Tour of Flanders - amateurs

H

Has anyone out there done the Tour of Flanders amateur ride on the da
before the great belgian Classic

I am thinking of having a go and would value any remarks..

Cheer

Jo


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Jon Cooper wrote:
Hi

Has anyone out there done the Tour of Flanders amateur ride on the day
before the great belgian Classic ?

I am thinking of having a go and would value any remarks...

Cheers

Jon

I have not done said ride, I have seen folk doing it and they all looked
knackered by the time they reached the hilly parts ! Do they do a shorter
route or is it just the race route ?

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Jon Cooper wrote in message ...
Hi

Has anyone out there done the Tour of Flanders amateur ride on the day
before the great belgian Classic ?

I am thinking of having a go and would value any remarks...

Cheers

Jon



Hi there,

I rode this event this year along with 14,000 others...

You can enter online at http://www.sport.be/eng/rondevanvlaanderen/

They are very efficient in dealing with entries, or you can always
enter on the line. The main advantage of entering in advance is that
you can book a place on a shuttle bus to take you to the start of the
250km version. If you do one of the shorter ones they start and finish
in Ninove.

Full route details and so on taken from the pro event can be found
here.

http://www.rvv.be/

I went via North Sea Ferries from Hull- this is normally
extortionately expensive but by booking in advance and taking
advantage of a 5day car plus 4 deal it cost 4 of us less the £60 each
return including a cabin. I booked online into the Ghent Ibis Opera, a
few yards from Plum's bike shop. There is also an excellent restaurant
a few hundred yards toward the centre on the left hand side, just by
the next canal.

Use http://www.ibishotel.com/ibis/ rather then a booking agency.


As to the event, it is very very hard. A week or so before we did a
110 mile ride round every hard climb we could think of the Yorkshire
Wolds and found that quite easy. It took at least a week to recover
from the Flanders... Main problem is the cobbles. I rode up every
climb including the Koppenberg without problems (39x26 recommended)
but the flat sections of cobbles are very hard to ride over. The
locals tackle them by doing over 20 MPH and sort of bounce along the
tops. Once I was stuffed and 15MPH was a real effort you just seem to
hit each one full on. Another big problem is that you tend to get
sucked into the competitiveness of the event and try to stay with
whatever group you find yourself in, hence you don't sit up when
things get hard and end up treating it as though it were a race. Also
take PROPER food and don't try to rely on energy drinks like High5.
This will just screw up your digestion and leave you feeling sick. As
to equipment, Continetal 4 season tyres are ideal.

As to watching the pro event, it is hard to follow the race due to all
the traffic. Picking 2 or 3 widely spaced locations is probably best
and just enjoying the atmousphere. We bailed out after the Old
Kwaremont and retired to a bar to watch the rest on TV.

All in all a great event. After it we all said 'never again', but
thought "Wow, that was great' by the time we were back on the ferry.
Ghent is a lovely place to stay as well- if you go with a partner
there are loads of really upmarket shops and so on.

Enjoy!

Jon Cooper wrote in message ...
Hi

Has anyone out there done the Tour of Flanders amateur ride on the day
before the great belgian Classic ?

I am thinking of having a go and would value any remarks...

Cheers

Jon


Some of my other club members did it last year, generally favourable
reports, but be aware of some ridiculous gradients on cobbled streets
around the route
(I think they they did the c150k route)
IMBW but there I believe there are also Etapes of the Amstel Gold and
PR

L'Ardecheoise looks fun if you can spare the time/money