My adventure during the Dorpenomloop Rucphen 2023
On Sunday March 12th I was at the start of a classic for the first time in a long time on behalf of my club GRC Jan van Arckel: the Dorpenomloop Rucphen. This is a Dutch classic of UCI 1.2 level that is held in the West Brabant municipality of Rucphen. In the years 2017 to 2021, I participated annually in various UCI level classics. Due to the corona vicissitudes in 2020 and 2021 and some fear on the bike as a result of a number of heavy falls in my immediate vicinity, I unfortunately lost some of the fun in the classics and decided to stop riding the classics in 2022. After a successful series of criteria in the summer months of 2022, it started to itch again towards the 2023 season to participate in some Dutch classics (the blood is thicker than water, shall we say...).A last minute opportunity
My first classics of 2023 were initially only planned for the end of April, but I recently took part in the Dorpenomloop Rucphen. A week before the Dorpenomloop there was a message in Jan van Arckel's WhatsApp group that one of the riders unfortunately could not start in Rucphen, followed by the question whether someone wanted to fill this place? At that moment I just came home from a training in which the legs felt pretty good. Because there were no other competitions to participate in the weekend of Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 March, I thought: why not? And so suddenly a classic was planned very quickly, secretly quite exciting after 1.5 years without classics...
Amacx nutrition plan for the competition
The evening before the Dorpenomloop I took some time to think about my nutrition plan and which Amacx products I wanted to use during the race. Because of the length of 177 kilometers and the predicted conditions (cold, strong wind and a small chance of rain), it was important to think carefully about which nutrition I was going to use the next day. In order to still get the right amount of energy with the high intensity and nervousness of the race (a number of laps with many narrow and winding sections), I mainly opted for products with fast sugars and products that I could eat easily and quickly. I ended up taking some Turbo Gels, Drink Gels and Energy Fruit Chews in the back pockets of my speed pack. To have some food with a little bit of 'bite' for a change, I also took two pieces of the new Energy Nougat with me. Of course I also took two well-filled bottles of Amacx Energy Drink with me in the bottle cages of my bike, so that I could also take care of two extra bottles halfway through the race. During the competition I ended up using the following products:1x Turbo Gel Citrus
1x Turbo Gel Cassis + caffeine
2x Drink Gel Strawberry
1x Energy Fruit Chew Orange
2x Energy Nougat Carberry
4x 600ml Energy Drink bottle
1x caffeine shot
Total nutrition: 390 g carbohydrates & 250 mg caffeine
Match duration: 3h52m12s
Amount of energy consumed: 3710 kilojoules (average power: 268 watts)
Chase and refrain
During the race itself, in the first 30 kilometers I had to get used to pushing and pulling in the nervous peloton, but luckily I managed to fight my way forward at a certain point and after an attacking race I was able to maintain myself in a thinned peloton of about 40 riders. In the ultimate final, three riders managed to break away from the rest, which meant that we were going to fight for the remaining top 10 spots with the thinned peloton. At about 3 kilometers from the finish I made an ultimate attempt to get away from the peloton, but unfortunately I didn't have enough strength in my legs to keep ahead. After being caught by the peloton about a kilometer later, I was unfortunately held up by a crash of a rider in front of me. Fortunately I was just able to avoid this crash, but unfortunately it meant that I lost too much speed to keep up with the peloton. In the end I crossed the finish line a little behind the peloton in 41st place, but the good feeling and fun I had during the race gave me a more than satisfied feeling. On to the next classics than this year!Thank you for reading this article, as a thank you for this you will receive a nice discount of 10% on your order with the code, JVDD10.
