Tijdrit Almere

Last Saturday, April 8th, I participated in the individual time trial event “Tijdrit Almere 2023”.

As the name implies, it’s in my hometown and the long distance is 42 kms, or three laps of 14 kms each.

Until 2019, this event took place in my backyard, the wide open polder outside the city.

I participated only once in that, before it changed the location to the outskirts of Almere-Haven – the oldest neighbourhood of Almere – for the 2019 edition last minute.

It was cancelled in 2020 and the “Tijdrit Almere 2021” was in October, last year’s “Tijdrit Almere 2022” was a week later than this year.

The course is following the dyke along the “Gooimeer” lake and open fields on the other side, so there’s no hiding from the wind…

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Last Saturday, April 16th, I participated in the individual time trial event “Tijdrit Almere 2022”.

It’s organized by Start2Finish, Tri2One being the main sponsor.

As the name implies, it’s in my hometown and the long distance is 42 kms, or three laps of 14 kms each.

Until 2019, this event took place in my backyard, the wide open polder outside the city.

I participated only once in that, before it changed the location to the outskirts of Almere-Haven – the oldest neighbourhood of Almere – for the 2019 edition last minute.

The new course is following the dyke along the “Gooimeer” lake, so also on that one, there’s no hiding from the wind…

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Last Saturday, I participated in the individual time trial ‘Tijdrit Almere 2019’.

Despite my raising questions about the old venue, we didn’t learn until late on Thursday that there had been a ‘last minute’ change in both location and course.

I had already pointed out that there now was a slurry pit at the old starting location, which made that unsuited, and on top of that, there were also some ‘other activities’ on the old course, as well as road construction works.

The ‘other activities’ probably referred to the hordes of people venturing through the polder, either by bike or by car, looking for flower beds to take pictures of…

Anyway, late or not, the organization managed to find a new location, also offering an alternative course, which is nothing short of a miracle.

It’s not uncommon that events are cancelled because of last minute mishaps like these…

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This Saturday, April 20, I will participate in the individual time trial ‘Tijdrit Almere’.

A very well organized event in my backyard, in which I participated last year as well.

It’s a big event too: last year, there where some 420 individual participants and 68 teams (of 4).

There are three individual distances, a hand-bike time trial and a team time trial.

There’s a 5.5 kilometer kid’s TT for boys and girls, and the (more or less) grown ups can chose between 21 and 42 kilometers; the team time trial is 21 kilometers.

Besides the kids, participants are split into various categories: junior, senior and masters, although the juniors cannot participate in the long distance.

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