Fleche

(Huy is painted all the way up the finishing climb)

We found some hills in Belgium this week at the Fleche Wallonne world cup. It was my favorite course so far. I really liked the hills... except perhaps for the finishing hill of this race which we had to do twice!

The Mur de Huy is only 1.3km and averages 9.3%. This doesn't sound soooo bad, but averages can be deceiving. The hill actually starts out not too steep and then kicks straight up almost vertical into the sky. If you were to walk up it, you'd probably need some climbing gear.

The hill was quite a tease for me. Before I knew it, I could see the 500m to go sign which means the top is only 500 meters away. This is not very far at all in biking distance (this isn't even very far in running distance). And the sign came so quickly after the start of the Huy that I thought the climb would soon be over.

But then it took quite some time to actually pass the 500 meter sign. Unfortunately, at this point I was working very hard to defy gravity and didn't recalculate the time I expected it might take to get to the top.

After quite a long time, the brain kicked in and says "ok -- i think we should be at the top by now." Then I look up to see the 250m sign. Now there was a bit of confusion as the 500m sign definitely passed ages ago. Then there was a bit of dread when I realized this tortuous ascent is still far from over and may last forever. But there was no time to dwell on these facts because I had to focus on not toppling over in front of hundreds of spectators.

The remaining thought process went somewhat like this:

225m to go

when am i ever going to get to that 200m sign?

200m to go

i made it! i made it! i made it to the 200m sign!

200m to go (thought 2)

i still have 200m to go? am i moving? keep turning the pedals.

150 to go

keeeeeeeeeep tuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrnnnnnning the pedals.

125m to go

turn turn turn turn the pedals. turn turn turn. don't stop -- you might fall over. turn turn turn.

100m to go

i think i might survive

50m to go

the road is flattening! maybe i can coast in now??

48m to go

nope -- gotto keep pedalling! pedal pedal pedal!

25 to go

the road is flattening -- wooo!! I'm gonna make it!!

And then there was a bit of excitement mixed with total exhaustion once I crossed top. Had I been a little more experienced in this race, I may have tried a couple of my teammate's strategies. One good one is to simply zig-zag back and forth across the hill. While this greatly reduces the grade of the hill, it does increase the distance you must traverse to the top and makes the distance to go signs even more irrelevant. Brooke notes that this strategy is particularly useful when both of your tires have most certainly, definitely gone flat.

The best strategy, however, is the Mackie "push push" strategy. Instead of silently hoping in your head that the hundreds of screaming, energetic fans would give you a push, be proactive. Actually ride along the edge of the course and yell out "push push" as you pass very close to the enthusiastic fans. Apparently this results in a few turbo boosts on the way up!

Or you could just have climbing super powers like Ruth and fly up the hill, but I'm not sure how to obtain these secret powers. So the team plan was to get our superhero to the hill in good position so she could fly away. The team raced super well and everything unfolded as planned. Ruth flew up the hill the first time and was in the winning breakaway ready for a winning flight to the finish. Unfortunately bad luck is sometimes a part of bike racing and 4km from the finish, her wheel got caught in a crack and the day was over. Luckily she is ok! And we are ready for another great race tomorrow -- hopefully luck will be on our side!

(This little guy has been monitoring our training rides -- we should be good to go tomorrow!)