Words and photos by Epic Rider Malaya van Ruitenbeek

On the first Saturday of April I woke up in a former convent near the city of Maastricht. This building was my home during the 2008 cycling season and it's a bit of a legend in the Dutch elite peloton. Years ago 4 cycling friends from Maastricht managed to get a housing contract with an anti-squatting agency for this convent (until last year squatters actually had a lot of rights in the Netherlands, once given to them to prevent buildings being left unused by their owner too long, so as a landlord with no direct plans for your property, you can ask such an anti-squatting agency to search tenants who will then be contracted as caretakers of that property). As this convent had a kitchen large enough to feed 4 hungry bike riders and their occasional visitors, a garden with enough space for a BBQ and 2 bike repair stands, a bike garage with space for more than 20 bikes and of course a living area with 4 couches to watch bike races from, a ping-pong table and enough room to spare for your training on rollers, it is not hard to imagine that this is the dream house of any group of cyclists living together. And the best part is yet to come, as it is in the neighborhood of Maastricht it is in the only area in the Netherlands that actually has hills.

On this particular day my younger brother would ride the only other one day pro race in this area other than the famous Amstel Gold Race, called the Hel van het Mergelland. And yes, hel in Dutch does mean hell in English. The hills here aren't particularly long, but as they are pretty steep, abundant and connected by ever winding roads it is very easy to loose you bearings round about the time that your legs start hurting. Not a good place to go riding without proper preparation, both in physique and in topography (you don't have to believe me on my word, scroll down to the bottom to check out the crazy gpx file and heart rate data). As the hilly part of the race would consist of 3 laps around a 60k course, my riding mate Jurgen and I decided to pick up the course near the convent and start our training along the course. After the first 2 hours we arrived at Eijsden, the start and finish place of the race and we met up with my brother and his team, who were just talking through the race tactics. I had taken some mental notes during the ride and told them where I thought the race would be hard and where they would have the possibility to take it a bit more easy.


After the start of the race we continued south into Belgium. This was the first climb longer than 2k and we were focused on riding itself now a bit more than before. The chatting got less and although it never turned out into a friendly competition, it was the kind of ride where it is okay to hurt yourself more than necessarily needed. Arguably this part of the route is one of the hardest, as it is one long boring road, with a fierce headwind and the width of the road makes it look less steep than it actually is. So by the time we saw the church of Julemont, where we turned off, we were silently relieved and ready for a more rolling bit of the route.


The area here is called the Voerstreek and it has a distinct feel to it. The people speak French, but it isn't exactly the Ardennes yet, and it is very tranquil. Following the scenic Val Dieu (valley of god) we then got back up on the plain through the climb in Saint Jean-Sart. After some 4 more hills with grades up to 17% we took a well deserved stop at a bakery in Henri Chapelle.


One custard bun and a coke on a bench at the town square later we were heading back to the Dutch border and discussing whether we would be able to catch another glimpse of the race. Although the roads are more quiet here than in the Dutch part of this hilly area, they are also a lot less well maintained. Maybe that's one of the reasons that as soon as we reached the border the number of cyclists boomed. We now had to cross our original route and we managed to get to the Loorberg before the race passed there during the second lap. I had just enough time to make this movie of the final 500m of this climb, which is also featured in the Amstel Gold Race twice.

There was a strong breakaway of around 8 riders and the peloton was all stretched out chasing them down. My brother was in the middle of the bunch and with more than half the race to go many riders had already been dropped. All week the weather had been dry and sunny, but the temperature suddenly peaked this day and it was obvious than a lot of riders were having trouble coping with that in the race. It was fun being part of this race as a spectator and where the sun gave the racers a hard time, it was very enjoyable for us enthusiasts. After the support cars passed we continued our route to Epen where the longest climb of the Netherlands is situated, the Camerig. We decided this would be the final climb of the day and we made it the hardest effort of the ride. The difficult thing about this climb is that it flattens out twice and when it finally kicks back up again you inevitably realize that you went to hard on the easy stretches just before...When I do this climb I always think back to the time when I just started cycling and had my first encounter with uphill riding. I was a young teen and so happy to ride around on my steel race bike together with my dad. Little did I know back then that I would once be riding this route on a carbon fiber NeilPryde! After the short trip down memory lane it was time to decide on the best route home and we chose to make a quick refuel stop at the gas station in Partij.

On our way back we wondered how far the race would be and just as we thought we would not be able to see it for a third time we heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter. We were going to miss the race by some 5 minutes if we would take the original route home so we quickly figured out where else we could see them. For spectators this race (and also the Amstel Gold Race) is fantastic, as you can easily see the race many times as it makes such strange loops through the landscape. The original breakaway was down to only 2 man and the closing peloton was only 40 riders big. We didn't spot my brother any more and he later told me he suffered from cramps as so many others had that day. We reached the convent just in time to watch the finale on the local broadcasting channel. The escapees were rolled in with just 2k to go and a sprint of a small peloton had to decide the race. And with the cobble stone sprint also our day in the Dutch mountains came to an end.
Link to the ride: http://ridewithgps.com/trips/208851