Arne

1) I never stop to pee during a race (peeing off the bike is not stopping).
2) I never ride with my shirt unzipped (we remain bien soignée and aero, yes, also when it's hot).
3) I never cramp during a race (I eat bananas).

Three confident statements that aged pretty bad this on Sunday.

After two years without a 'real' road race, I finally pinned the numbers back on for a proper road race: the Alfa Bier Limburg Trophy. 207 km, up, down, twisty, turning, never really easy. A hard race.
I was looking forward to it. Also a bit nervous. Training tells you a lot, but racing is racing. You cannot fully simulate a 150-man peloton trying to murder each other over every climb and every narrow road.

Before the start we had the usual team talk.
“What are your goals?”
My answer: win. No idea how, but that is the goal. If I start a race, I want to be part of it. Not just survive somewhere in the wheels and call it a day.
The first hour was chaos. I struggled a bit with positioning. Every time you stop fighting for ten seconds, you lose twenty spots, especially on this course where you want to be in front all the time to not miss the winning group. I have done this race 3 times now and at some point a group goes containing at least one rider from most of the continental teams and it's over. You just don't know if that group goes at 20k, 40k or 150k.

I responded to a few early attacks, legs were feeling good, power was there. No one was dropping me, not at this point in the race. However, I also felt that the energy spent on responding and positioning was going to cost me. I had to place my bets and gamble a bit.

And then, I missed the move that mattered. The winning group went in one of the easier climbs, with a headwind section after it. Exactly the kind of moment where you think: nah, this is not it, mid-pack is oke here. Turns out: it wasn't.
Six guys gone. Never saw them again.

Power-wise, I think I could have been there. But that is also part of racing. If you only have enough bullets to respond to an X amount of attacks, and then need to gamble on the quiet moments, at some point you miss the right one. The really strong guys don’t need to gamble as much. They just go again. And again. And again.

#1 I never stop to pee during a race.
So the group went, their teammates did a great job slowing down the peloton on the narrow roads. As the pace slowed down, I had some time to reflect on the state of the body, the legs and the blatter: I had to pee. I thought about skipping it. When the pace pick up again you forget about it. But my teammate called me saying he went to stop for a pee. Well, if you pee, I pee. So I stopped, peed, and then had to rush back into position.
Claim #1 debunked.
#2 I never ride with my shirt unzipped
In that rush, I completely forgot to zip my shirt back up. Garmin analysis says: 30sec stopping time. Enough to pee, not to zip jerseys apparently. There I was, full open jersey, fighting back through the bunch like I was on a mountain stage in July. It took me long to realize. Eventually I looked down like: ah. Yes. Close that.
Serious athlete. Bien soignée. Closed Jersey.
Claim #2 debunked.
After the front group was gone, the race got into this typical rhythm. Flat parts: slow, teams blocking, nobody really committing. Climbs: full gas, riders trying to force a chasing group. A repeating pattern slowly squeezing the legs. Around 110 km in, I noticed my teammate was better than me. And if we wanted to have a tiny tiny chance to get back to the front group which had a 3min lead already, we had to force something now. I did a long lead-out into the climbs, positioned him well, and tried to launch him with a group that could maybe still get across. They got away for a bit. It came back. Then more attacking. Which got the race back to the pattern of blocking, attacking, repeat, but with any real hope of a chase group getting back gone. It was more to ride for a nice stop in the final result.

#3 I never cramp
I felt good but, after about 170 km, the wheels started to come off.
“Cramps. I eat at least 5 bananas per day. The “monkey never cramps” myth is now officially debunked. Monkey very much cramps. Monkey cramps badly.”
The best part? Two minutes before it happened, I got angry at a guy in front of me because he didn’t follow an attack after a climb.
Then I tried to do exactly that myself.
Cramp.
Immediate karma. No jury needed.

From that point on, it was survival. Every time I pushed more than 400, maybe 450 watts, my legs started locking up. So I had to ride every climb like a negotiation. Not too hard. Not too soft.
I finished 25th.
First proper road classic after two years. 207 km. Chaos managed. Legs eventually exploded, but not before I actually raced. I was part of it. I helped the team. I suffered properly.
Can’t complain.
Although maybe, I can complain about the cramps.
And the pee.
And the open jersey.

This is my first real Grassdune post.
People who know me well know I spend a (sometimes ridiculous) amount of time training. Cycling, mostly. I love the long rides. Four, five, six hours. But I also love the structured interval sessions.

And honestly… I might love what comes after just as much. Looking at the data. Re-living the ride through numbers, photos, videos.

But what I might enjoy even more than my own training?
Looking at someone else’s. Because there’s real value in that.

Performance lives in the data.
Meaning lives in the story behind it.
Seeing what someone did is interesting.

Understanding why they did it – that’s where it becomes powerful. The problem is: these two are often still completely disconnected.

On Strava you see the numbers.
On Substack you read the story.

But nowhere do they truly come together. That’s where Grassdune started.

Grassdune is a place where you don’t just upload an activity – you break it down.
The data.
The context.
The why behind the session.
What went right AND what didn’t.

Not just highlights. Actual training. And if people genuinely care about your journey, they can go deeper. Athletes shouldn’t have to rely on cringe, obligatory sponsored posts to support their sport.

They should be able to do that through the thing people actually care about: their journey. No pressure to perform for attention.

On Grassdune you can follow for free or subscribe for a few euros per month to support an athlete and get deeper insights into their training.

And for anyone who wonders where that name “Grassdune” comes from. It comes from the Dutch word ”grasduinen”: browsing, digging around, exploring without a clear goal. That’s still one of my favourite things to do:
Diving into other athletes’ training, learning from it, getting inspired. Grassdune is built for that.

If that sounds like you, you’re in the right place 👇
Welcome to Grassdune.🌱

Two weeks down in Finland and I can confidently say that I know what (the southern part of) country looks like. In hindsight, I knew what it looked like after day one.

After two weeks, I stand by my original statement: Finland is beautiful. But it is also all the same. Endless forests, endless lakes, roads that gently roll but never really become hills. You can ride for hours and feel like you've barely moved.

The biggest unaccomplished mission so far? Still no wild moose. I was promised moose. No moose. Most exotic finds are a black woodpecker and a wolf crossing the road. You can find both in the Netherlands, so my expectations are not fulfilled.

What I am confidently getting into, however, is Finnish food. The discovery of the trip is riisipiirakka, a rice-filled pastry that is dangerously close to perfect cycling food. As a Dutchy, it immediately reminded me of rijstevlaai. Most people eat them warm with egg butter. I eat them warm with cottage cheese and banana (duhhh). I even put them in my pockets when going out riding.
Another thing that has become impossible to ignore is the Finnish obsession with saunas. There are apparently more saunas than cars in Finland. There is a sauna in the office. Many people have one in their house. And then another one in the garden. If there is a building, there is probably a sauna somewhere nearby.

The other national treasure is coffee. The Finns drink more coffee per person than anyone else in the world, which should make them my kind of people. Unfortunately, we seem to disagree on what good coffee actually is. Most people here drink very light roasted filter coffee. The kind that keeps you awake but doesn't necessarily make you happy.

Last week we ran out of coffee at work. Since we are in a small facility and bring our own packs for the filter machine anyway, I figured I'd do something nice and pick up some coffee from the supermarket. So I bought Italian coffee. Apparently that was not the correct one: they made that very clear. Not every coffee-loving country should be trusted to drink coffee.

Although mission-moose is still open, I did finally completed a mission that has been four years in the making. Ever since I started working with one of my Finnish colleagues, there has been an ongoing joke that one day I would visit Finland, go to his summer cottage and cut down a tree. So that's exactly what we did.
Apart from cutting trees in remote forests. I also spent some time in Turku. Finnish cities feel surprisingly familiar. Once you leave the countryside and enter a larger city, life starts looking a lot like life anywhere else in Europe. The biggest differences are found outside the cities, where forests, lakes and summer cottages seem to take over everything.

The biggest cycling news of the week is that I officially got a spot for the Dutch National Time Trial Championships. A few weeks ago I wrote about my qualification attempt and whether it would be enough. At the time I wasn't sure, but my ranking ended up high enough to make the start list.

What makes the national TT championships interesting is that everyone lines up together. National elites (like me), continental riders and WorldTour pros. It's one of the few moments where you get a direct comparison against riders who do this for a living.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I already hoped there was a chance I'd get selected, so I quietly kept training as if it would happen. So I continued the focus on threshold work. Going slightly over, slightly under, and repeating that in intervals.

Today I mixed things up a bit, I did 20-40s (no, not 40-20s). The idea is to keep up the higher end again. Too much threshold work can make you feel too much diesel-like. I was happy that the session felt decent as I have not been feeling great overall.

Since the qualification TT the body and legs are don't feel like I would want, a bit empty. Heart rate doesn't really want to go up, resting heart rate is unusually low. The textbook explanation would probably involve words like fatigue or overreaching. But purely from training load I haven't. The overall picture might influence it. My rhythm here is different from home. The days are long, at work we're trying to get as much done as possible during the three weeks I'm in Finland, and workouts get squeezed into whatever gaps are available. That means early alarms, long workdays and a bit more balancing than I'm used to.

The bigger problem is that my TT bike is still in the Netherlands. So my preparation currently consists of doing all the fitness work without actually riding the bike I need for the race. When I get back home I have four days before nationals to spend as much time as possible in the TT position, and hope muscle memory does the rest.

One more week in Finland.
Four days of panic preparation.
And then Nationals on the 24th.

De openingszin van Nooit meer slapen. Het is al zeker 10 jaar geleden dat ik dit boek heb gelezen. Maar de openingszin is blijven hangen en ik moet er, nu ik in Finland ben, regelmatig terugdenken. De hoofdpersoon van Nooit meer slapen heet toevallig ook Arne en reist naar het hoge noorden voor wetenschappelijk werk, waar hij vooral terechtkomt in een vreemd landschap, veel licht, ongemak en lichte existentiële verwarring.

Nou. Ik ben ook in het hoge noorden. Misschien niet zó hoog, maar toch hoger dan ik ooit ben geweest. Dus ja, de parallel is misschien wat overdreven, maar ik mijn hoofd heeft hem toch gemaakt.
Jullie vragen zich misschien af: wat doet deze gast in Finland? En niet eens in Helsinki of Tampere, maar in Forssa of all places. Forssa ligt tussen Helsinki, Tampere en Turku. Eigenlijk de middle of nowhere, maar vanuit historisch oogpunt Logistiek heel praktisch gepositioneerd tussen deze drie grote steden. Het bedrijf waar ik werk heeft hier een faciliteit waar we prototypes bouwen, dus ik ben hier drie weken voor werk. Met fiets natuurlijk, want waar ik ga, gaat de fiets.

Dit is mijn eerste keer Finland en ook het meest noordelijke waar ik ooit ben geweest. Dat merk je meteen, want het wordt hier praktisch niet donker. We zitten dicht tegen midsummer aan, dus het is daglicht, schemer, en dan gewoon weer daglicht. Geen echte nacht dus. Heel raar, als je om vier uur wakker wordt en er al vol licht in je kamer staat.

Fietsen hier is ook vreemd. Finland is extreem vlak, maar toch niet echt vlak. Er is geen klim die meer dan misschien 40 hoogtemeters overbrugd, maar de weg rolt constant een beetje. Je kunt dus 100 kilometer rijden met 1.000 hoogtemeters zonder ooit een echte klim te doen. Dat in combinatie met dat er bijna geen bochten zijn, rij ik hier vrij makkelijk 34, 35 km/u. Route instructies op de Garmin zijn simpel: 38 km rechtdoor. Linksaf en weer 20 km rechtdoor.
Het landschap is mooi, maar ook enorm herhalend. Dennenbomen, vlaktes met boerderijen, meren. Daarna weer dennenbomen, vlaktes met boerderijen, meren. In 500 kilometer fietsen heb ik twee andere wielrenners gezien. Allebei mannen van rond de 60, op fietsen die er ongeveer half zo oud uitzagen.
Ik ben dol op buitenlandse supermarkten. Ik ben altijd benieuwd naar lokale producten. Het rijke assortiment aan cottage cheese is dan ook een van de hoogtepunten. Naast de cottage cheese zoals ik die in Nederland kent verkopen ze 'Rae', ook een soort cottage cheese maar dan zonder het vocht, eigenlijk alleen de korrels. Beduidend minder lekker in alle eerlijkheid. Daarnaast verkopen zakken havermout van 2,5 kilo, winnen.
Qua weer mag ik niet klagen. Meestal 20 tot 25 graden en zon. Beduidend beter dan ik had verwacht, maar volgens mijn Finse collega's toch vrij normaal in de echte zomermaanden.

Te leeg, te recht, te herhalend, en praktisch geen andere wielrenners. Maar ook rustig, vreemd, best mooi, en oke voor een paar weken. Als ik maar kan fietsen.

Been off doing any efforts for the whole week.

Went out today to do some 1-1.30min efforts on the only ‘hill’ nearby. Legs and body not feeling like it at all started 2 times, HR unresponsive, decided not to do it.

Came back one more time with the promise to take it down a lot and even if I would only do 5 efforts at least the body would hopefully reactivate. Eventually did 15 at lower intensity.