Tag Archives: cycling

A crazy finish for this cycling season

I do not even know where to start… You might remember, that I crashed this year already two times on the racing bike (first almost breaking a newly purchased aero front wheel, then breaking a helmet and a special GPS mount) before we went to the USA. Soon after we came back, I participated in a very nice organised ride (accompanied by police motorcycles, so we did not have to stop at red lights, etc.), which ended abruptly after 100 kilometres, when my rear tire exploded. But it was not just a flat. The outer tire fell off the rim, so I had to brake scratching the edge of the rim, and when I came to a full stop I had to realise that the inner tube is stuck in and around – in truly unimaginable ways – the cassette and that the aforementioned outer tire has a 15 cm long opening in the middle… It did not take much time to realised that the situation was hopeless (since no person carries a spare outer tire with him), so I was already about to call Clio and ask her to come and pick me up, when a random Flandrien came to me from over the other side of the street. He told me, mostly in Dutch, that he has a tire, and I can take it. Then – while I was still in disbelief – he invited me inside, and it turned out that he had a fully equipped garage with all the possible bike parts and even a proper bike stand, just like the one I have. He gave me everything I needed to repair my wheel (a file to smoothen the horribly scratched, sharp edges of my rim, and the exact same brand and type of tire I just destroyed), which still took more than a half hour to accomplish. Since I had no cash on me, I asked him to give me the number of his bank account and reimbursed him for all the things he gave me.

But my misfortune was not over. Two weeks later while Clio was in Antwerp meeting up with a girlfriend for shopping, I went for a nice and easy afternoon ride. Just a day earlier, I did a big maintenance on the bike: cleaned it, rewired some brakes, changed the bottom bracket (for the first time in my life), installed new bar tape, trued my aero wheels (and even removed the decal stickers to make them look even slicker), etc. So there I was the next day, enjoying the silent (except for the sweet sound of the aero wheels slicing through the air) and smooth ride of my reborn bike the next day, when out of nowhere, I got a flat. Since recently I had gotten quite some experience in changing tubes, even before I came to a full stop I was already thinking: “ok, a 5 min break and we will back on track, no biggie”… But then when I started inspecting the front wheel to check if the flat did some damage to the outer tire too, I immediately noticed, that something was not right. And the shocking recognition came almost instantaneously: one side of the edge of the rim (which holds the outer tire in place normally) was completely broken, as if some previously hidden internal pressure or stress would have torn it away from the main body of the rim. It was probably some invisible damage from the crash earlier this year. It was unrepairable. Also, since Clio was not at home, I could not call her to come and pick me up, so accepting the situation, I started walking towards Leuven. I was in the middle of nowhere, with no buses or trains nearby, so there was not really another option. I was more or less 3 hours of walking from home… Luckily it was sunny, and relatively warm (for late September), so I did not have to worry about that, but it was still a long walk, especially in cycling shoes… After two hours, while I was already walking along the small channel which ends at the northern gates of Leuven, a guy picked me up and drove me home, saving me another hour of the cyclists’ walk of shame.

You might think this was the end of bad things, and now I will write about the nice rides I have been doing afterwards. But nope. On the next weekend, I was on my usual Sunday morning group ride, and everything went fine until the last 500 metres, where I managed to not concentrate enough for two seconds on a downhill (I took my eyes off the road for a jiffy), which was just enough to miss noticing a car coming to a full stop 50 metres in front of me… I guess it is needless to say, that I crashed into the rear of the car (travelling with around 30 km/h). Luckily (or because I had gathered quite some experience in crashing too recently) I managed to fall along the right hand side of the car while my bike bounced to the side, and land in a way that I got nothing worse than a few scratches… My bike was a bit less lucky: I immediately noticed that the replacement mount I had just installed a week ago broke into pieces, and that my front wheel got a bit untrue (this was the front wheel of the wheel-set from which the rear wheel got damaged in the “tire explosion incident” you might still remember from a few lines earlier).

Since I lost my trust in this wheel-set and I needed something trustworthy in a very short notice as I was about to leave to La Palma two days later, I decided to put on the wheels from Clio’s bike. But of course for that I had to change the cassette, the tires, and then fine tune the position of the brake pads again… Then I noticed that my nice carbon pedals also broke, so I had to put back the old (but still pretty good) ones. Now bear with me, we are on Monday afternoon, just two hours before I had to leave for my Dutch course, when I finally thought everything was ok, and I was about to start packing my suitcases. This is the point when shit happened again. And not the small kind of shit, but the big one. While doing a really last check on the bike, I found out that the chainrings (on the front) were seriously out of true (meaning: bent). I did not notice it while riding home after the accident because while riding using gears where the chain is near the middle of the cassette at the back, it did not result in anything noticeable. But as soon as you shifted towards the largest or smallest cogs, the chain started rubbing against the front derailleur. Since climbing on the Canary Islands means using the easiest gear, this was a huge problem, not to mention that riding a bent chainring will only bend it further… So, I guess I do not really need to stress that at this point I was on the edge of mental breakdown. A quick phone call with Clio made me feel a tiny bit better, but I was really about to just leave the bike as it was, and fly the next day without it (especially that I knew that the part I needed to replace is basically the most expensive part on the bike after the frame). But since this would have left me with nothing to do on La Palma for a week, I looked for a solution. I knew that there is only one bike shop near Leuven which is open on Mondays – of course the one which is furthest from us -, so I rode there. Unluckily the shop was just under renovation, but luckily the owners were there doing the works themselves, so at the end, they managed to get the crankset I needed from some other storage unit in the very back… After this, I still had to go to my Dutch course, which was really good for my nerves to calm down a bit. Then I arrived home at 10 on the evening, and after having something to eat (pizza!!!), I still had to pack all my stuff, then to make things even better, install the new crankset. It is not the easiest thing to do on a bike, and I had to set up my bike stand for it, so to cut it short, by the time I was done with everything it was 2 on the morning. And my taxi came at 3:30, so I had nothing more than an hour to sleep…

Surprisingly enough, I managed to get out of bed in time (although I remember vaguely Clio saying something about not try to sleep again after I killed the alarm), and everything went fine at the airport too. The flight was uneventful (and I managed to sleep another 2 hour pushing the total up to 3! – nope, not factorial tree, unluckily), and I also got to my hotel very quickly. My original plan was already a bigger ride for the afternoon, but thanks to the low amount of sleep I managed to accumulate, I had to opt for a quick and short training (after lunch in my favourite pizzeria). Even though I went for the most flat route possible, I had to overcome 750 metres of elevation gain over the course of only 42 kilometres. And finally it seemed like everything was working fine on my bike…

This miraculous state lasted till the next morning. I was in the middle of preparing for the first proper, long, epic ride, had my breakfast, put together all the energy bars and gels, started filling my bottles, etc. As one of the last action items, since I remembered from the previous day that my seat felt a bit too low, I wanted to raise the seat post a bit. While tightening back the seat post clamp, the threading broke in the clamp. I really could not believe this was happening… Probably all the fine-tuning of my seat height during the past years was too much for the thread, and it decided to finally give up… I really thought this was the end. I am always travelling with all the spare parts, spokes, tires, tubes, brakes, wires, everything, but who has a spare seat post clamp with him? But then again, I really had nothing to do, so I started sending around emails to all the bike shops I managed to find online, and also to the staff of the Mercator telescope asking if they could help me somehow (in driving me around, or in trying to ask around in Spanish)… After a few hours, I had a couple replies from shops on the other side of the island (so I already started looking up the bus schedules while preparing myself for another adventure), but also one of our engineers told that he could take me to a more nearby shop on the afternoon. At the end, this turned out to be the solution, and I managed to get a new seat post clamp for 3.5 (!) euros. Compared to the crankset which costed me 220 euros a few days earlier, it was really nothing, but no matter how inexpensive this part was, I still could not go cycling without it. At the end, the new seat post clamp did fit my bike, and this incident was – finally – really the last mishappening…

Of course with this half the day was lost again, so I could not do anything but go for a short ride similar to the day before. Although it was almost the same route, I had some excitement when a dog started to chase me while I was going up on a slight climb… Luckily, I was still faster uphills ;) Then things really turned around, and on Thursday and Saturday, I managed to do two really nice, hard and epic rides. On Thursday I did a circle through the northeast of the island, climbed the Roque de los Muchachos from the North, and finished the day after 121.8 kilometres and 3621 metres of elevation gain. It was great.

Then two days later I did a circle into the heart of the island, climbing the Roque de los Muchachos from the East, and on the end of the day, the second highest pass of the island from the West too (which I have never fully done before, especially not in good weather). This was my second hardest ride ever: 147.9 km and 4363 m of elevation gain, and even though I was a bit on the slow side, I am proud of the accomplishment.

And with this ride, this year’s cycling season is more or less over (and it was my best season so far), I will probably join a few more Sunday group rides if there are any left before winter kicks in, but then I will take some time off the bike, and do some running just like I did the previous winter. Hopefully without any misfortune happening to me, since I think I had enough of that recently :)

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Cycling in the Rocky Mountains

The first day, after getting my rental Trek Domane 4.5 from the local Trek store just a few minutes walk away from our hotel, I headed out to the North in beautiful warm weather. (I apologise up front, but pictures in this post were all taken with my phone, thus the quality is not exactly what you are used to on these pages.) Getting used to a completely different bike geometry took a bit of time, especially that the frame was slightly larger than what I need, and the handlebars were really wide compared to what I am used to. But riding a full carbon bike for the first time in my life was a nice experience. Now I want a new bike :S Anyway, back to the ride. Getting out of the city was not much of a challenge since I had a map on my Garmin Edge 800 GPS (this is actually the first time I had a mapped GPS with me on a biking holiday), but then the climbing started. I first had to ascend a 3rd category hill with nearly half kilometre at 10-12%, which was followed by a long descent to Lyons, where the big mountain of the day started. It was not too steep, but took a while, since I had to ride more than 38 km to gain some 1600 metre in altitude (there was ~2km downhill part within), which made it a HC (Hors Catégorie) ascent. The scenery was really nice, the roads wide and smooth with very little traffic, so I enjoyed it a lot.

To make it more interesting, I got a flat somewhere along the ascent, so I finally got to use my CO₂ cartridges with my new handpump (cool!). But since changing tires is nothing of a challenge after riding 23000 kilometres, I also got a nice thunderstorm for the last part of the climb. Huge but sparse drops of rain started to fall when I reached an elevation of 2300 metres, and with the precipitation, the temperature also started to drop. I was riding in 30°C before the clouds came, and in a bit less than one hour, the temperature dropped to a mere 5°C… Yeah, the sparse drops soon turned into heavy rain, which turned into a mix of snow, ice, and graupel, which first of all was a bit painful (making me think about what to do if the ice grows in size and starts falling in not 0.5-1 cm pieces but 5…, which luckily did not happen), second of all it acted like ice in the fridge, hence the 25°C drop in no time, but despite the suffering I went through during these kilometres, it was a huge experience, and now it seems like one of the best things from this holiday. I know, it sounds crazy :) Of course the worst part was not going up in that cold, but that I had to start my descent at 2800 metres in 5°C with no warm clothes except for a wind/rain jacket (which already lost its ability to keep rain out). It was around 15 kilometres to go down till the air started to warm up, and going 40 km/h in 5°C means a perceived temperature (thanks to wind chill) of -17°C… I quickly started shivering quite seriously, which meant that I really had to concentrate not to let the handlebars go and fall off the bike. It was not easy. When I finally escaped from the clouds and arrived to a crossroad with sunshine, I stopped for a while to warm up a bit.

By the time I started climbing the last hill (4th category) it was back to 27°C again, and sweating :) I finished the day after 112.37 km and an elevation gain of 1794 metres. More details can be found on Garmin Connect or Strava. Thanks to Clio I had a huge burrito waiting for me in the fridge (and also lots of grapes we had bought the previous day in the Whole Foods Market), so I had quite some difficulty when I still wanted to finish a full plate of pasta for dinner…

On Tuesday, I started the same way towards the north, but just before the long 10-12% section of the previous day, I turned left… to have a similar section but now with sustained 12-14%… At least the view was first class again. Soon afterwards the climb became less brutal, but it went all the way up till 2125 metres in elevation. After this 2nd category climb, I descended to the valley and started climbing up again (along Lefthand Canyon Drive), on the same road I descended while battling the elements the day before. You might recall that it was a long descent, which of course means that now it was a long ascent. Very long. It started at 2000 metres and went up till 3168 metres, which means I had an average grade of 4.5% on a bit more than 26 kilometres (HC climb). Luckily except for a 3 km section arriving to Ward with an average of ~8%, it was not too steep, so I had energy to keep looking around end enjoy the scenery. I started to hear thunder in the distance quite early already (around 2400 metres), so I was a bit worried about the rest of the day, especially that I knew I am heading towards a lake at 3150 metres, situated in a quite open area, which is not the safest place to be in a thunderstorm… Luckily after a few drops of rain near Ward it cleared up again, and I arrived in nice weather and sunshine to the Brainard Lake.

It was really beautiful up there, but you could feel that the oxygen content of the air was much lower than usual, so I was glad to have some downhill from here. I took the Peak to Peak Highway to Nederland (mostly flat or not too steep downhill, then a 4th category climb), and for some reason, I got a flat again…

At that point it was raining again, and with lightning being not too far from me, I performed the fastest tube-change of my life so far. From Nederland I had to climb a little bit along the reservoir before starting the long descent towards Boulder in another canyon (the 3rd so far), but it was barely a 4th category hump if any. Of course, for the long descent I got heavy rain (again…), so I could not really enjoy it, especially that it was a bit more busy than the other roads I have ridden so far, but I knew that I would be climbing back up there the coming day, so I was not really bothered by it. Also, this time the temperature went down to only 11°C (from 23°C) and I even had my arm warmers with me, so I was not at all cold. Before riding back to the hotel I dropped by the Trek store to buy another spare tire and a CO2 cartridge to replace the ones I used up. I finished after 102.13 km and 1910 metres of elevation gain. Full details of the ride can be found on Garmin Connect and Strava. That evening I had no difficulty finishing my plate at Noodles & Company.

On Wednesday, I first headed out to climb Flagstaff Hill (2nd category climb, 5.5 km @ 6.2%), which is the most local, classic climb of Boulder cyclists. With its switchbacks it is indeed the climb most similar to the big European ascents, and with the view to the Flatirons, Boulder and the plains towards Denver, and towards the higher snowy peaks of the Rockies from the finish line, it is indeed a must have in every cyclists logbook.

As usual I had some friendly americans to chat with at the top before rolling back to Boulder (almost running into a deer family crossing the road) and turning west to start the long climb of the day. It is 22 km at an average 4% (HC) along the Boulder Canyon Drive till the Barker Reservoir, which is not steep at all, except for ~5 km in the middle with sustained grades up till 10% (which makes the rest even less steep). Now in good weather I could enjoy the steep walls of the canyon around me, with great rock formations everywhere.

The view from the reservoir was also very nice, especially that finally there was no risk of thunderstorms, but clear skies.

From Nederland there was still a bit of climbing (a good 4th category up to 2626 metres) along the Peak to Peak highway before the road started going downhills and I turned right on Coal Creek Canyon Road (the 4th and last canyon on the bike). The downhill went on for almost 10 km, before the road turned uphills again. This last ascent was a bit more than 4 km at an average almost 5% back up to an elevation of 2630 metres.

From the last hairpin there was a great view to the higher Rockies! The long descent from here was the nicest from the three days – but I do not know if because it was again a very nice canyon, or because this was the only dry descent I had where I was not breaking all the time ;) For the last 20 km I escaped the Rockies and rode the plains under the foothills with great views back to the mountainous landscape I just left behind. I arrived back to the trek store to drop off the bike after 100.94 km and 1761 metres of elevation gain, and as usual, all the details are on Garmin Connect and Strava.

Since I got back quite early from the ride (after leaving very early on the morning), and Clio had only a half day of conference that day, we still had a walk and some food downtown on the afternoon. For dinner, we went to a place called West Flanders Brewing Company, and I had a burger and some Belgian style beer (which was quite nice, even though they ran out of my first choice, the Angry Monk).

On Thursday morning, we took the bus to Denver…

Halfway around the globe on the racing bike

Yesterday somewhere along the channel between Mechelen and Leuven, I passed the 20000 km mark on my racing bike. This is the distance I have ridden since I started cycling (as a sport/training – I do not keep track of the kilometres during commuting anyway) on the 20th of February in 2010. By the time I arrived home and finished the day’s ride, I was (virtually) over halfway around the circumference of our home planet. To commemorate this event, here are some statistics from the past years.

Between 20 February 2010 and 15 May 2013 (1180 days, or almost 39 months) I have the following statistics:

457 rides (including very short ones up to and down from the Mercator telescope)
20042 km (half the Earth’s circumference)
711h 17m 06s on the bike (almost 30 days)
126933 m of elevation gained (more than 14 times the height of Mt Everest)
28.1 km/h average speed (674.4 km/day)
159 BPM average heart rate (that is still in Zone 2 for me, so moderate intensity)
88 RPM average cadence
546431 Calories (or kcal) burned (almost 220 Guideline Daily Amounts for men)

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WT Wedstrijd Hoeleden 2012

Although I had a feeling it was not the best idea, I got dragged into a race after coming back from Mallorca by Stan and Tijl… Of course I was curious if I can finally manage to survive a real Flemish koers, because one and a half years ago I already failed once miserably, although I was in an incomparably worse shape back then… Now after months of hard training and a week on Mallorca, with much more experience on the road bike, I was relatively optimistic, so I set the goal of finishing the race for myself, hoping that it was within reach. Tijl drove me to the start in Hoeleden, I was very nervous, but I still felt OK. Then the other competitors started to arrive, mostly with really fancy (expensive, light, and aerodynamic) bikes, some of them came with small teams, so I felt a bit worried and afraid of the competition… Still, I did some good warm up, tried out with Tijl how to take a bottle from his hands while riding with 40 km/h, and then went to the start line, still relatively optimistic, looking forward to one and a half hour of suffering, but hoping that I can finish the race with the main group, without being dropped.

The first lap is always a bit slower, behind the race director’s car, so speed and heart rate-vise it was OK, although I did not feel very good about all the crazy breaking in front of me. Things can get a bit tense when you are surrounded with a 100 other bikers from every side… Then after the first lap, hell broke loose… On the long flat we had a speed constantly above 50 km/h (there was a sleigh tailwind), which was still OK (as for me a heart rate of 180 is still fine, I can take that for more than one and a half hours), but then near the end of the lap, when we got sidewind on a slight uphill section, and the peloton got stretched out into a one biker wide long line, then I could not follow anymore, it was just too much. I was dropped after two laps. But I was far not the first to be dropped. And still, I managed to go another two laps before I was taken out from the race by the director. It could have been much further, if the guys I caught up with would have been more cooperative… But anyway, being dropped from the main group in a criterium race always means it is over. It is just impossible to catch up. Here is the GPS-log of the race.

I was pissed. I was pissed because I really wanted to finish, and even though I felt strong, and I was in a good shape, with a very good fitness level, I did not manage to follow. Ok, I did not do too much interval training this year, but with this much training, I felt very disappointed to drop out like this. And I kind of lost motivation too, I did not feel that I would want to just train more and more and come back next time, I just felt like I do not want this crap anymore. And by crap I mean the racing, not the biking :) I biked home after the race with Stan (who at the end did not participate in the race, although that might have been good for me), which felt good, but I felt hurt inside. It was not physical pain, but mental…

Towards the end of may I still did some proper training, I had a seasonal best (or personal best if you look only at rides without aero wheels) on my standard Leuven-Mechelen-Leuven route, but then I really felt burned out. I need to take a small break, stay off the bike for a while, so by the time I have my cycling holiday on Gran Canaria (starting on the last days of August) I can build up my form again, and enjoy riding again as much as I did in the first 5 months of 2012. I am already at 5130 kilometres this year anyway :)

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A week of cycling fun on Mallorca

Yes, I know, I am really lagging behind my life with the blog, but it is not dead yet. So to cut the unnecessary chatter short, I have been on a cycling holiday finally not alone, but with other people! I know, sounds unbelievable, but several photos and videos prove that Tijl and Thomas were my company.

We have spent 7 amazing days on Mallorca from the 29th of April till the 5th of May. Our headquarters were in Port de Pollenca in an amazing seaside villa (where we all had our private bedroom and private bathroom – early season prices are really low…), so every morning we had breakfast on the terrace (which was a bit chilly, but as soon as we managed to get some sun on our skin, everything became better), and every evening we had a stroll along the beach to the ‘city’ to have dinner in our local Pizzeria (where the service got better and better as we kept going back every day – so the last evening it was the chef himself serving us). I have to mention here, that they have the best brownie (warm brownie with nuts and raisins inside served with vanilla ice cream…) on the planet. Period. Then we usually went to the market square after dinner to get our daily internet and upload our rides to Garmin Connect. Then we went to sleep. Which was very well deserved every day…

We made loads of movies with my helmet camera (which was installed on one of our handlebars), which I still have to edit and cut together, but I need a bit more time for that, as there are other things in my life too… But the footage we got is really cool, believe me. The scenery was amazing, the weather was nice, the company was great, so we had loads of fun.

I have already ‘killed myself’ on the first ride of the first day, racing to the lighthouse, which did not feel too good (I was somewhere in between throwing up and fainting, luckily neither of these happened), but my form quickly shoved, so all the hard training of the first four months was proven to be very useful. Although Tijl and Thomas had much less training and they are also a bit older (sorry… :P), it still felt good to be the strongest of the three. Still, Thomas was a great climber (who always managed to stick with me so I could only ‘win’ the climbs with a sprint at the end – thanks to my fitness level), and Tijl is just crazy amazing on the descents (so technically impossible to follow for people with no suicidal tendencies :D). Also, Tijl’s English breakfast was first class. We should have had it on every morning ;)

Here are the links for all the rides on Garmin Connect: Day 1 morning (to the lighthouse) and Day 1 afternoon (small flat circle), Day 2 (long flat ride), Day 3 (Sa Calobra – big competitive climb), Day 4 (small flat rest day circle), Day 5 (extreme stage), Day 6 (long flat till the climb of Cura), Day 7 (morning good bye ride to the lighthouse). Total of 645 km with 8200 metre of elevation gain, 18 000 Cal burned. It was an extremely nice holiday, and it was extremely crappy to arrive back to the rainy Charleroi in 6°C… :D I could write pages of this holiday, but this was really something you have to experience as a cyclist (all the discussions about bike parts, following ‘The Rules‘, passionate bike cleaning, etc.), and not read about it. I will be back somewhen with the videos too! Update: here it is (set it to 720p).