This week I had the opportunity to go to Belgium to ride in
the Tour of Flanders, a one-day classic cycling race infamous for its
cobblestoned sections and steep hills. My housemate and a group of his friends
were all entered and had the trip planned and booked, and had one free space.
It was something of a difficult decision to go to Flanders, as I could also
have been competing in the Titanic Quarter 10K road running race in Belfast, or
I could have been supporting a friend at the Manchester marathon, so I was
spoilt for choice. I was also worried about crashing and damaging either myself
or my bike on the cobblestoned sections in Flanders, particularly if it was wet.
Flanders cobblestones
And so the kilometres passed and my bike held together and the jackhammering effect of the cobbles shook my hands and arms and feet and legs and backside until they were numb. Many cyclists used double or triple layers of handlebar tape, and two pairs of gel gloves, and fatter, softer tyres than normal in an effort to mitigate the effects. I had none of these things, and my hands gradually lost the ability to function properly.
This is what happens to the pros on the Koppenberg.
If one falters, all falter. What chance for amateurs?!
The Kwaremont is another famed climb, close to the end. It’s not very steep, but it’s one of the longer climbs, and it’s cobbled. I can’t remember anything about the Kwaremont. I can recall being strong on flats and on the gradual inclines, and passing lots of people. I can recall opening up and going full gas on a few occasions, and hammering past literally hundreds of people. I can recall the final short, sharp climb, the Paterberg. I can recall the wonderful, wide, flat, smooth 10K run into the finish line. I can recall hammering into the finish line and sprinting flat out for the final 200m and feeling the legs burning. I can recall finishing the race and being thankful for having survived it, and I can recall thinking, “What an epic experience.” But for some reason I can’t recall the Kwaremont, possible the most famous climb on the whole course.
The square in Oudenaarde, after the finish
We drove out to the Kwaremont, and watched the races (male and female) unfolding on a big screen in yet another cowfield, eating frites and drinking beer, along with thousands of others. As the riders approached the Kwaremont, everyone decamped onto the verges, banks and ditches lining the thin cobbled ribbon of a road. Even being on the Kwaremont didn’t jog my memory and I still couldn’t remember it.
What a weekend. What an experience.
In the end, I decided that the opportunity to go to Flanders
was too good to turn down. I told myself I would simply not ride the cobbles if
I deemed it too dangerous, and I would walk them instead. So off we set, 4 of
us, 4 bikes, 8 wheels and goodness knows how much extra gear, all squeezed into
one car. And the same set-up in a second car. After negotiating the Channel
Tunnel, being misled by dodgy SatNav directions, and getting lost on French and
Belgian roads, we arrived in Flanders, the centre of the cycling world for this
weekend.
Dodgy SatNav, confusing two grown men
The professional race was on the Sunday, with a Sportive event
for amateur riders on the Saturday, following the same course as the
professionals would race. Something like 20,000 riders were expected to
participate on the Saturday, the bulk of whom would line the roads to watch the
professional race on Sunday. We registered and made a few purchases at the expo
(aerodynamic shoe covers and yet another pair of sunglasses for me), found our
hotel in Ghent, got some dinner, and got to bed.
On the Saturday we were up bright and early, and a quick
check of the weather forecast confirmed that there was mercifully no rain
forecast. After driving to a cow field masquerading as an official car park,
assembling the bikes, debating what clothing to wear, having a last “toilet”
pit stop in an adjacent cow field, and cycling a few kilometres to the official
start, we finally got going. There were cyclists everywhere.
Cowfield carpark
The first part of the route followed a decidedly narrow cycle
path along a river, and with 20,000 cyclists starting the event, space was at a
premium. Within the first few kilometres I had already witnessed a couple of
crashes. I had decided against wearing a jacket, but at 9am it was still cold,
and the combination of nervousness, cold, slight peloton claustrophobia, and
general twitchy mood amongst the riders left me gritting my teeth, cursing the
cold, constantly on edge and wondering what the heck I was doing in Flanders on
a stupidly narrow cycle path in a tidal wave of cyclists with nowhere to move.
Little did I know what was ahead…
Finally we hit the open road, the peloton thinned a bit and
temperatures started to creep up. I began to feel better and was spinning along
at around 20mph beginning to think, “This is more like it.” Then, like some
sort of hideous gauntlet of destruction, the first cobblestone section loomed
ahead, and I had about 5 seconds of frantic contemplation between seeing it for
the first time and riding onto it. Every instinct was screaming not to ride on
it. It looked horrifying, like it would destroy bike, wheels and rider. Not
something that any sane or sensible person would ride an expensive carbon fibre
bike across. But the Tour of Flanders is neither sane nor sensible, it’s an
unashamedly rough, tough ride. To win in Flanders is a huge thing in cycling,
and is proof of being the strongest of the strong.
I braked and slowed a bit, and hit the cobbles. I had no
idea how it would feel. “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!” Or rather, “F-UU-UUU-UU-U-UUU-UUU-UU-U-U-UUU-CK”,
was my reaction as the cobbles jackhammered me and my bike like a rag doll in a
hurricane. It felt terrible. “Welcome to the cobbles,” laughed a voice
somewhere in the vicinity. The noise was horrible, as my bike clattered over
the cobbled surface. My precious bike… Ahead of me people were cycling even
more tentatively than I, and bike accessories were being shaken loose left,
right and centre. Bottles, bottle cages, pumps, speedometers, computers. A
fortune in equipment being claimed by the cobbled roads of Flanders. Anything
coming loose from a bike and falling to the road was as good as lost, because
the roads were so narrow and the tidal wave of cyclists so unrelenting that
stopping to retrieve anything was dangerous and nigh on impossible.
After an eternity, but in reality probably only 5 minutes
later, the first cobbled section ended, and I had survived it. Nothing had
fallen off the bike, I hadn’t crashed, or punctured, and the flat road felt
like heaven. Another cobbled section followed shortly after, which I again
endured through gritted teeth, grunts and curses, and I slowly gained a bit of
confidence in riding on the cobbles. I hadn’t seen any shattered bikes, and I
told myself there was no reason mine would shatter either. I was keeping my
fingers crossed that my drinks bottle wouldn’t be shaken loose. I thought, “Surely
it can’t get any worse…”
How wrong I was. A sharp left turn led into a 6-foot wide
cobbled uphill road, at maybe 10-15% gradient. It reared up, a wall of
slow-moving cyclists, many of whom had to get off and walk, pushing their bikes.
Guttural, angry shouts in various European languages berated the walkers who
were in the way and had nowhere to go. It was insane. Nowhere to go. Nothing to
do except grit the teeth, churn the pedals, ignore the pain, and shout at the
walkers ahead in an effort to make some space.
Me loving the cobbles...
And so the kilometres passed and my bike held together and the jackhammering effect of the cobbles shook my hands and arms and feet and legs and backside until they were numb. Many cyclists used double or triple layers of handlebar tape, and two pairs of gel gloves, and fatter, softer tyres than normal in an effort to mitigate the effects. I had none of these things, and my hands gradually lost the ability to function properly.
At a feed station
Shortly after the second feed stop came the steepest climb
of the day, the Koppenberg. On the insanity scale, it was way off the chart. Hitting
gradients of over 20%, on cobblestones, on a road no wider than the width of a
car, this climb is hellish. I can’t imagine what it would be like in the wet.
It was so crowded with people that none of the road was visible. Most riders
were pushing their bikes up. Peloton etiquette dictated that riders should walk/push
their bikes on the right hand side of the road, but this went totally out the
window. Riders were swerving wildly, crunching their gears, shouting and screaming
for space, grinding to a halt, keeling over into other riders, and ultimately falling
off and blocking the road for those behind. It was carnage. A chain reaction of
total carnage.
If one falters, all falter. What chance for amateurs?!
When I’m going up a hill, I have a deep-rooted instinct that
screams at me from within: “You’re damned if you’re getting off and walking.”
That instinct kicked in big-time on the Koppenberg. It’s not that the hill was
too steep to ride. For some, yes, the gradient was too steep but for me, this
wasn’t the problem. The problem was getting the walkers out of the way and
having a few vital feet of road ahead of me so that I could keep going.
I went up that hill screaming and shouting, “STAY IN, STAY
IN, STAY IN,” the whole way up, non-stop. It wasn’t pretty, and the tone varied
from anger to pure desperation, but it just about worked. One big German who
had been forced to resort to walking took exception and gave me a shove and a
few indecipherable Germanic barks as I passed, but I was too preoccupied with
pushing the pedals and shouting, “STAY IN” to spit a few words back at him. Steve
tailed me to the top, and we made it, just about managing to keep those
precious few feet of road in front of us, just enough to keep us going. We
crested the hill and looked at each other in total disbelief. There can’t have
been many cyclists who managed to cycle up the entire length of the Koppenberg.
"STAY IN, STAY IN!"
The Kwaremont is another famed climb, close to the end. It’s not very steep, but it’s one of the longer climbs, and it’s cobbled. I can’t remember anything about the Kwaremont. I can recall being strong on flats and on the gradual inclines, and passing lots of people. I can recall opening up and going full gas on a few occasions, and hammering past literally hundreds of people. I can recall the final short, sharp climb, the Paterberg. I can recall the wonderful, wide, flat, smooth 10K run into the finish line. I can recall hammering into the finish line and sprinting flat out for the final 200m and feeling the legs burning. I can recall finishing the race and being thankful for having survived it, and I can recall thinking, “What an epic experience.” But for some reason I can’t recall the Kwaremont, possible the most famous climb on the whole course.
Having crossed the finish line, all the riders were then
directed a further few kilometres into the central square in the town of Oudenaarde.
The square was lined on all four sides with restaurants and bars. The sun was
out, it was over 20 degrees and the square was heaving with cyclists drinking
beer, eating frites, and debriefing, no doubt debating which was worse, the Paterberg
or the Koppenberg, and recounting what a brutal yet fantastic day it had been.
It was a brilliant hour or two in the square, then it was back to Ghent for
dinner and bed.
The following day we had a quick look around Ghent before
going to watch the pro race. It’s a really picturesque town, quaint and
medieval, with wonderful old buildings lining the river and streets. The centre
was largely traffic-free, except for people getting around on their bikes. A
short rain shower made the cobbled streets very slippery, and I struggled to
comprehend how a peloton of professional cyclists could race at 30mph along the
narrow, winding cobbled roads we had cycled yesterday. Flanders takes no
prisoners.
Ghent by night, and by day
We drove out to the Kwaremont, and watched the races (male and female) unfolding on a big screen in yet another cowfield, eating frites and drinking beer, along with thousands of others. As the riders approached the Kwaremont, everyone decamped onto the verges, banks and ditches lining the thin cobbled ribbon of a road. Even being on the Kwaremont didn’t jog my memory and I still couldn’t remember it.
The pros were to ride up the Kwaremont twice. They hammered
past with faces contorted in pain, no more than a foot or two from the
spectators. Surely there’s no other sport where it’s possible to get so close
to the action. Fabian Cancellara, a Swiss beast of a cyclist nicknamed
Spartacus, was chasing hard, and by the time they reached the 10km finishing
straight, he was leading a group of four. Eventually, in a cagey sprint finish,
he was crowned the King of Flanders. The strong man of Flanders.
Getting close to the action on the Kwaremont.
Fabian Cancellera is in black in the second photo.
Fabian Cancellera is in black in the second photo.
What a weekend. What an experience.
Other training this week was as follows:
Monday 31st March 2014: Bike 2 hours 30 minutes,
run 20 minutes
Tuesday 1st April 2014: 30 minute fartlek run
Wed 2nd April 2014: 65 minute turbo (6 x 5 minutes easy, 5 minutes hard), 20 minute run
Thurs 3rd April 2014: Swim 1.6km (1500m time trial in 23:23), 65 minute turbo – single leg drills (4 x 5 minutes left, 5 right, 5 both)
Friday 4th April 2014: Rest
Saturday 5th April 2014: Bike 100 miles (Tour of Flanders)
Sunday 6th April 2014: Rest
Tuesday 1st April 2014: 30 minute fartlek run
Wed 2nd April 2014: 65 minute turbo (6 x 5 minutes easy, 5 minutes hard), 20 minute run
Thurs 3rd April 2014: Swim 1.6km (1500m time trial in 23:23), 65 minute turbo – single leg drills (4 x 5 minutes left, 5 right, 5 both)
Friday 4th April 2014: Rest
Saturday 5th April 2014: Bike 100 miles (Tour of Flanders)
Sunday 6th April 2014: Rest
Totals: Swim 0 km, Bike 180 miles, Run 11 miles
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