Allow me to brag a little: I did a 103 km bike ride on Monday, directly after writing about a 109 km bike ride. I didn't plan to do a metric century again, I wanted to focus on climbing as much as possible. And that went well: on a short, sharp climb, I passed a man on a mountainbike who had a 100 m head start. Poor guy! I felt sorry for him - imagine a 200 pound blob of fat zooming past you!
I took a break in a military area that's open to the public as a nature reserve these days. There's still a shooting range on the other side of the road.
Edit: here's a fun graph that shows how I maintained the same speed on that short climb:
I also survived a fast descent among a hundred high-school students on an outing. But after returning to the outskirts of Amersfoort for the fifth climb of the day, I got bored and decided to try a new route, although it would be flat all the way. Well, the middle part was nice. This time I went clockwise on the map:
The N226 was surprisingly busy for a road running through some villages, with many stops for traffic lights and roundabouts. Oh wait, it connects the city of Amersfoort to the A12 highway. Which is convenient if you forget that there are two highways running through Amersfoort.
As you can see on the map, I got lost in the woods before riding through the fields, but the area where I got lost around the village of Darthuizen was nice and quiet. Further on, near the village of Werkhoven I noticed the following building:
Doesn't this look like a scene from Tuscany? Just like in my previous post, it's a square water tower, but this one was built in the middle of nowhere, in a region that's known for tower-style castles. I'm sure it was meant to look like one of these donjons (keeps). In contrast to the democratic water boards in the Western Netherlands, polders were created by aristocrats here, so the countryside around Langbroek is littered with modest castles, and as far as I know, the dairy farms are still run by tenants of big landowners.
Winding roads led me to a bridge where I crossed to the southwestern bank of the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal.
I knew this bike path wouldn't be as good as the one on the other side. And the last part was gnarly indeed - it would be a good place to train for Paris-Roubaix, a clinker-paved street used by heavy farming equipment that hasn't been maintained in years. The 15 km speed limit is probably for your own safety. I can't say that I'd never appreciate vibrations on my posterior, but this wasn't the time and the place.
Afterwards, I felt frustrated despite the distance I covered, because I didn't have the average speed that would allow me to finish a 150 km ride in one day. For some reason, I've set that as a target. I could keep peddling for 8 hours, but I couldn't keep sitting on a saddle for 8 hours.
On the other hand, I was #1 of all Strava users that day for the very first stretch of my ride, leaving the city of Utrecht. Sorry, I can't show proof because of privacy - and Strava replaced the stats for Monday with live stats for today. An earlier attempt is still #2 for this year. It's a half-mile bike path segment that includes two tunnels under a railway line. The trick is not to slow down when you have to climb just a few feet. And you have to be lucky not to hit a pedestrian while passing under the railway station.
Today, I got over my disappointment and I booked a ticket for two organized 125 km bike rides in June. Both are in the eastern part of the Netherlands and will feature plenty of hills. Don't expect me to take a lot of pictures, because riding among other cyclists makes me competitive. The last time, I kept passing the same people on the downhill stretches that passed me uphill, until I almost hit a car.
Earlier posts about cycling:
