Ferwert to Lelystad, 170km or 106 miles. I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring You and us both, Bilbo. I was just too tired to even put a thought together, yesterday. It wasn’t any harder but the cumulative strain is building up. […]

Read More RatN – Day 5 – The Morning After

The day wasn’t abbreviated. In fact, it was quite long. Just the post will be abbreviated. Our WiFi is a bit lackluster so uploading many pictures isn’t working so well. About an hour from our landing site in Ferwert, as we were passing through a town named Moddergat, we encountered this RAtN dot watcher/supporter. All […]

Read More RatN – Day 4 – Friesland, Abbreviated (is FR)

Things are starting to happen to us. We are (well, I am!) making more mistakes. Blowing past turns and doing a few hundred extra meters. As a result, Liz has started to pay attention to the map, which has been very helpful. FWIW, I’d like to point out just how many turns I don’t miss!Forgetting […]

Read More RatN – Day 3 – Hellendoorn to Anderen

One way to get a good start on the day in an event like this is to get an early start. It’s light at 6am and the wind hasn’t kicked up yet usually. So yeah, that’s a good plan! The bad plan? Stay at a small hotel where the owner so badly wants to offer […]

Read More RatN – Day 2 – Take the Wind

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. […]

Read More RatN – Day 1 in the Books

This morning we woke up to a still-chilly but mercifully sunny day. Our AirBnb has a nice little kitchen space but we hadn’t had time to shop so we were left with only a few crumbs for breakfast. Already off to a good start with the planning! We had been planning under the assumption that […]

Read More RatN – Early-bird Registration

Tuesday -> Wednesday A brief rundown of events: It was great to see Corey and Jennie again! They’ve been in the Netherlands for five years, but this is our first visit to them in that time. Just in time, it turns out, because they’re moving back to Doha this summer! We joked a lot that […]

Read More RatN – A Blur but Coming into Focus

Last night I went to bed and thought to myself  “Why would we ever want to sleep anywhere else? What are we thinking?!” Home is so good. Usually I’m not thinking this way until midway through a big trip! The morning came quickly and we woke up early to finish up our packing and prepare […]

Read More RatN – Bike to Bus to Plane

Wow, Bliz is actually heading out tomorrow to participate in the 2024 Race Around the Netherlands. So many times during the past few months we thought we would have to cancel this trip, but somehow despite lingering knee problems, a very sick dog and generally sketchy weather for early-season training, we still managed to get […]

Read More RatN – Gearing up, again