Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne
A Belgian Cyclo-Sportif
2 March 2019
The air smells of embrocation, coffee and farts. Over four thousand men and a few dozen women press into a large black shed beside a hippodrome. Euro-pop booms out of over excited speakers, creating waves of throbbing beat through flesh and lycra. Everyone is wrapped in multi-layers puffed up like the frail birds ready for the strong, wet, wind outside. Perhaps the music is too loud, or perhaps everyone is just anxious about what lies ahead, but there is no talking in the queues, just some early morning coughs and the clacking of cleats upon a concrete floor.
We are the amateurs who’ll share the same roads and weather that the more glamorous pros will ride tomorrow in the opening weekend of the European Cycling season. And there the similarities between us end; We are much more self sufficient than they. We miss out on road side musettes and we have no team cars travelling behind with spare wheels, extra gels and mechanical assistance. There are a couple of feed stops and there is an emergency mechanic somewhere along the route, but essentially we are all self sufficient with pockets bulging with bananas and spare inner tubes. To enhance the sense of occasion there are crowd barriers to hold back (tomorrow’s) crowds on key sections and TV gantries ready to film (tomorrow’s) heroics.
Kuurne-Burssels-Kuurne, or the KBK as its more widely known, is the raw and unglamorous end of cycling. This is no parade through mountain backdrops, or rides up a leaf lined Champs Élysée. It is a test both hard and beautiful. Belgian early spring cycling is a gritty exposé of character and the cyclists’ soul. The landscape is one of sparse beauty; of weak light, heavy cloud, wind and rain. There are the miles of open wastelands of liquid mud and over-fertilised fields. There are clumps of trees whose branches clatter and crash against each other on the tops of the steep hills. The roads are narrow and often little more than concrete slabs poorly joined together, zig zagging in right angled corners around field edges. Some roads are roughly cobbled and riding these in the wet is an art usually attained after some sketchy slips and slides. It’s gloomy and bleak and often cold and for all that, it is a strangely uplifting experience. It is also curiously addictive and once you’ve had one Belgian spring experience, you know that you’ll be back for more.
The secret is to find or create a group to ride with. Never ride alone. The wind will do for you. The group that I find myself in are younger, fitter and faster than me. The first forty kilometres or so are like a turbo interval session without the rests. Then the hills come in thick and fast succession. The Olieberg is pretty straightforward, the Kluisberg starts easy then kicks up to 16%. A short down hill and a flat recovery through fields, then it is up into the bare trees on the Cote de Trieu, which again starts easy enough, before kicking up to another16 per cent. The group fragments for each test then naturally reforms at the top. There is a fearsome section of cobbles at Kwaremont, before more energy sapping hills, including the Tiegemberg.
The Huisepontweg is a couple of kilometres of cobbled road on top of a hill, passing between the huge ponds of liquid mud that in summer call themselves fields. There is an old Dutch styled windmill and a small wood. It was up here, where the wind was at its most fearsome and a new rain cloud opened upon us, that my legs packed up. My inner voices cursed them. ‘Ride, you wretches, ride!’ It was to no avail. In this Flandrian bleakness, I watched bikes and backsides brown with mud, disappear into the grey gloom ahead. My bike came to a standstill as the wind kicked me and the rain searched for the seams which were not fully waterproofed. I stopped and took an energy bar from my rear pocket. I had that chat with myself - the ‘come on, get on with it’, sort of talk. It was here on the Huisepontweg, that my day really came alive.
I re-mounted and joined a new group toiling past in the wind. I tucked as deep inside this group as I could, and rode with them all the way to that most romantic of finishes - a line painted across the straight and dreary N90 on the outskirts of town. With a few metres left of road, I pull out of the group and sprint for the line. The photographer caught the moment well. The fact that a few hundred had crossed the line before me is not shown. Just me crossing that line on the road, a whole bike length ahead. Such are the petty little victories of sportive rider!
My clothes are welded to me bound by sweat, mud and rain. There is no place to change, so we - the Flandrians and I - drink beer whilst standing in our soggy gear. The morning’s air of farts and embrocations are replaced by the afternoon’s waft of sweat and beer. Euro-pop continues its beat, creating waves in the glass of Kwaremont beer. I join the Flandrians with whom I spent the latter part of the day and we talk beer and bergs. Pity the poor professional we say. He finishes and into the bus he goes, away to a cheap hotel and plain chicken breast. ‘No beer’, says my newfound friend. ‘Can you imagine it? You ride all day in the cold and rain and you can’t have a beer at the end?’ By the time we think about leaving, it is dark again and somewhere we left our bikes and somehow we have to persuade these tired and tipsy legs to turn the pedals once again and take us back to out hotel somewhere on the edge of town.
