My First Dutch Race (sort of - it was a training race :o)

So the weekend training – how was it? Super! On Saturday I slept in (I didn’t hit the sack until about 2:30 after going to Amsterdam for the Cartier-Bresson exhibition and then dinner at a really tasty Arabic restaurant – lekker!!!). So I missed the Eindhoven training again and just went out with 4 friends – into the cold, clear day with HOWLING winds! Holy shit was it a strong wind – for a while we were riding 23km/hr into it along the dykes – yikes (no rhyme intended :o)

After an hour of that the guys turned around and were going to head back along another route, but I wanted to get more riding in my legs so I kept going on my own – along a similar route that I’ve ridden the past 2 Saturdays but with some additional little loops to explore the Dutch countryside, and it was well worth it. It was really sunny and nice, so I wanted to take advantage of the weather (ok – it was pretty damn cold too!). But I knew on Sunday I had my first training race, so I didn’t want to go too long or hard or deep (wow – sounds like a porn movie scene, non?).

I ended up doing about 125km in 5 hours – not a great average speed, but given the winds I figured it was ok. And I was having so much fun I didn’t even need my iPod :o)

So the big test was today – my first training race! I met up the espoir rider I’ve ridden with a few times in the past week at his place and then the coach of the new club showed up too. We headed out (into the cold wind – and even snow this morning!) to ride the 40 minutes to the race. Perfect – we get a bit of a warmup! The coach managed to register me even though I don’t have a license yet this year (hehe :o), and then we did 2 rounds of the course before the start.
It was actually a super neat course for this kind of race – about a 2.5-3km loop (I never actually measured it) on a closed circuit that they use for cycling and I THINK car racing, but to be honest I’m not sure – there were no tire marks. But the track was brand new, so it was super smooth pavement with wide turns – and even a hill – which was a big surprise and would DEFINITELY play into the race. So the course basically did a spiral up the hill in the middle and then swept down to the finish line and a loop around the base.

The wind. Wow. What a wind it was. Unfortunately the windy sections included all the climbs (one ‘major’ and one minor), and lots of the flats were either head-wind or cross-wind and REALLY unfortunately the hill blocked the wind during most of the flat sections and the downhills, so it was either head-wind or no-wind. Greeeaaaaaat.

The race started poorly for me though – I was freezing off the start (granted everyone was!), but I still tried (stupidly) to ride at or near the front. Well after about 2 rounds my legs felt like lead and I was quickly dropping places – right past the coach and the espoir I’d arrived with. Rats. So as the pace picks up I’m dangling at the back of the peloton, which is about 60+ riders made up of elites and espoirs (this is 1 level below pro – cool!). I was suffering too – there was very little shelter from the wind at the back since it was mostly cross winds, and I couldn’t seem to get warmed up.

After about 20 minutes I was seriously thinking of quitting – I was a hurting unit! But of course I wasn’t going to do that (I’m a sissy, but not THAT big of a sissy!). So I managed to work my way back into a good position and started to ride a bit better. By this point there was already a break of 4 riders and a chase of about 6 (including the espoir I was with). No way I was going to try to catch them – this was my first race and I hadn’t seen efforts like this in MONTHS. My legs were really screaming, and there were few chances for recovery.

So on and on we ride, and eventually we whittle the pack off our wheels until there’s only 7 of us in the group – me and the coach, 2 randoms, and 3 riders from one team who were working together. We started working well as a group, and coach and I even made a break effort that would have worked beautifully if we’d timed it for the last lap (which we thought we were doing!). Rats.

So the effort took pretty much all the pep out of my legs and it was just try to hang on until the finish – I’d been doing the lions share of work with the group, so I was happy with my ride at this point. Stupidly I took a long pull heading into the last sweeping corner that dumped out into the headwind for the finish straight. Such a cool corner though – I’ve never cornered that fast before. The bike is REALLY pushing back at you when you’re going that fast – and you really hope it doesn’t slip out, cause you’d loose all your skin for sure. We’re hitting this corner at about 50kph and carrying it through the sweeper until the headwind. F-U-N.

I had nothing for the sprint, so the 4 guys beat me, but by then we’d dropped one guy and coach.

All in all it was a really fun race – 60km in 1hr20 minutes – you do the math (that’s about 43kph average!!!!). Cool. And after the race the coach and the espoir were really happy with my ride and positioning – they said I had quite a bit of potential considering my race experience. So we rode home the long way to make it a 4 hour day. Great training and great fun. The coach will call me this week to find a spot for me on the team – coolio! Lets see what happens!