It is afternoons like this where it feels great to be a cycling fan. Perfect sunny weather down in Belgium and Eurosport coverage for the last 150km which was the most interesting. Yes, that was the distance I was going to do in the cyclosportive. Ouch.

I have to go down there and experience those hills and cobblestones myself. When is the question. And I know that I will enjoy the ride much more on my own than if surrounded by a bunch of cyclist asses.

There are a couple of weeks in July that are free of local races. Hmm...road trip anyone?

As you may have noticed, I said awhile back that I would do the 150km Ronde van Vlaanderen motionär race down in Belgium the day before the pros start. That was before all of this -15C crap ice weather.

I have been reading about this 'race' and it is a true cyclosportive. You start whenever you want and no time is kept so you have no result list to show off to anyone. And if you pay an extra 15€ they will give you a medal (the race only costs 25€). What do you get? Well, you get to ride with thousands of Dutch and Germans which probably means 6 hours of riding in the centre of a klungan the size of Falun.

The RVV website is full of great tourist tips for museums and how to get the real Belgian cycling experience...including beer. They also have three permanently marked cycling routes which take you over all of the hills and cobblestones; the 72 km Orange Route, the 80km Blue Route, and the 114 km Green Route are all you need to get the proper experience.

So the question now is simple. Why not just go there and ride the 3 loops over 3 days and actually use that as a pre-season training camp instead?