Herning Pre-View

There has been a pattern to my races for the last month, and that pattern involves gravel. First, three weeks ago we had the race is Esbjerg which had a 1.3 km section of pretty deep gravel that we did ten times. Then last weekend we had the East Midlands Cicle Classic which also had 11 sections of gravel or beat up roads. Finally, this coming weekend we are doing the GP Herning which is a 200 km UCI 1.1 race, has about 50 km of gravel roads, and is convinently about 60 km from here. So yesterday I rode out to do one critical section of the race where the field always splits. Its pretty clear why. The sector is 2.5 km long. Its only wide enough for 2, maybe 3 riders and it goes up and down a pretty ligitimate hill. Here is what it looks like from the bottom:
It may be hard to see the hill, but you definitely feel it. The downhill is going to be a challenge as well. The two sides of the road are both pretty sandy, but the middle is hard. However, the middle also has 5 deep, tire-flatting, wheel-breaking holes. By myself it was easy to see and jump over them, but in the peleton that won't be quite so easy, we'll see how it really feels.

I think most of the gravel roads are relatively nice though. I think they look more like this:
Still, you can definitely expect them to go all out on these sections so its definitely not going to be easy. CSC won this race basically every year since they started being a team, but Saxo Bank isn't going this year. So I think the race will be a bit different from the past and a bit more wide open, there won't be any Pro Tour team to take control of the peleton and dictate the pace. That being said, many Pro Continental teams can still do that so you never know. I do have to say thanks to Jesse and his rides though, without them I would be much less prepared for all of this offroad road racing.

Still, the highlight of my ride was this bakery stop. I was out of water and didn't want to eat another bar so I stopped in a small town and its bakery had this:
There was also a cholocate, vanilla filling. But, the most amazing part is that it was only 10 Kroner, which is like $1.5. Try finding that in a small down back home.