These guys have been around for a loooooooong time. Can you guess who they are? The first is the easiest, the third is the hardest. A little hint: his teammate used to be Lennie Kristensen.

There was a bit of pause between the end of the women`s race and the beginning of the men`s race, which passed by with frantic picture downloading and editing.

I left the press centre not long before the race, having the shuttle service in my mind. I had myself transported to certain part of the circuit that was said to be quite tricky. Riding on the quad, I was there in no time. En route, I saw a couple other photographers, walking towards the same spot so I reckoned it might be a good spot after all.
The place looked quite impressive, in front of this descent, I had this view:

The section in question was a steep but fast downhill part with loads of roots on the track. I wondered up and and down a bit to find the best spot and I decided to stay on the lower part so I`d get good background as the racers start to descend. I set up two strobes again, one on a light stand, left to the camera, that would illuminate the riders` face and another right to the camera, a bit behind the riders, to highlight the edges. The two light sources were pointed into the same direction which was above a bigger piece of root, so everything seemed perfect. But things never are. As soon as the cyclist came for the first time and I checked the shots afterwards, it turned out, that I set the focus improperly: a couple feet behind the point, where the lights were focused. The output was more than disappointing.

This was really annoying, but I thought that there`s potential in that spot so I stayed for another lap, concentrating hard to get the focus right. This time everything went well, I was really satisfied the the result.

Moving on, I decided to go the the same downhill spot I was yesterday. I got there just in time to catch them during their first full lap, so I didn`t have time to fiddle much with the strobes, thus I just popped a flash on the camera and shot them. German rider, Manuel Fumic had the funniest shades, hands down.

This spot didn`t offer much, so I switched to the climbing part, that was rather close. A bunch of safe shots followed.

I managed to snap one interesting shot though. It was known, that this would be the Belgian rider, Filip Meirhaeghe`s last race in Houffalize as he`s planning to retire by the end of the season. His home crowd cheered throughout his race, wherever he rode, people were screaming and clapping hands – even his last lap. This picture was taken around his 3rd or 4th lap.

There wasn`t much left from the race, so I went towards the finish area. I missed the lap count (again) so I was rather surprised to see the riders coming by once again. I dropped a flash on the left side of the track, and the sun was nice enough to act as a secondary light source. I really like this picture, the way the two light sources are balanced.

This meant, however that I got to the awards ceremony a tad bit late, thus I didn`t have a chance to get closer to the podium due to the huge crowd.

I arrived early to the press center and mounted up (???) for the day. The organizers provided photographers and VIP personnel a shuttle service with quad bikes, which allowed us to get to certain points of the course really fast, it allowed us to spend less time with moving around.

The official press material stated that there`s a very steep climb, right after the start, so I decided to start the women`s race there. Houffalize is less known for its part in the Battle of Bulge, however it had its fair share and there are some old fighting machines, like this German panzer, left here and there as a memento.

I went to the top of the aforementioned climb, where loads of fans were preparing to see their favourite riders to tackle the ascent. The race commenced in a timely fashion and they appeared at the bottom. I first used the 70-200 zoom lens to show the size of the group of the riders: almost 100 ladies entered the race.

As they got closer, I opted for the wider, 24-70 lens, but as I didn`t have any idea, what I wanted to see, no wonder that I couldn`t take a picture with what I was happy.

I was a bit clueless, I didn`t want to go back to the place where I shot the juniors` race yesterday, or at least not just yet, so I walked to a tricky section, near the 4X course, where a daring downhill preceeded a cruel climb. I arrived here by their first lap and didn`t have much time so I set things up on the downhill section. I threw a flash on the right of the camera as a fill light, but it didn`t really look the way I imagined. I got however a bunch of decent shots, that weren`t particularly interesting, but had to have something decent on the racers I had to cover.

The ascent was really close, so I went there, and again, took some really boring, standard pictures, just to be on the safe side.

I wondered back a little on the course, trying to find something interesting. It didn`t take long before I found an interesting corner. I set up two strobes, one from the front, to lighten up the face of the rider a bit and one behind the rider, to give the edges a little accent. The shot didn`t work out however, for various reasons. The rear flash crawled almost always into the frame, therefore I couldn`t use compose the picture the way I wanted. Also, the fill flash in the front just didn`t work the way I wanted.

After a few cyclists, I realized that it didn`t make sense to push it any further, so I made some bland shots and then left the scene a bit later, feeling defeated.

The course wasn`t optimal from a photographer`s point of view, as it was long and the cyclist completed a low number of laps, giving us less chance to take pictures, since we`re not omnipresent, no matter how hard we all try.

The race ended after 3 laps and I hurried back to the press center to download the pictures. There are just days, when you`re not inspired and no matter how hard you try, cannot get interesting shots. All you can do then is to take a step back and go for the safe shots.