team and even the ones not yet on the team.
I got the idea to come to Gent AND Ghent (I've already been to both) from Ido Syrkin, my coach and director of my Israeli team, Triple G. I'm guessing that many of you have heard of Triple G by now because I do talk about it a bit. He has spent a bunch of time racing in Gent while he was trying to make it as a big time cyclist. I was hoping to meet up with the team here in July but with the baby coming it wasn't in the cards.
Ido has really turned my racing around. I feel like I owe a ton to his coaching and insight. The past two years I have made significant gains in all sorts of aspects of my riding. If I had come to Belgium in 2006 I don't think I'd last a lap in a kermesse (that's what they call the races in Belgium, unless they're really big ones. The word has some relation to the word circus). He gets all of the people on the team into the same shape and it's a pretty full roster, mostly under 18 riders finding their way.
The purpose of the team is to make good kids through cycling. It's a really great idea; racing is not easy. It teaches you to suffer but through suffering there is a reward at the end. It enables you to handle whatever life throws at you. And it's fun too. I got to see it first hand last year. Ido takes a ton of his time outside of work on the vineyard on his kibbutz to run the team.
He also sees it as an opportunity to bring people to northern Israel. Holding races in the Galilee brings people from all over Israel and the world to see the sights. Unfortunately, too many people spend all their time in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and never get to see the rest of the country. It is especially important after the second Lebanon war to help revive the economy. This year's North Arrow Road Race, held in May, ran past the spot that two soldiers were kidnapped from in 2006. It was dedicated to them in the hope that they are returned safely to Israel, along with a third soldier kidnapped near Gaza.
In an effort to maintain a quality program and in the hopes of expanding the program to even more kids in the Galilee, I've been trying to raise money stateside with Craig Abrams, a former teammate in the US and long-time friend. There are links at the ride side of this page to the team's English page along with a link to donate to the team. The team is already a registered non-profit in Israel and we're working on it in the US. To be completely honest I haven't been so successful raising money but I'm waiting for the dam to break and really help all of the kids on the team and even the ones not yet on the team.
The team at a training camp near Ashkelon, Israel in March 2008.
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