road racing

is always something that has fascinated and intimidated me. racing mountain bikes is awesome, fun, I love it... but for so many reasons, not the least of which being that there are no mountains in this country, I decided it was time to learn how to race a road bike. this started a while back when I joined hsk trias here in den haag, did a couple of club criterium rides, with mixed results, and then almost took my eye off the road racing ball while playing in some cyclocross mud. but in cyclocross races as in mountain biking, there seem to be many people who get their fitness from the road, and I wanted some of this.



even tho I had read stories of unknown (soon to be famous) racers winning road races on a cyclocross bike, everyone seemed intent on talking me out of attempting proper road races like this, so the quest began... the pile of parts in the corner waiting to be a road bike basically consisted of a brooks titanium swift saddle and some matching leather bar tape, oh and a set of tubular wheels with dura ace hubs. trawling the classifieds yielded an affordable SRAM force groupset and a fortuitous sequence of events resulted in a classic pink racing frame all but appearing in my living room. so far so good as everyone knows that pink bikes go faster.



i slapped the bike together, did a couple of training rides and even made it to a little club race out in gouda (40km solo into a headwind on a sunday morning just to get there, hence i didnt feel it warranted a blog post) just to make sure that i hadnt put the tires on inside out or something. and the pink duell flies, steel is real and all that. there is more than just a hint of satisfaction evident in the photo above as team 'amateurs without ambition' comprised of richard, selmar and myself heads off to my first and our first proper road race together. stay tuned