Well, looking back, I had all right to feel scared. We did the climb…. but don’t ask how… it wasn’t pretty… it wasn’t pretty at all. On the Keutenberg I used, no, had to use the smallest gear I have (30×25) on the last stretch of the steep part of the climb…. and even that was a struggle… Amazing. My breathing was extremely heavily and fast. With each peddle: breath in, breath out. My heart pounding like mad. An extraordinary feeling. Never experienced anything like that ever before! Truely amazing… Felt good to reach the top cycling though, but it was more a relief then an heroic feeling… *hahaha* I guess that must say it all! :-)

I must admit though I felt a bit better after cycling up the Keutenberg, then I felt when reaching the top of the “Cauberg” (pronounce as “cow”-berg). The Cauberg is Holland’s most famous climb and also the last climb to the finish in the Amstel Gold Race. We tried that one before we went to the Keutenberg and damn… I choose the wrong gear… I felt quite good, so picked quite a normal gear (42×19), got about halfway through my little engine started to run out of gas…. oh my lord…. got quickly down to gear 42×23 and managed to get to the top, but damn what was I thinking?!?! Well, I couldn’t know of course, only had been there as a kid, and couldn’t remember exactly how the climb was…

All in all it made great practice for the “real thing” next week. Now we at least know what to expect… Although that doesn’t make me particularly happy, as it will most likely will hurt a lot cycling up these hills after more then 100km…

In the distance	The top	Outch…	More Outch…

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 10th, 2005 at 12:49 and is filed under Cycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.