And so. We pick up the tale as we set out to do what we came to do: ride the cobbled climbs of Flanders.
I know. Can we really be THAT handsome a couple?!? Should the good people of the Rapha Bicycle-Oriented Clothing Company need roving ambassadors to quite literally pedal their wares, we hereby zip up our gilets and toss our birettas into the ring.
We were led onto Flanders' cobbled climbs by no less than Eric DeClerq, verteran of 12 years with the Belgian professional squad Collstrop, having raced the Ronde Van Vlaanderen, Paris-Roubaix, and many other Classics and Semi-classics during that time. The Bomber, needless to say, was more than a little excited to be following Eric down the same roads he raced on:
The object of the day's game was to ride many of the climbs used in the Tour of Flanders the day before the cyclosportive event, during which there would be approximately 19,785 more riders on the course. Among the other groups who had the same idea were the squads of Liquigas, Lampre, Astana, Radio Shack, and Landbouwkreidit (Sven Nys rode right by me! ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!). We started the day on the Oude Kwaremont, where the Bomber was politely asked to move aside by Peter Sagan of Liquigas, only to have the Liquigas team car lose traction on the steep and wet cobbles and come to a complete stop, thus screwing pretty much everyone's attempt at the climb.
The sharp eyed among you will note that is not the Oude Kwaremont, but is instead the significantly steeper Koppenberg. We were stopped here too, this time by the ambulance you can see in the background that came to rescue a cyclist who managed to fall and break his hip. While riding uphill. Flanders cobbles are like that: hard and polished. And hard. Steep too:
From here, however, our successes would mount, as we cleaned the Taienberg, Molenberg, Paterberg (only the Bomber managed this one, as I was thwarted by a balky drivetrain at the bottom and a Belgian's bottom at the top), as well as the less well-known but equally challenging downhill stretch of pave known as the Lippenhouvenstraat. Here, the Bomber makes the hard left at the top of the Paterberg, which is every bit as steep as its more famous cousin, the Koppenberg.
And here, Eric explains that I am somewhere behind the group because every bolt in my bike, and my eyeballs, have been rattled from their respective moorings and I will be delayed until everything is returned to its anatomically appropriate place. Meanwhile, the guys in the group are trying to wrap their heads around the fact that the Bomber stayed firmly planted in the middle of the group across the cobbles.
Everyone has they own kind of motivation, and the Bomber's success was due in no small part to the fact the ride ended at the Ronde Van Vlaanderen Museum in Oudenaarde, which has a cafe. In Belgium, coffee is served without fail on a silver tray, accompanied by at least one biscuit or other sweet. Properly.
Meanwhile I took in the sights, which for me involved being photographed with every Belgian and Flandrian flag I could find, because I am cheesy.
With the course reconnoitered, we were ready to ride it at Belgian sportive pace in the largest cyclosportive event in the world (non fact-checked version), the Ronde Van Vlaanderen Cyclosportive. On the day we did it, there were a record 19,800 participants. That is a lot of people to put on a 140 kilometer stretch of sidewalk.
I have read in other corners of the interwebs that the Ronde sportive event was a bloc with squirrelly riders. Statistically speaking, if you have 20,000 cyclists on the same roads at the same time, there will be a few tweakers in the mix, but our experience was quite different. The vast majority rode extremely well, lines were held, wheels were not overlapped and the rubber side stayed down. Again, not an easy task when pretty much all of the 135 kilometers we rode looked like this:
As in the Ronde itself, the Sportive is defined by the climbs, and the Belgians turn out to watch the amateurs suffer. Throughout the day I was able to track the Bomber's progress by the sound of the crowds on the climbs when she passed. In five plus hours of riding, I saw three women other than the Bomber, so this was a rare sight indeed:
Props to the Belgian men for being surprisingly good sports while they were repeatedly subjected to this sort of treatment, much to the spectators' vocal delight:
That's the Bomber cleaning the inside line at the top of the Kappelmuur, which runs somewhere in the neighborhood of 24 percent. On cobbles. A more accurrate depiction of exactly how hard this stretch of cobbles is looks like this:
The Belgians love a good pain face, as it happens. So while my popularity did not approach the Bomber's, by the end of the day I knew how to say "That guy is going to need an ambulance" in Flemish.
After the Bosberg, it is a false flat downhill with a slight tailwind into the finish at Ninove. Ride that section and you know why Boonen was never going to catch Cancellara in the 2010 Ronde. And somewhere in Flanders there's a group of middle age men in black kit with a big Z on the back wondering why the hell they weren't able to catch some chick in a red jersey on the same stretch of road. Of course they did not see the Bomber tuck in among the team cars for a 25 mph rest in the outskirts of Ninove, nor did they see the impressive job done by her faithful domestique in the closing kilometers. Which, in the interest of full disclosure, is where I finally caught her. Having spent a little too long on the back of the group of Masters cyclists in their fetching black on black with added black accented kits wondering when they would take up the chase, I was - as Phil and Paul might say - caught out when I finally realized The Bomber would take top honors if I did not put my own nose in the wind. So chase I did, and thanks to the several thousand rolling obstacles in the road, I was finally able to latch on to the Bomber's wheel in time to roll under the red kite.
The Ronde Sportive is one hell of a hard ride. The last 50 kilometers are one berg after another with precious little time to recover in between. Still, I don't know when we have had more fun riding, which is all the more surprising given that we usually seek out the most deserted roads we can find and here found ourselves in the largest rolling crowd we have ever seen or heard tell of. It is a rare thing that an event like this lives up to all the expectations you pile on it during the months of preparation, but the Ronde Sportive certainly did that.
Frank Lazlo
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