The Granfondo Vélomédiane Claude Criquélion also involved cycling in the rain.
It didn’t rain all the time, but it did rain regularly.
And riding in a group on a (soaking) wet road surface means that you will become even wetter.
Unless you are constantly pulling at the front of course 🙂
Yet, despite the rain, the satisfaction afterwards was bigger than normal: I finished in time to get the gold certificate!
It’s officially called a Wild Boar or Sanglier in French.
This means that I completed the course within 6:35, the limit applicable for my category (6 – fifty plus).
And it’s a very tough course for sure.
Although the official 170 kms turned out to be ‘only’ 167 and 3,300 meters of D+ ‘only’ 3,100…
But I was at the end of my rope when I crossed the line.
I rode all day with a Belgian daredevil, Jan Boelaerts, whom I found via Twitter.
Together you are strong(er) and where possible we joined groups, doing our share of pulling.
The speed went up to over 50 kph at times, to compensate for the often steep climbs.
Although I thought that Jan had a max time of fifteen minutes less than me, Jan was convinced he did not.
So we aimed for a max time of 6:35 and unfortunately, the ‘net finishing time’ of 6:24 turned out to be a silver classification for Jan.
We should indeed have aimed for 6:20… It certainly would not have been easy to shave off another 4 minutes, but it was not impossible either.
The Garmin indicated a moving time of 6:15, the elapsed time was 6:24, including a short brake *.
Jan already tweeted that he will try again next year – by then he will be in category F and can aim for 6:35 🙂
There are some numbers are missing on the certificate: nothing was officially registered for me.
Afterwards it turned out that my chip was defective – I was certainly not the only one, because there were many in line for the special defective chips counter.
Obtaining the certificate was time-consuming: first we stood in line a while only to be told that we were too early as processing times takes at least 15 minutes.
Then we stood in line again: Jan had a time and I did not, so we needed to go to the defective chips counter first, than back in line for the diploma…
I had my certificate laminated and of course I bought a medal – I have a weakness for mementos 😂
Jan: thank you and maybe see you next year!
In the official Vélomédiane 2011 Classification (PDF), I finished 586th out of 1,332 total and 77th out of 248 in my category.
*The Strava segment of the route (165 km) shows a time of 6:19:20…
