So much for my skill at prognostication. Marianne Vos wins the women’s race and Zdenek Stybar takes the men’s title.

I was trying to follow the men’s race via streaming video, but it blew up on me somewhere in the third lap so I clocked in and went to work. The video finally came back to life with two laps remaining, so I had that going for me.

Man, check that photo of the men’s podium. Those are two disgruntled Belgians.

Good Lord, the worlds course in Germany sounds like your basic nightmare. Goo on top of ice. Mmm, mmm, good.

Naturally, being a Bibleburger, I’m pulling for Katie Compton in Sunday’s women’s race. She’s raced strongly and smart this season, and it’s not just a question of her being a Yank and a local — I think she’s got it coming. So sue me.

As to the men’s race, I know Tim Johnson and Jonathan Page well enough to say hi to, and I like Jeremy Powers’ style — but I think I’m gonna have to go with Niels Albert, who has been killing it.

That said, Sven Nys is overdue for a rainbow kit, and he likes him some filth. Will his come-from-behind style pay dividends in St.-Wendel? Stay tuned to VeloNews.com. My colleague Charles Pelkey is on the scene, and we’ll all be getting up way too early so you don’t have to.

January. Meh. The Turk’ and I both find it too tedious for words.

The upside of cycling in 30-something temps is that your bottles stay cool while your boogers get warm enough for you to bombard the iPod People with drive-by snot rockets as you zip past. The downside is that you have to wear every bit of kit in your footlocker and staying out for more than 90 minutes or so kinda sucks.

Yesterday I thought I’d be smart and toddled off to a nearby junior high school for a bit of solo cyclo-cross on Old Yeller, my favorite Steelman. The grounds there have a rolling nature, there’s a gravel track, some asphalt and a couple of staircases for run-ups, so yeah, perfect for chewing on that cold NNW wind only in tiny bites and getting in some vigorous healthful exercise.

Until the rear tire collected every goathead in Christendom and I had to take five to replace the tube, after first running a finger around inside the tire, probing for sneaky spines invisible from the outside. I found ’em the hard way, as usual. Owie.

This morning the front had gone flat, too. O bugger. That one I fixed indoors, where the furnace is.

It ain’t a cyclo-cross unless you get off the bike at some point and run, son. Sorry, but them’s the rules.

Still, today’s Superprestige Gavere was a great bike race. It’s hard to judge the quality of the surface when you’re watching streaming Internet video in an itty-bitty window, but that said you wouldn’t have caught me out on this course without a mountain bike. Maybe a double-boinger, too. It looked like one hell of a rough ride.

Sven Nys just squeaked past Kevin Pauwels at the line. Ten more meters of pavement and the kid would have punk’d him again. It was that close. Poor old Niels Albert looked like Death eating a cracker when he rolled in for third.

Tim Johnson scored a fine 12th-place finish after a rough start — “f’d the first few corners and paid the price big time,” he noted on Twitter.  Jonathan Page, who in contrast had a great start, rolled in a couple places behind Timmy J; VeloNews‘ man on the scene, Dan Seaton, says Page spent a bad night with the gut rumble, then cramped up on the bell lap.