Last Ride.

Has been an amazing trip.  Thanks to the 9 people who regularly followed the blog.  Rode just under 50 k out to Marken Island, along Zeedike, which is the Dutch name for the dike and the road and bike path along it.  It’s was cool.  Video shows water on both sides for a bit. I also accidentally recorded the last 11 minutes of the ride.

I used my garmin 500 for navigation on this trip.  I had downloaded a bunch of routes from my laptop.  The route today was called rondje Marken, but someone also had done the same route and titled it Netherlands mountains, which I think are the same as Texas hills,  a big headwind.  I knew I would have a headwind coming back, and I headed out anyway.  It ended up being quite a delightful ride.  The headwind wasn’t brutal and the scenery was amazing.

City of Bikes

Headed out early for a ride before visiting Van Gogh and Rijksmuseum.  The ride was flat and all on bike paths.  Amsterdam is one of the most cycling friendly and dense places in the world.  For a non native like me, it may be too much of a good thing.  I came back from my ride into the center part of the city at 9 am.  Video is above.  It was cool.

Amstel and Amsterdam

It’s Sunday here, but this post is about Saturday.  I rode the Amstel Gold Race Course, 125 km (half the pros) and about 4500 feet of climbing, it was fun, but nothing like the thrill of Roubaix.  It is a cool event with some really neat roads.  It was crowded, 12000 total people and much of the time we were on bike paths, so passing became difficult.  Some video below shows a tiny sample.

I also drove in Amsterdam.  I was specifically warned not to drive in the central part of the city by the  rental car company, so in true Brian Oliver fashion, I attempted to drive to the hotel in the center of the city.  I made it, but the last kilometer took an hour and the sat nav sent me down two pedestrian only streets and a closed street (I had to back up across one of the canal bridges).  It was very challenging.

Half of my blog audience is in Amsterdam now, Amy flew in yesterday, so today (Sunday) we are tourists.  We had excellent Indian food last night in the Jordaan district which is multicultural, we even, accidentally, did some ‘window’ shopping.  

Videos of yesterday’s ride is below, One of them is me in the finishing straight, which was quite thrilling, because in my imaginiation, I was riding in from a 50km solo break away, where I left the peloton in my dust.

Privilege

It has been a privilege to ride in Europe. Short ride today, not a lot to report. Early ride tomorrow, so short post.   Today I touched three countries with my bike tires,  Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. It was awesome.  Tomorrow, I get to ride Amstel Gold, one of the hardest spring classics, the pro’s are riding 273 kilometers on Sunday, tomorrow I am riding a lot less.

I had Hawaiian Schwarma for lunch at a cafe run by a middle eastern man who spoke halting English, and left Texas due to racism.  He lives here (Maastricht) with extended family.  He speaks five languages, runs a business, and has very little formal education.  I feel very privileged to be here,  I have had more than a little good luck to be where I am at.  

Tourism, and dysphoric movies

I knew I would be a tourist today,  I had to choose between going to Bruges or Middelburg as I didn’t have time for both.  Unfortunately I watched “In Bruges” last night on Netflix.  What a happy, uplifting snapshot of the human race!!!  Due to the dysphoria induced by that movie, which was good but quite dark, I went to Middelburg to see several polders, which is the Dutch word for areas that have been reclaimed from the North Sea.  The GPS in the car routinely said I was below sea level.  Drove and walked around in Middelburg, then across the various sea works and back to Zolder via Sven Nys’s facility.  Here are a couple of pics of the sea dykes (panoramic) and a double decker dutch parking structure.

Sven Nys is a multi time world cyclocross champion who has a training facility that was close to my route.  Also close to my driving route is the Circuit Zolder which is a race track.  3 evenings per week they allow cyclists to ride their track, it quickly turns into speed work for the locals which I wanted none of, I just wanted to ride on an F1 track.  I also rode a kilometer for so of local single track. See videos below.  Zolder was auto corrected to solder by you tube.

Ran out of gas

Not a lot to report today.  I started some more touring/riding in the Flemish Ardennes where I am staying.  I thought I was ready for the hardest part of the Tour of Flanders route.  I was not.  About 30 kilometers into it, I was done, not really bonking but definitely some central fatigue.  The hard part about riding in a country with a language I don’t know (Flemish), is that I can’t read any street signs. So I guessed which way Oudenaarde was and got lucky, rode back with no major detours and ended up doing about 50 kilometers total with a lot of climbing.  Apparently I am also an old donkey who doesn’t recover very fast anymore.  Days gone by, I would get stronger day after day, not weaker.  Planning to be mostly a tourist tomorrow and ride only a few miles to see if I can recover for Amstel Gold on Saturday.

Also,  I was surprised to see a few characters from my other recent vacations here, fully licensed I am sure. 

“Kilometer Professional”

Great Day here in Belgium.  I rode the “yellow” loop of the tour of Flanders, with some more cobbles and other realizations.  My legs aren’t rocks like yesterday, so it was nice to pedal hard.  As I was enjoying the Belgian scenery and watching the kilometers tick by on the route on my GPS, I realized I am a kilometer pro.  This means that I can ride most routes at the same speed as the professionals, if you measure my speed in kilometers per hour and the pro’s in miles per hour.  This makes me 62% of a professional, with which I am totally comfortable.  A ‘kilometer professional is a much nicer label than my previous self appellation of “really fast donkey” which comes from the following paraphrased quote.

“You are a fast donkey, if you train really hard, you could be a really fast donkey, but you will never be a thoroughbred.”

I don’t train really hard anymore, and I am probably just a donkey, which translates to jackass.  You can see why “kilometer professional” is a much nicer term for myself.

I had  another realization as I was eating my 5000th calorie today, riding makes you, and me, hungry. I went to the market and bought a couple of nice pre-made salads thinking I would have a couple of days worth of food.  Nope, ate it all.  And I just polished off a Belgian waffle with ice cream and frites with mayo for a 9pm snack.  60 plus miles per day has made me hungry.  My body is convinced we are in a survival situation and is craving calories.  Fries and Waffles, and every other food stuff is better in Europe.  I don’t know how they do it, but even their supermarket pre-made food is excellent.  A couple of videos are posted below, and there is a new video of the whole first five star (3.7 km) section of cobbles from Paris-Roubaix on my YouTube channel.

As I was descending from the Koppenberg yesterday, and from the Molenberg today, I was wondering what the inside of a Belgian ICU looks like, because, if I crash I’ll be lucky if I make it to the ICU.  One of the videos is of part of the descent,  these roads are like 8 feet wide and I hit 80 plus kilometers per hour a couple of times. YOLO.  There is also a short clip of how they make the Belgian cobbles, which are huge.

Highest mountain in Europe***

Today, I figured out a couple things while climbing the venerable Mont de L’Enclus.  I know you haven’t heard of these famous Belgian mountains, but I am here to tell you that this is one of the most difficult mountains I have ever climbed.  I think it topped out at 140 meters above sea level.  The air was very thin up there, judging by my need for the lowest gear on my bike.  It is either the tallest mountain pass in Europe, or I have not recovered from Paris Roubaix.  I am not sure which, but a 65 year old German Guy dropped me like a hot potato on the climb, so it might be that I am still tired.

I rode the Koppenberg today, one of the actually famous climbs on the tour of Flanders.  It is steep, maximum gradient is 22%, I could barely keep the bike moving.  I rode it with a few pro’s from the Bahrain team, they were nice enough to let me hang with them for about 3 seconds.  In the video below you will hear me ask them at the bottom of the climb for a push when they catch me.  None of them gave me a push, I needed it.  A few seconds later in the video, you may here me say “my god this is steep”. I will probably look for a flat ride tomorrow.

I also posted a high def video of the whole first section of cobbles at Paris Roubaix.   Happy Monday everyone.

Being a fan

Professional cyclists are amazing athletes.  Watching it in person is cool, but also somewhat anticlimactic.  We rode out to Carrefour de l’Arbre, the last 5 Star (hardest level) section of cobbles to watch the race.  Riding went well, my hands and sit bones were ok after yesterday’s almost 7 hours on the bike. We left the hotel for the race at noon and got back at 6.  I saw the pro’s for maybe a minute.  They had a giant TV set up in a farmers field so we were able to watch.  Pics below show the crowd and a few pics of the cobbles so you know how brutal they are.

L’Enfer Du Nord

I rode Paris Roubaix on the 7th.  It is known as the “hell of the north” which is the French title above.

It was amazing. 173 km total with 54 of it on roads like in the video. I have wanted to ride the cobbles my entire adult life, ever since I have been a cycling fan.

I don’t expect anyone to understand this,  these cobbles are brutally hard.  This is almost the hardest day I have ever had on a bike.  6+ hours of pedaling with a few rest stops to socialize and refuel.  6000 people did the event.  (Not 8000, that was last year).

As a quick teaser, here is video from my handlebar of the Trouée (trench) of Arenberg, one of the most difficult sections. Watch the guy in front of me and next to me bounce around. I found that speed over these cobbles is the only way to make them smoother, so I tried to go as fast as I could.

Johan Museeuw crashed here as the race favorite in 1998 and broke his knee cap (open fracture) that got infected and almost was amputated. Video upload problems from hotel forced me to put it on YouTube in standard definition. Hopefully the next hotel has better WiFi?

Rode in Ypres this morning, couldn’t sleep due to jet lag, so I headed out at 7 am. 40 degrees Fahrenheit is warmer in Europe than at home. I did the peace ride in Ypres which takes in a few WWI sites. Including the largest commonwealth cemetery in the world. 12000 people are buried there.

There were 3 WWI battles near Ypres. In total, 800,000 people were killed near here. It’s a little mind blowing. Two videos are below. These little farm roads are awesome, although I had to get off the road for a tractor. 

Civilization??

I was nervous about driving in Europe. Turns out it is pretty similar to home, except the drivers have manners and actually use the brake pedal as a tool rather than avoiding it like commandment number 11 says “thou shalt not touch the brake pedal.”  I saw two unique things on the road, one was the pay toilet  that I couldn’t figure out how to use at the gas station, the other was cars actually merging early when a lane was ending, rather than the last possible second. Remarkable, and quite civilized.  Bike and stuff made it. No rides yet.

Hello,

Resurrecting an old blog to give trip highlights for upcoming Belgian, Netherlands, French cycling adventure.  Here is a short video to show where I got the cycling disease, and proof that it is genetic.  My dad is in his 70's, and that is my 8 year old who is already a better rider than me, maybe a thoroughbred.  He has his mom's mitochondria so maybe he can produce more than 250 watts at threshold unlike his slowish dad.