This morning Cyclingnews asked readers on social media to caption a photo we took of Sep Vanmarcke (Cannondale-Drapac) clambering over a barrier towards a cafe at the start of Dwars door Vlaanderen. A few hours later, after Vanmarcke had crossed the finish line anonymously in the main peloton, some of those caption efforts proved awkwardly accurate, with the Belgian revealing that bowel problems held him back in the first of an all-important run of cobbled classics. `By 10 o`clock Iīd already been on the toilet four times,` he told Cyclingnews and several Belgian reporters outside the Cannondale-Drapac bus. `Straight from the start I felt weird. I was running on empty, and maybe thatīs why I didnīt feel good today.` Vanmarcke, a perennial animator of the spring classics, missed the boat when Philippe Gilbert (Quick-Step Floors) attacked on the Berendries, forming the first key selection of the race with just over 75 kilometres remaining. Despite committing teammates to the chase, alongside Arnaud Demareīs FDJ, heīd never see the front of the race again.ADVERTISEMENT `During the race I told the guys that I wasn`t feeling great, but I told them to keep racing to see where we would end up. When others were passing me they saw I wasn`t going well. I felt it throughout the race, so I wasn`t surprised during the finale,` he said. `It`s no fun this way, even though I was still in the first main group and racing along. Normally I should be capable of taking the initiative or following the moves, but that wasn`t the case today.` Vanmarcke revealed last week that he was suffering with lingering rib pain caused by a crash at Strade Bianche earlier this month. Short of breath when making big efforts, he opted to struggle through Tirreno-Adriatico so as not to lose form ahead of the Classics, and hoped that a visit to the physio last Wednesday would put him back on track.
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