RatN – Day 1 in the Books

Quick note: we had prebooked a hotel in Rozendaal which is about 155km into the race route. With today being a national holiday (King’s Day) we were worried it was going to be tricky to find a place to stay.

The race started out fun, with three waves spaced out 10 min starting at 8am. We were in the first wave, as all pairs are, which is customary, so lots of fast riders were passing us in the first hour.

We headed north mostly on roads with non-buffered bike lanes. The car lane for both directions is only one lane wide, so cars are used to taking it slow. However, with so many riders increasingly spaced out,  there was a bit of frustration but they’ll get over it.

Many towns were preparing for King’s Day celebrations, so there were some major slowdowns getting through small town centers. But mostly, the route was relaxing and for the first couple hours we had a modest tailwind.

We then did a few hours of riding in a sparsely populated area along two inland bodies of water, the Wolderwijd and the Veluwemeer. Along this stretch it chilled down and we thought we were going to get rained on, but it didn’t amount to much. Overall the weather for the day was great!

We then returned south (moderate headwind, sadly) through undeveloped parkland. Very quiet roads with either completely separated bike paths (usually one for each direction) or no traffic to speak of.

After a short lunch we sped through Apeldoorn which is one of the gateways to Het Nationale Park De Hoge Veluwe. It was fun riding through the park, but it was quite busy due to the holiday. Everyone was using free loaner bikes (hundreds of them, sorry no pics) that you grab at the entrance. No cars allowed into the park.

It was warming up but we were coming to the end of our day. Many (nearly all) riders were continuing on into the later afternoon and evening or even all night, but this was a good first day for us. 98 miles, 158km.

Tomorrow we have no lodging prebooked so we’ll see how that plays out. It could give us flexibility to go further if conditions are right, or we could find ourselves in a pickle. We shall see!

Here’s a video GoPro AI crapped out.