Years later, this phrase would come back to haunt me while racing in Belgium. This is because there are three distinct types of gaps here, and you have to mind all of them.
The first kind of gap is annoying. They are what you hit at regular intervals while riding on the many cement roads. The streets and roads in Flanders are often surfaced with slabs of concrete. Either the roads weren't well constructed, or they have been neglected over the years, and therefore the junction between each slab usually features a 1-3cm gap (and height difference from 1 to 3cm!). That's if you are lucky though, as all too often the gap becomes a pot-hole from heavy traffic use. Or a bump after attempts to fill in the pot-holes with asphalt have made it worse. Sometimes there is a gap and a bump. Ugh.
The effect of this is that during a race, you are often motoring along and going bonkers with the "thu-thunk... thu-thunk... thu-thunk" sound of your wheels rhythmically hitting the gap every few seconds. During group rides and races you end up always looking 10 riders ahead of you in the peloton or death-line to see whether those in front are swerving, bouncing or hopping over any big holes. This way you have a fighting chance at avoiding a pot-hole and flatting, destroying your wheels, or just having a really sore butt. During my last race, I thought for the first time of taping my wrists, as my hands went numb from the pounding bumps!
The second kind of gap is dangerous. It is a 2-3cm gap between concrete slabs running parallel to the road (and therefore your direction), usually in the centre. It is where the sheets of cement from the right lane and left lane meet. If the gap is sealed with asphalt, it can be annoying. But if the asphalt is eroded away or missing, your wheels fit perfectly into it and it's enough to cause you to crash. Especially when not prepared. When taking position in a group of riders, you have to sort of jump your wheel over it while swerving if you want to cross from one side to the other. It is a bit like racing on a street with streetcar tracks, like King or Queen Streets in Toronto...
The third kind of gap is just scary. It's the gap between you and the rider you're following. While in Austria hills can and do dictate the outcomes of races, in Belgium it's usually the wind. The golden rule during any race is that you want to always, always be in somebody's draft. When attacks are going, jumping into a rider's slipstream as quickly as possible is the difference between making the breakaway or being left behind. If you find yourself at your limit in the death-line (when the pack is riding single file), hanging on for all you are worth and hoping that the attacking will soon end, being on somebody's wheel is the difference between surviving at your anaerobic threshold or riding in the wind and blowing up. And at the very least, minding the gap between you and the rider you are following is where you can conserve precious energy for the next round of attacks.
So if you ever happen to find yourself racing bicycles in Belgium... Mind the gap.
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As a small note, I'd just like to say that I finally accomplished my goal and finished an elite race in the main group. While the average speed was 45kph, it was actually not as hard as some of the previous races. This was because there were not many corners or anaerobic attacks. We were just riding flat out and single file for much of the second half at a steady speed. Now I understand why people do motor-pacing for training- in races like this, it's an exact simulation.