Second attempt today to do the Mergelland Route in Limburg. Another failure to follow the route. For one reason or another I never get this one right. This time the Ironman Limburg was happening in exactly good part of the same route we were try to follow. But overall it was a great 96kms ride with Stef and Tom (who took the above picture) and a good climbing training.
I’ve downloaded the route to my Garmin and today I have to say it worked perfect. I didn’t miss any turn and could follow the course perfectly. The only problem is that I’ve set the route in the “easy” direction (clockwise) and not on the way you get all the big climbs. In this way you get the climbs going downhill but the route is full of long false flats, which sucks energy.
We were just going thru the climbs nicely but at around 70 kms we all started feeling tired, what is unusual. Usually one or two are not feeling strong. But this time the legs were not there. Stef and Tom could still drop me on the climbs but they couldn’t do their normal push. At that point it started raining quite heavily, so we decided to stop at a little restaurant to get some coffee and a rice cake (with the vain hope to regain some energy) which are very good in Limburg.
When we finished, the rain has stopped and we continue. But just a little over 2 kilometers we were forced to stop as the road was blocked due to the bike leg of the Limburg Ironman. Tired and not being able to complete, we decided to call it a day and ride straight to the car. Good ride but clearly not my day. I need to focus on strength training…
Clearly I was going the wrong way…
Some say Stef was pushing me uphill.
Some say he was trying to hang on my jersey for dear life.
Coffee and rice cake in Mheer
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