This Sunday the Nike L'Etape du Tour team will be traveling to Germany to ride around 110 kilometers in the hilly region of Eifel as one more ride in preparation for the Etape challenge in July. It is a car travel of 2 and half hours but it is totally worth as this is a very nice and scenery area. But also a region full of long and steep hills, good tarmac and not many cars.
Last year in June we did 106 kms starting from the village of Rott, 30 minutes of the Dutch border. The ride starts a descend of 3% gradient followed immediately by a long 7 kms climb at 7% when the legs are not even warm yet. That is going to be a shock to some people. After that is up and down the rest of the day going in the direction of the lake and back.
The main challenge of the day the are the long 7kms hill in the middle of the ride with 9% max gradient and the last big climb on the way back with 4 kms and a max of 14% inclination after we rode 100 kms. There are other 3 hills around 4kms with a max of 9% inclination that we will need to climb in both ways in the loop ride.
In total its going to be 34 kms uphill and we will gain around 1800 meters in altitude. Not too difficult but not to easy. To put things in perspective this is more or less one single mountain of the Etape du Tour last year. The weather forecast is expected to be cloudy in the morning and sunny/overcasted in the afternoon, going up to 15 degrees. Perfect cycling weather!
The good news is that good part of the ride is also downhill. And they are going to be fast ones. It is a good training to get used to speed and cornering at high velocity. The tarmac is perfect and the roads are wide, so you can let the bike roll easily. My max speed last year was 73 kms/h and some of the guys were even faster. The only thing to be careful about is never to cross to the opposite lane as together with cyclists the place will be packed with motorbikers and they are fast.
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