Gent Ieper Prerace Training RideThe Gent Ieper 1.12 Top Competition race is always an early season favorite for the most Belgian bike racers. The U23 Natty team headed out for a little bit of a reconnaissance mission on Thursday before the race. It was 8 degree’s Celsius (about 46F) and raining as Matt Crane, Zach Taylor, Ryan Keels, Chase Renick and I ate our breakfast in our cozy Izegem team house. As the 5 of us quietly ate our meals, we all sat typing at our laptops thinking the same thing. “Are we really going out in this nasty weather to do the 165k race loop? F**K!” We all thought this, but nobody said it. We all knew we were going. With the two local Belgian riders Chris and Stijn, for sure we were preparing for an epic day of training.
For a little background on these guys, Chris has been working with the team for the past couple weeks. He is an ex-pro who has not only raced in countless pro races, but also won Gent Ieper when he was 20 years old. He’s nothing short of a bad-ass. Stijn is a local racer who is good friends with Noel, our full time director. He joins us on many training rides to make sure we are riding hard enough and not stopping for pastries too often.
We started the ride shortly before 1pm, with Chris and Stijn immediately setting tempo on the front in an effort to get warm in the cool weather. We hit the course at the 25k marker, which was about 10k from the house. With the beginning of the race being very exposed and open, wind will play a major factor in the race. The first climb is about 85k into the race, so the race will have most likely shattered by then. We do a 30k loop consisting of the three climbs, the Baneburg, Rode burg, and the Kemmelburg. The Kemmelburg being the toughest climb, with gnarly cobbles up and then even sketchier cobbles on the backside. At almost 1k, the Kemmelburg is just long enough to crack riders, so it’s important to save some effort to be able to tackle this climb. I went hard over all three of the climbs to get a feel for how the race would be. I felt good, driving it hard over the climbs. We did the loop twice to get a good feel for the run in to the climbs. It’s very important to be at the front before the climbs, because the roads are narrow and gaps open up very easy in the group.
Once we finished riding the 30k loop for the second time, we began our journey to the finish in Ieper. We had already logged 110k at 3.5 hours, so we were moving. With 30k to go to Ieper, we started to get rained on. Luckily Lionel, Chris brother, was driving the van behind us with all our rain supplies, as well as food, bottles and spare wheels. We all pulled our rain jackets on and continued to ride.
Once in Ieper, I stopped for a bottle from the van. When I looked up, the guys had left me, so I followed Lionel through the town. Apparently we took a different way through because we totally lost the other guys. It was straight home though on the road, so Lionel just followed me for the next 25k’s home. It had stopped raining, but my gloves were soaked along with everything else. With darkness closing in, I rode a good tempo to make it back as quick as I could. With 10k’s to go to the house, Lionel drove in front of me and put me at 50kph behind the van all the back. With daylight fading away, I made it back just in time. It was a great finish to a solid training ride. 4000 Kilojoules later, it was time for a warm shower and dinner.
