Limburgs Mooiste

Last Saturday I went to ride Limburgs Mooiste with my 12 year old son. As we only did 2 practice rides, one of 70k and another one of 80k in the weeks before we took the shortest 70k blue route. With all the hills around Valkenburg it would probably be challenging enough. About the distance we were confident as we managed the 80k in our neighbourhood without issues, including some climbs around Rotselaar and Aarschot. The previous time I participated more than 15 years ago I got into a traffic jam near the parking lot in the morning so this time I decided to travel already on Friday to avoid traffic stress on the Saturday. At first we thought about camping at the start location but opted to go for a hotel in the end. We found a good deal at the Sittard Hilton. We arrived early on Friday evening so we decided to stop at the start point to pick up our documents. As the ride is a big event with maximum 15000 participants everyone gets their starting number and selected route printed to attach to your shirt and bike. I don’t know if the event sold out again but if not there must have been at least close to 14000 participants. After picking up our documents we went to our hotel and had dinner. In the morning we enjoyed a relaxed early breakfast at 8AM and then checked out at a leisurely pace to head over to the starting point. One of the parking lots was already full so we had to drive around the city ring to get to the second parking lot. From there it was another 1k or so to the starting point. In the end we only started our ride around 10:45 so close to the latest allowed starting time of 11AM. This meant that the majority of the riders had already left and in the beginning we were alone on the route. But as we progressed we started overtaking others. We were not in a particular hurry but rode around 25km per hour on flat sections which was not particularly fast. But as the day progressed and we tackled the hills we learned that we were going uphill quite a bit faster than many others which probably explains why we caught up. This was actually a bit unexpected for me as last time around I remember being mostly overtaken by others uphill. There were 2 points where we could get food and water along the route but excluding the time we spent there it took us roughly 3 hours and 15 minutes and managing a decent pace uphill without being completely exhausted at the finish. I had told my son he had to ride his own pace uphill and that I would wait if needed at the top but he was always in my wheel and he probably could have overtaken me easily. The atmosphere is very relaxed with a mix of all fitness levels and not many making a real race out of it. To me the fun is to be part of this event of like minded riders in a nice environment on a route with a lot of variation and nice little climbs to tax you a bit. This year there was quite a bit of wind which made the flat sections less relaxing than wanted but as there weren’t many long flat sections it never got annoying. I did feel I had tackled 700 meters of elevation going over the finish line but less so than feared. Taking the bike to work regularly does count as a bit of training as well. On the way home we were already discussing coming back to do one of the more challenging popular routes of 100k another year. But then we will have to practice a little more. And also on the to do list is one of the mountainbike routes.