Kromme Rijn Loppet

It's been a while, but on Saturday 26 October 2024, I took part in the Kromme Rijn Loppet. A roller ski tour in the Netherlands. There was a choice between 11, 19, 30 or 65 km. As part of my preparation, I went for the 30 km tour. Start and finish were at Vasa Sport in Cothen, the Netherlands. There were at least about 100 participants, spread across different distances.

The ride took me along mostly quiet roads through the Cothen area. The underground i rolled on was mostly a well-run asphalt. Although it also included a kilometre-long stretch of concrete road. This was just a little less pleasant. Full of good spirits, I had started the tour. I immediately started double-poling and soon found myself alone somewhere in the 2nd part of the field of participants. Until a good 24 km everything went reasonably smoothly. But because of the permanent double poles, I felt that my arms, ravaged by 2 sports accidents last year, were not trained enough and started to become "empty". So the last 6 kilometres were hanging on in double poling with intermediate stride. After just over 3 hours of rolling, I reached the finish line. Not satisfied with the time and how it went, I was slightly disappointed. On the other hand, I was happy to have done 30 km on roller skis for the first time. Another new frontier was reached. The day after, I did feel the fatigue in my body. But still, I was certainly not ‘broken’. I was able to have a nice classic langlauf training in SnowWorld Landgraaf on Sunday morning.

In short: nice ride, and well organised (thanks Vasa Sport). Did bump into myself. But still managed to finish nicely. It was a reality check about the 90km the Vasaloppet is. But the ambition and will is still there.