Oh I'm so sore

Living in the ankle of the Netherlands, with Germany and Belgium as my neighbors, got me thinking about how many countries I could visit in a single day. After a little bit of research, I found out I'd be about 5 years too late to nab a world record from my starting point, but it's still something I wanted to try regardless. For the curious, the record now stands at 8 countries.

In this post I'm sharing how that ride turned out. Read on for fun details, video documentation, and map animations of this little treat to myself.

The Experience

I knew from the outset that the 250km distance would be a struggle. I packed my tiny camera with the intention of capturing myself speaking at it so I could relive the feeling in the future. The footage is a little raw, but here is the whole 10 minute video!

I've never edited in this vlog style before; I'm curious to know whether it's interesting to watch. Sorry in advance for the rough wind noise in parts!

Saved by Éclair

One bit I didn't get to record on camera was my resurrection from the depths of misery via delicious pastry. With about 50km to go I was having a really rough time with the endless up and down in the Ardennes. I knew I had to keep eating to keep my energy up but I felt like I just couldn't have another bite of the food I had prepared. Thank goodness I spotted a bakery that was open near Champlon. I stumbled in and managed to order an éclair au café through whatever nonsense was coming out of my mouth at that point. I also picked up a sports drink from their refrigerator. The pastry didn't last long as I devoured it, but it was the best thing in the world. The sweet and creamy custard inside was exactly what I needed. The caffeine embedded in the coffee frosting certainly didn't hurt either. The sports drink was a huge help too; it was far easier to drink the sugar and electrolytes than to keep trying to eat it.

Aftermath

As the title of the post makes pretty clear, I'm pretty sore everywhere today (second day after this ride). My left knee ached yesterday but seems to be getting better quickly. I'm not planning on anything similar anytime soon, but it was great to get out and challenge my limits!

Routing

Despite the advantage of having three countries to cross off the list immediately, making it all the way to 5 would be quite a distance, far longer than my previous longest ride in a single day (100 miles, or 160 km). Reaching Luxembourg would be pretty straight-forward by following the Vennbahn, which conveys a nice and gentle incline most of the way up the elevation difference.

From there I would have a choice to get to France. The most obvious option would probably be to continue directly south, traversing the length of Luxembourg to reach the border. However, that would make the return journey the next day a lot longer. Instead, I spotted on the map a little piece of France that sticks up into Belgium along the Meuse river. That's what I targeted. Overall the distance would be a few kilometers longer, but the elevation difference was similar (both fairly hilly) and my return would be a lot easier.

I've included an embedded version of GPX Replay below with this route loaded. You'll see that it forms two legs of a triangle shape; I went south until Luxembourg and then cut west to France. The return was thus very direct and only needed a couple of train transfers in Belgium.

Equipment

I think a pretty natural question is how did I prepare for this? To be honest I didn't carry very much. I plotted the route just 2 days in advance, booked one night in a B&B in Givet, and relied on availability of water along the way. In the end that was completely adequate. I had two 500ml bottles of water and I stopped at three points for refills (in addition to the savior bakery). Twice I visited restaurants, and once I asked some people who were having a party in their front yard.

I also carried about 2 pounds of rice cake (recipe: sticky rice, cookies, coconut oil, cream cheese, honey, sugar, cinnamon). Unfortunately I forgot to buy some table salt after I'd run out so there was very little sodium in there beyond what the cookies contained. That might be why I felt so much better after the sports drink.

All of this water and food, along with one change of clothes, a toothbrush, spare tube, mini-pump, and portable battery fit in my back pockets and my frame bag. In the end I found my rear tire was very flat; I think it had a slow leak caused by the final rough gravel section on the last few kilometers entering France. The next day I pumped it up when I left and it got me over the border again to Dinant, where I rode the train back home. By then it was flat again, so I'll definitely need to replace the tube before my next ride!

And finally, here's the Strava activity:

Happy riding!