A few years ago during the Covid-19 crisis we we're quite restricted by our government. When the restrictions eased somewhat we we're allowed to practice some outside sports in small groups. Together with two friends I did quite a few long rides back then. We wanted to have a goal we could train for, so we decided to train for a 200 kilometer ride.
Quite a challenging goal since most rides we did were 80 kilometer at max.
We trained a lot and finally managed to complete the ride. From that year a new tradition was born.
After that year we made a 200+ ride every year. This year for the fourth time in a row.
We plan this ride in the middle of the year. This gives us enough time to build up our fitness after the winter. We usually start cycling in February when the weather allows. We start off with rides of 40 kilometers and slowly increase the distance week after week until we make rides of 120 kilometer.
Last year I made a 135 kilometer solo ride from the campsite back home just a few weeks before the 200 kilometer ride.
But this year my training wasn't as good as the years before. I've been quite busy in the weekends, so I had to skip a lot of rides. We've also had quite a lot of rain in spring which resulted in far less training kilometers than I had planned. The longest ride I made before our trip was just over 80 kilometers which isn't even half of what we we're going to ride.
To be honest I was a little bit worried whether I would make it this year or not.
Luckily I was able to make quite some commuting rides in the last two weeks before our trip. The distance isn't that much; 16,5 kilometer one way, but with 33 kilometer a day I managed to ride over 200 kilometer in two weeks.
The weather last Friday was perfect! It was sunny and dry and there wasn't a lot of wind. We took off at 8:00 AM and went in the South-East direction. This part of the Netherlands is called 'the green heart' because it exists mainly of polders and meadows. It's very beautiful. We've seen many canals, meadows, cows and sheep.
We've also had to cross some canals as well. We've been on two ferries and also cycled under the water in quite a long tunnel.
Cycling through the city of Rotterdam wasn't a very good choice. There was a lot of traffic, so we had to stop a lot of times for traffic lights. And that's not funny after 140 kilometers.
After leaving Rotterdam behind we had about 50 kilometers left to ride. And since we started with a headwind we now had a nice tailwind.
In the end it wasn't as tough as I had thought. We managed to complete the ride relatively fresh (for as far as you can be fresh after being on a bicycle for over 7 hours).
Check out the video in this post to get a bit of an impression of the ride.
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