FIRST EVENT OF THE YEAR

135 kms | 5 h 03 m | avg speed 26.9  kmh | avg hr 149 bpm

After two weeks with no serious training and only a small zone 1 spin due to a strong flu, today I faced the first event of the year: Veenendaal – Veenendaal. This is a sportive with 135 kms, 16 short hills and 935 vertical meters. A hard day as I’m still weak from the flu (actually I still have it) and the lack of training in the last days meant I was very stiff.  But also a good day and happy to have completed. Take a look how it went.

Depois de duas semanas sem treinar de verdade com somente um pequeno treino na zona 1, eu enfrentei hoje o primeiro evento do ano: Veenendaal – Veenendaal. Este é um “sportive” com 135 kms, 16 ladeiras fortes e 935 metros verticais. Um dia duro já que eu ainda estou gripado e a falta de treino me fez estar totalmente for a de forma. Mas também foi um dia bom e eu estou feliz de ter completado a volta. Dá uma olhada depois do link

This is the first time I’ve ridden Veenendal - Veenendal. Usually my first event of the day is in May. But with the very good weather this year, I decided to enroll. First the idea was to ride as hard as possible with a fast group, but with the flu I decided to take it easy and only push on the climbs. Which prove difficult enough for my current condition, the hills we faced and the last kilometers against the mid speed wind.

A colleague join me in his first big event and we start riding to a very misty 5 degrees C morning ride. It was cold but the worst part was the mist. I had to take my glasses off just to be able to see a couple of meters ahead of us and they are actually transparent. Later the sun got out and it turned into a gorgeous day, with fantastic views of the region. Lakes, hills, fields and nice locations. A fantastic ride in this respect.

In the first kilometers I decided to push hard on the climbs and see how my legs would react. The first climb was the Amerongse Berg  with 6.8% max inclination,  which went OK and no surprises. After that was time for the Defensieweg (5.3%) and than around kilometer 22 the Koerheuvel (7.3%). This one is only 640 meters but it is very constant around the 7%. I pushed as hard as I could, reaching the max heart rate. It felt good to overtake a good number of riders. Always a good feeling.

Another nice climb in the day was the Italiaanseweg, around 44 kms int the ride. In this one because it starts immediately after a quick descend, I decided to try to climb with a cadence above 100 rpm. I manage to keep it almost thru the whole climb, just slowing down in the last corner as I was cut by another rider. This is one of the most beautiful climbs in the region, all in small stones and not tarmac, which makes is quite nice. Below you can see a video of some guys doing it.

 

From there we went thru the first feeding zone, around 58 kms into the ride. I’ve been coughing hard during the whole day. I could manage it because after I started riding hard, the body warming up would make the coughing stop. However, when we stop it was uncontrollable. So, better not stop and keep on going and we didn’t stay for longer than 10 minutes.

From that point also I could feel that my energy was dropping quite fast. We still went thru some big climbs like Emmapiramide and Posbank, which I could do at decent speed, but not really riveting. Also it was the first time the cramps started showing up. At some point, any gradient above 4% would trigger my hamstrings to cramp immediately. On the flat I was OK, managing to keep a speed of 32 to 34 kmh. But on any climbs I had to slow down to 13 kmh.

I expected a hard day because of the lack of training and the flu. But I didn’t expect the cramps.  And those bastards just suck even more energy out of you. The last 20 kilometers I really countdown every kilometer. I used every gram of energy to finish… But I’m happy I did Veenendaal – Veenendaal. Very close to Jan Janssen Classic and will be good to compare the two to see performance gain.