After TNR, I laid low for a while before waking up to the realisation I wanted to do another long ride in June. Of perhaps two. In my mind the 160 and 200 km rides I planned, weren’t that big of a deal. And with the proper training, that wouldn’t have been a big deal. But I didn’t fall back in love with cycling yet. So with minimal training, and a round of Prednisone, I forced myself through the 160 km Unbound ride and attempted the 200km, but managed to be semi-smart about it and turned around after 55km.

After that, I had a sit down with myself because this half-assed riding but attacking big things was ruining me. I came to 2 conclusions; I wanted to stop riding. I had to give myself permission to stop riding and not have any milestones in the back of my mind, rushing this cycling-sabbatical. No goals, no expectations.

I agreed to start with a personal trainer to help me recover physically. My message to her was clear: help me enjoy riding again. I felt mentally and physically at rock bottom in terms of fitness. I had skipped the foundational training after my TNR crash, so after this second mental crash, I was left with nothing.

In July, I did nothing but hiking and PT sessions. After a week or 6, I noticed some stamina and muscle gain. I toyed with the idea of riding again and gave myself permission to do a 30-minute Zwift ride. And sure enough, 2 days later, I signed up for the training plan “Back to Fitness”. I liked it because the workouts were short and easy. I left the bike with a smile after every workout. Great start.

The next week I extended the workouts with a bit of freeriding to get 60 minutes of riding. Still a smile on my face and the feeling of “I want/could do more”. And that’s the feeling you want. Still not trusting myself, so keeping to 60 minutes until I rented a Wahoo Kickr Climb. I found a Zwift event for the Four Horseman badge (90km with 2k climb) and wondered if I could train for it in 3 months’ time. So it took me all of 2 months without a big goal. I added some longer workouts on routes with more climbing and by the end of september I did my first Alpe d’Zwift again. I felt like a million bucks, because I paced myself and kept it together physically and mentally. This stretched my permission to intensify the workout, but still only indoor and always maintaining the “I could do more” feeling afterwards.

The biggest win after 3 months was that I didn’t do the Four Horsemen. A few weeks before the event I started wondering if I could do the length of riding. I focussed on climbing, not so much on length and the caused a concern with me. At first I decided to just go ahead and start and see how far I’d go. The best thing about Zwift, is that when you had enough, you can just get off the bike and hit the showers and be done.

The week before the event I found an event for Quatch Quest (48km with 1678k climb). Another much desired Zwift badge and I thought I’d use that ride as a test. I loved it, loved the fight and the struggle but even before finishing I know, no Four Horsemen for me. This was perfect enough and I was mad proud of the badge. I walked away from the Four Horsemen goal, to leave it on the bucketlist for someday, maybe.

Without zero regrets I let that event pass by and just did my thing, PT and my 60-ish Zwift workouts. Perhaps I was falling back in love with cycling again? Not sure, because I haven’t done any outdoor rides. But goal setting has crept back in. Yes dear people, we have a new goal for 2024. I want to try and qualify for the World Championships Gravel, which is held in Belgium in Oktober. There are a few qualifying opportunities, one in Valkenburg. But it’s pretty early in the season, april, my best form usually only comes after a few months of sunshine. But Valkenburg is on the schedule and perhaps also Roden in July.

Long story short, trust the process of recovery. Both mentally and physically, your love of cycling comes back, when you nurture that foundation and build upon that.

Despite having the best weather possible, the best company and the best route. I mean, the route was phenomenal. We borrowed a route from Wouter Hendriksen ‘Deurdonderen’ and changed it to start from Brummen. It featured so much awesome gravel; it was ridiculous. Sometimes we almost felt like we were in Italy; the scenery differed from our usual grounds.

I felt great until about 105km; I was literally thinking, “Only 55km left. I can do this!”.

And then we had a tiny bit of climbing. It wasn’t bad, actually, but after a little break at 118km, I started to feel worse and worse. We faced a lot of headwinds, and I started to feel tired and empty. When I say empty, I don’t mean hungry. I mean empty, like an empty shell. Like my consciousness was departing, all that was left was a body struggling to push the pedals forward.

I also refused to give up, obviously. We had another short break at 140km, where I took some caffeine, and we rode on to face more wind on our way to the ferry at Bronkhorst. I couldn’t talk or think, only pedal (in a sad tempo) and tried to pull the ferry closer by staring at it fiercely.

When we reached the ferry, I hoped we’d just miss it, so I could rest a bit. But no such luck. After the ferry, there was just 2km left. Just 2km, but I just didn’t have it in me anymore. Marieke saw it and asked if I needed to stop or be picked up. I could only mutter something along the lines that I’d be fine, but I just needed to go slow (which was an understatement). We chatted a bit, and before we knew it, there were just 900 meters left, and luckily after that, it went pretty quick, and we cheered and celebrated this massive milestone.

I was proud to finish, but let’s be honest. This isn’t smart to persist like that, it’s not kind to your body, and possibly it wasn’t the best idea to start in the first place. I rode just once a week for fun, with no structured training. I was fully relying on my willpower and character to endure. The same thing I did in Torino. So basically, I haven’t yet learned to say no and to stop at the right time.

And what’s worse, I am again set back mentally and physically in a state of decline. I hadn’t touched my bike since Rebound and was supposed to ride 20km to Maastricht 2 weeks later. I thought I was smart and decided to make it 95km to Venlo instead. During Rebound, I was good during the first 100ish km, so I figured riding to Venlo would be safe. It would have been okay if I didn’t suffer from some sort of heatstroke. I went slower and slower, getting a headache, and though I tried to drink, it was getting harder.

I left the route around 55km and found a train station near 65km. After just sitting there for a while, drinking a cold soda, my headache calmed, and though I felt bad the rest of the day, it could have been worse had I not taken the shortcut. Of course, I wonder if I should have gone; perhaps I should have stayed home.

My desire to ride is now still completely gone. Any plans I made with friends for later this year are not exciting me anymore. I am concerned I won’t be fit and will struggle more because I have no desire to ride and train.

I could force myself, but perhaps I shouldn’t this time.

My friend Marieke agreed to join me. Her alarm went off at 5am, mine at 5:50. We met at 7 am in the woods and we were awarded inches of fresh snow, clear skies and a pretty sunrise. In terms of filming conditions, I think Lars was extremely pleased, and we will have a very nice video to look forward to.

Having general goals like “attaining [x amount] of fitness” or “improving FTP”, do not work for me as a motivator. They are too non-committal for my personality. It’s not that I am lazy, but if nothing depends on it, the importance is not tangible. Sure, if I ride with buddies and I lack fitness, I’ll feel that. Unfortunately, we’ve not been riding together for a long time.

So I could do a few things.

• Wait for the internal motivation to return (it always returns).
• Ride more with others, perhaps even online.
• Participate in (online) individual races.
• Pick milestone events to work toward.

Out of all these options, the last one is most likely to work as a training motivation. But I am not interested in huge -multiday-events like the TNR at this time. A Gran Fondo ride is probably the best option to go. And even better, Gran Fondo’s with my best friends.

For now, those seem to be: a self-planned Gran Fondo in the Vosges (one Tour de France for women’s stage) somewhere in May. And the Flatlands300.cc. That is a 300km gravel ultra from A to B in the Netherlands. Date: 1-2 July 2023

Both sound like a proper challenge. Also not very invasive, in the sense of taking time off away from home, for instance. Shall we go?

About a year ago I saw images of my ultra cycling heroines Lael Wilcox and Emily Chappell riding the Torino Nice Rally with a bunch of women. Right then and there I decided to take part in the 2022 Rally.

The Torino Nice Rally is a self-supported event. Cycling from Turin to Nice over all sorts of mountains and backcountry gravel roads. It would be somewhere between 600 and 700 kilometres. I figured it would take me a week, maybe eight days.

I have been riding bikes since 1995. Cycling is my refuge. It keeps me sane, and healthy and I am a much nicer person to be around when I stick to my cycling routine. Oh, you must know… I am a highly sensitive introvert. I like isolation. I don’t mind being alone. In fact; me, myself and I… we get along just fine.

So, I figured I was made for this epic challenge.

Hmmm turns out I was not. And turns out that I had some things to learn.

Here is what I learned

• Stress you know is much easier managed than stress you don’t know. Having experience makes a lot of difference in letting go or just going with the flow.
• A good mindset helps to endure physical exhaustion. Likewise, good physical condition helps to endure mental challenges. Combining physical and mental exhaustion is a recipe for disaster. At least for this person. I know this because I battled depression many years ago. The combination of physical and mental exhaustion is very close to how I’d feel back then.
• Solo or pair. I think having a familiar face to share the experience with, would have made all the difference. Not just the worries, but simple things such as reminding each other to have a proper break and eat. Mind your bike during a bio break or supermarket raid. Or a boost of confidence when the going gets tough.
• Permission. I couldn’t accept the fact that it was okay to leave my family and take time off from work, for as long as I needed to get to Nice safe and in a timely fashion. Instead, I gave myself a deadline.
• It is okay to quit. It’s okay to say “This is not for me” and quit. There is still a bit of faulty wiring inside me that rather endures hardship and persevere than quit. I cried turning my bike around to go back. I cried posting on Instagram that I had to quit (cried again when I saw all the lovely comments).

I spend a year preparing for this trip. Preparing was a way to take control of something completely unknown to me. When it came close to departure, there was nothing left to prepare. But a lot of unknowns remained. The only way for me to deal with this was: stress and worry.

This is an old pattern. I used to be really good at worrying in the time before I healed from depression. It surprises me how easy I shifted back into that pattern. I also stopped eating and sleeping the days before departure. Just to have more energy to stress and worry, or have more to stress and worry about.

Barely 60km of TNR

The first few kilometres into the ride I was pretty happy. A bit relieved to be finally doing it. I had taken the traditional departure photo and was happy just pedalling. Then I missed my exit, had to turn around and lost about 5 minutes. Something insignificant but a big trigger.

It kick-started the worry mode again. I skipped my much-needed break in Viù. And because there was already so much deficit, I wouldn’t recover. But I know I am good at enduring and persevering, so I stubbornly kept going. After a long time of suffering up a mountain at a whopping speed of 1,5 km/h, while my body was screaming “Please stop!”, my strong-willed mind finally woke up and gave in.

I texted my best friends “I don’t think I can do this…” feeling defeated and relieved at the same time. I was met with supportive calls and texts guiding me to a safe place to stay that night. A way home and some recovery time with my parents before embracing my family again after a few days. Thank you all again, so much.

No regrets

Yes, I was very sad to miss the views I came for and miss the special moments of comradery with other riders. But as soon as the decision was made, I knew it was the right one. It was a tough -and a bit extreme or expensive- lesson to learn that I’m just not cut out for such (solo) adventures.

ps. look at the comments in the Instagram post. So much love.

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Een bericht gedeeld door Tanja de Bie – Van leeuwen (@tanjadebie)

Aaaaaaaah

This weekend I was reading the entry contract (8 pages), and I receive the badge and route card. It is real already. Less than two weeks and I’m there, doing it. At least I hope, I hope I don’t end up stranded on the first day or something.

I’ve done all the training I could do. Collected all the necessary stuff. All I can do now is try and optimise the pack list and try and see how it’ll all fit together, and familiarize myself with the route.

Preparing for a trip like this is tough on your family. In my experience, at least. I don’t want to be away from them all the time just to train. When we didn’t have kids, I did prepare like that for the Trans Provence. But that was hard and asked a lot of flexibility of my partner. I pick my training moments very carefully, sometimes early in the morning so we’d have time together later in the day. That could be rough on me, but I figured it would be a part of my training. Sometimes I’d feel guilty and shorten my ride.

However, let’s compare, shall we?

The weird thing is, though, if I look at Strava 2014 and compare it to 2022, I think I am actually doing really well with the limited time I have. For the first 4 months of 2022, I was battling either the common cold, Covid or managing kids -or a partner- with either. So my training didn’t fully start until May 2022.

Let’s hope that what Van Vleuten said after winning the Tour de France has merit. She said that training years also matter and contribute to success. I’ll settle for finishing and enjoying the ride.

I spoke to a friend about suffering and being able to enjoy it despite the suffering. And I said that TNR is basically going to be a meditation camp. The real challenge is to accept the suffering and keep going; enjoy the moment because before you know it, you’re in Nice, and it’s all behind you.

If you’re only looking to the end of suffering, you’ll miss the amazing moments, the reasons you wanted to come in the first place.

That’s a big step of the trip settled. Train ticket, train bag for the bike and hostel in Turin. This part had me worried. I didn’t want to fly, and driving was out of the question for me. That would leave the train. But trains are extremely popular due to covid and very unpredictable. I could possibly take a long-distance coach, but to be honest, that seems more like a last resort type of thing.

Just as long as I can board the train in Paris, I’ll be fine, I guess. I won’t be the only one going to Turin and certainly not the only biker. So I bought a bag that would fit a dismantled bike and pack up really small, so I can use it on the way back home.

Talking about packing. These last few weeks will be about packing and re-packing my stuff and fitting it to my bike. I think I have all I need; the bike is undergoing service maintenance and will receive a new drive chain.

So that’s stuff, the bike and getting there.

How about the actual event: the Torino Nice Rally itself?

James has released the route with a few options and important remarks; the rest is up to us. Normally I use Komoot for everything, but for this trip, I opted for RidewithGPS. Komoot sometimes reroutes in an undesirable way and causes big headaches. It took a while to get the hang of RidewithGPS, though, but I’m getting there, and I ended up using Komoot for some details. I have no idea how I will cope with the intense days and ride alone. I tried to chop the route into bite-sized days focused on the profile, like trying not to start a day with a big climb within the first few kilometres.

Another thing I did, was to give myself permission to have the option for a shortcut near Little Peru. Any given day would be a little over 2.000 meters uphill. But that day would be 3.000 or more… if I want to be on a train on Monday 12th at the latest.

Yes, less than one month to go, and it is all about fine-tuning and fine-tuning. And trying not to get too nervous…

Time crunched

I am not prepared to sacrifice that much time away from my family and to be as difficult to live with like last time. Personally, I have no problems dodging social events like birthdays, but it’s no fun for my partner to always have to go solo with the kids. So instead, I just have to make do with the time I have and pick a few moments to do a bit more. Like this weekend. I did a big ride on Saturday and on Sunday.

The week leading up to that weekend was super busy and stressful. My HRV on Friday was 0.3. It hasn’t been this low since I had corona in March… after testing I knew it wasn’t corona, so it must have been the stress. Not the ideal start of a big weekend…

The route I planned for Saturday was new to me. I was looking for ways to connect “My favourite things” with Planken Wambuis and this was to experience that region. Though the gravel was very nice, there was a lot of asphalt on the route. I tried to take it easy and just enjoy the ride, knowing there was also Sunday. My HRV climbed to 5.2 (maximum score is 10) so that was pretty good. I arrived home a little past eight at night and went to bed around 21:30 with about 100km done on day 1.

And everything would have been fine if I only had a nice sleep that night.

But I didn’t. It took me forever to fall asleep – of course – and nightly constructions outside.

Ideal training

I woke up even more tired. But I guess that’s what’s going to happen during the TNR too right? I always sleep horribly when I’m excited about something, or when I sleep in a strange bed or when the stars and the planets do not align…

So basically I created the perfect training conditions for day 2. Tired and with a sore butt.

Day 2 started out with an hour of finding the right position to sit. It took a while before the correct position settled and I could forget about the pain in the butt and just ride.

After about 70 kilometres I started to feel nauseous from being tired. I started making some shortcuts in my mind but also tried to keep enjoying the phenomenal gravel in front of me. My legs were just fine and no back pains, that’s something to be grateful for right? It was the rest of me that was tired and missing a bit of edge to push longer than 112km.

When I arrived home, I was super tired but I felt better after a few hours. And after a day of eating on Monday, I was feeling back to normal again, with my HRV between 9.5 and 10. Not bad. It even seems like I caught up with my trajectory in TrainingPeaks.

In my mind, I can make it at least to Briançon. 2 months to go to make it all the way to Nice.

My favourite things

I have been working on creating a new gravel route near my hometown for a few weeks. Where I live we have a lot of gravel, it might be the best place in the Netherlands. Apeldoorn is in the centre and I can go in any direction and find epic gravel roads. Last few weeks I created a route south of Apeldoorn that would focus on smooth gravel only. Because what Apeldoorn also has: loose sand, single trails and bumpy forest roads. I managed a loop of 65km from my home of just asphalt or smooth gravel. It’s called “These are a few of my favourite things” because I was singing it the first time I was putting the route together. And because it’s all my favourite gravel things connected in one loop.

However, 65km isn’t a long slow ride. It’s a very nice loop for my routine training on Saturday, but for a propper long slow, I needed more distance.

Last year I attempted the Veluwe Maximaal route (250 km) from Gijs Bruinsma. But my buddy got injured and we had to stop. I managed to continue up until 200 km but not more because I have a problem… or a phobia perhaps? Of boars. After a close encounter, I fled the forest and cycled on the roads to hit my 200km marker.

Long slow without boars, please

This year, no buddies were available and 250km demands an early start and late finish. All by myself in Boarland near the edge of the night? No way.

So, instead, I opted to create a new route, combining “These are a few of my favourite things” with the Kroondomein (aka Boarland). I ended up with almost 150 km and because it was going to be so hot, I started at 6:30 in the morning. First my favourites (less to no boars) and do Boarland while the boars are sleeping to avoid the heat. So I’d rather face heat than boars apparently…

It was scorching hot that day, but most of my ride was in the forest with shade and a bit of wind. Only in Boarland, I was suffering from the heat, there were some exposed paths in the burning sun. Up until then I was feeling pretty good about my fitness and how well it was going.

Normally if I arrive home with 149,1 km on my Garmin, I’d take a detour to make it a full 150 km. But this time I couldn’t be bothered. I needed to cool down and lay down.

Pretty pleased

All and all… Considering I am about 1.000 km behind in my original training plan due to having covid and other health issues, I can’t help but feel very pleased with myself. The ease of how the first 130km felt, was especially pleasing. Training my core and my back for the past 6 months with laser focus is a bigger help than I could have imagined. The impingement in my hip is getting better, but I’m not hopeful it will ever disappear. I might just have to deal with it for the rest of my life. This means rigorous core stability training, training my back and maintaining attention to how I walk, stand, sit, or even sleep. Yes kids, don’t slouch!

Or it could be hellish.

For this ride, I planned to mock a TNR stage. With over 100 kilometres and more than 2.000 meters of altitude in one ride. It’s not hard to plan such a ride in this area, in fact, it’s hard to restrict it to these parameters. Before you know it, you’re well passed the 160 km and over 3.000 meters up.

Originally, my brother would join me for a part of the ride, and I made a figure 8 to accommodate a dropoff for him at home. I combined the Bikefestival gravel route near Willingen with a mixed route near Marsberg. Today’s ride would total 111 kilometres and 2.080 meters uphill.

The day before, we arrived in Stormbruch after massive delays in traffic. I was toast, but I wanted to change my tires for the ride anyway before heading to bed. Though I did watch the rotation direction of the tires, I forgot to pay attention to which tire I’d fit on which wheel. Because when I departed Saturday morning I immediately figured something was wrong with my bike. I know changing the tires from semi’s to more voluminous knobby tires, would slow me down a bit. After a while, it dawned on me that my front tire was in the back and it was very grippy.

I tried to let it go and ride on, focussing on the fantastic trails ahead of me. Some of the tracks I hadn’t ridden before. In fact, Wandrer.earth informed me I had ridden 53.83 new kilometres. A few bits I had ridden before, like the insane climb exiting Titmaringhausen. As soon as I turned the corner, I recognized the agonizing tarmac ahead of me. It was exactly 5 years ago I did that climb on my road bike. Here I was with fat knobby tires trying not to let it get to me. I mean, TNR will be worse and far worse for days on end.

The Pön Climb Continental Gravel Ride Bike Festival Willingen is 2,95km long, covering 209 meters uphill with an average of 7,1% (the steepest was 20%). I wasn’t done after 2,95 km though, it pushed on for another kilometre before a short descent. Actually, in my head, the whole stage before returning to Stormbruch was one big climb (in reality it was not, it just felt that way). Apart from the climbs, it was a truly great ride, I had a lot of fun and would ride it again.

Back home I had lunch and refilled my hydro-jacket (my choice for the TNR to hydrate whilst using a frame bag). I briefly considered staying home. Instead, my dad and I changed the tires and I got back on the bike for the second stage.

This stage I had ridden before for the most part. It’s the Diemelradweg following the Diemel river for a while. In Marsberg I left the Diemelradweg and followed the road through Essentho. To get to the nice bit of gravel, I needed to do quite a bit of climbing. This road was very exposed to traffic and I was climbing in the hot sun. No safe way to take a break, it was just a matter of pushing through to get off that road asap.

Though in Germany cyclists can ride on busy roads, it’s not something I like very much. I avoid it when I can and I will find an alternative for those climbs the next time. It might mean steeper backroad climbs, but at least there’s a lot less traffic.

I had anticipated this would be a “long slow ride”. The average of 14.4 km per hour was about what I expected but slower than I hoped. During my last Sauerland century with 2.107 meters uphill I was faster with 16.2 km per hour. But as long as I am able to keep at it for 7 days in a row, it doesn’t really matter. It will not be speed I need on the TNR, well a bit more would be nice, mainly I need to endure.

Endure going slow. Endure foreverness. Endure conditions I cannot control. Endure and persist. That’s all…