Ronde van Vlaaderen / Tour of Flanders Sportive

http://www.sport.be/rondevanvlaanderen/

will be riding it with a bunch from here in london.
who's riding / ridden?

right now that looks deeply attractive. i realise it might feel different riding it.

Better climbing, than descending it, lol

oh and registration is now open btw -

Anyone have any tips for reasonable accommodation? (fear it may already be a bit late in the day!)

Fucking. Awesome. I'm moving to Belgium.

Did you do it dude? Kudos if so. I'm doing liege in a few weeks.... Scared

Enjoy the pro race tomorrow Carson..
You deserve it and a few bottles of fruity beer.
Al

I did it, what an amazing ride

Chapeau - a report please. Have done this before and reported on a previous thread. Always like to read riders experiences. My memories are of random houses in outlying villages with miniature goats in the garden, the smell of shit from the fields and wondering why the dual carriageway into Oudenaarde went on forever and into a headwind.

To be honest, I wasn't interested in doing the full 250ish ks so I booked the medium route, so I pulled a Klein Attitude frame off of the wall that has been sitting there restored and built it up, gave it to Mrs Davroos as I was riding a Klein Attitude in Dolomite.

The ride was great except the Kleins were way to stiff, every cobblestone I felt. The instructions said, 4 pave and 15 hills, but the pave just kept coming. The ups were ok, it was the flats/down that were killing us both.

Hitting the 2nd loop, the first hill was the Kopperburg and I told Mrs Davroos to get ready to jump off as people were having accidents !!! I managed to weave my way up to the top whereas she jumped ship before someone ran into her near the top. The hills kept coming and coming, but we rode them all. The Paderburg wasn't as scary as people made it out to be, and then we smashed the 11ks into the centre.

It was a lovely day so we parked the bikes up in the town square and we chilled out just drinking a few beers, as you do as this is Belgium !!! 90 minutes later, we took off to finish.

Awesome event, I am taking a Merlin next year, I think titanium will be better than alu !!!

i went across with a friend and mates of his. the group of us rented a great old house about 30 km from oudenarde. i drove with my mate from london thursday eve after work. allowing for 1 hour time change ahead we reached house some time after midnight and joined in with some beers. drive over on the tunnel was so easy - drive from calais was very easy to navigate. on fri the 6 of us there went out for a ride, taking in the eikenberg and the valkenberg and then 20km or so along the pro's highway next to the schelde back to near the house - it was really nice to get a chilled ride in before the next day's madness. riding there is not hard - climbs are short and less testing than many around surrey / kent. that fri afternoon we drove back to oudenarde to sign on for the next day. signage and parking was well organised and straightforward - others from our group had already signed on for all of us - most of us had gone for the 250 km originally but by the time we were there 135 seemed more suitable. moving down was ok, apparently moving up in distance could have caused problems. an extra 100km chain gang riding down a straight road before you even get to the cobbles and climbs didn't seem too appetising.
next day and early rise and decent breakfast and we got to the start around 8ish - traffic was a bit slow on outskirts of oudenarde but moving and we were quickly directed to a car park in a field a few mins ride from the start point. setting off in a busy but fluid constant stream of riders. it pretty quickly thinned out though and i always found enough space to ride except on the koppenberg when walking riders blocked the road.
the first stretch of cobbles was an immediate oh fucking hell this is rough moment - like a barely controllable jackhammer going off in your hands. riding up them is ok - riding them on the flat or downhill is an experience...you want to cling on tight to stop the bars flying out of your hands but the firmer you hold on the more the vibrations pummel you -riding fast and hard in the drops and just letting the bike find its own way over them with some blind faith you won't crash seemed the best way to ride them. riding without gloves stands you out as double hard - but then you have to cope with the palm blisters and bruises that the cobbles produce after a while.
within a few minutes one bottle cage had rattled loose - one stop and an allen key later, the other bottle cage had snapped....(£40 a pop titanium cages....).
in terms of support the feed and service stations were awesome...really well organised and stocked...water and energy drink in agricultural vats, waffles and bananas and orange segments and energy bars to help yourself to at will.
the whole route was perfectly signed with marshals and police stopping traffic -in 135 km i only stopped once being caught by chance at a busy road junction at a time the police had stopped cyclists to allow cars to cross. some of the descents were fast - pushing 60km easily - most cyclists seemed pretty skilled and i didn't see too many stupid moves. for the first 50 km of so there seemed to be quite a few groups of elephants thundering past you on the flats and then grinding to a halt on the climbs, and then thundering past you on the next flat section - they seemed to disappear after a while. dont know what happened to them - maybe they were still there but had lost their early zoom factor so were less noticeable. it seemed like the rule was if you were coming up fast behind someone you would shout loudly in dutch / flemish what i took to be "get out of the way" or similar and expect a path would open in front. it wasn't gentlemanly perhaps but it seemed a workable way of sharing the sometimes narrow farm roads and i never felt intimidated or pushed around by people.
the hellingen were brilliant - they look and feel just like they do on the tv - riding up some of them makes you feel very pro - however slowly you are going.

as you'll know from the race, the last few kms are flat and you can really get the last juice from the legs and fire it up to the pro's finish line - before i knew it i saw a 350 m sign and then that was it. a short gentle drift into oudenarde for beers on the square before back to the car and easy drive home. supper, bed. and up the next day before nice gentle ride up the schelde and back before drive back to london (couldn't stay to watch the race).

cycling in belgium has to be experienced - it made me realise how shitty uk roads drivers are. the actual flanders sportive was like in a bubble, but the other days i never once felt intimidated or scared or any such thing. cycles lanes are everywhere and can actually be ridden. when there aren't drivers give you room.

it was an easy and cheap and really fun trip and i'm going next year.

Just registered for 2015

Whos riding Flanders on Saturday?

me,first decent ride of the year, think im gonna suffer a bit

C'mon folks, let's have some debriefs. heard the weather was shite.

I'm doing the Amstel Gold Race in a fortnight, shitting it. did Liege Bastogne Liege last year, but there's something about Amstel that I'm finding more terrifying. The barrage of short steep climbs will be exhausting.

It was abit of a suffer fest. I was signed up for the big one and downgraded to the 135km route (so glad I did).

It rained for most of the ride apart from the last hour or so. The cobbles were pretty brutal, as I was struggling to find grip. The big cobbles climbs were nearly impossible to get up as it was so slippery, and far too many ppl going up.

Another mate did the big one. They left at 7am and rode the 100km of flat from Brugge - Oudenaarde and got absolutely soaked. He ended up in the medical tent with mild hyperthermia.

I didn't ride it this year - a friend did and said the weather made it the hardest of the 5 he's done.. Getting there and back in a day from London probably didn't help either..

My company have been working on some "Spring Classics" prints. If anyone fancies one drop me a line and I'll send you a 10% discount code..
http://themassifcentral.co.uk/collections/spring-classics

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They look ace! £35 for the print, how much is postage to London?

Also, on the Ronde sportive, I didn't realise it was that cold! My mates mentioned it was cold and very wet, but not hypothermia levels. Belgian hardmen innit

The thread title is mis-spelled, @carson. Might help people searching if it's corrected. Also, the way the search on the new forum works is that you have to separate the slashes from the words.

I stupidly rode without a base & jackets and was cold & wet but nothing major.

My mate is known for suffering in the wet, but I think it was 100km of flat riding to Oudenaarde, soaking wet & a poor choice of layers.

The Pattenburg was the last climb, and the cobbles dried up by then. But as you can see traffic was another element.

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Really nice posters. Sort of wish there was one for Gent-Wevelgem as that's been the most amazing race of the Spring so far. Might get that Ronde one though, its tight.

Thanks @youramericanlover. Hopefully we will be able to do a full range of Classics next year. Showing the wind at GW would have been brilliant. I reckon that E3 would have been a great seller too this year..

Thanks @jim1985 - postage for a unframed print is £3.50 in the UK but with an 'lfgss' discount it basically works out as free postage..