I’m registered to something crazy !

In the beginning

I nervously refresh the website page and nothing moves. It’s time though! It’s on this December 1st 2022 at 9pm that the registrations for the North Cape 4000 open! An umpteenth F5 and there, I get an error message. Arg, did the website crashed? I ask Gerger, no it works on her side. So I try F5 again. And there it is ! It works ! Quickly! There are only 250 places and I have no idea how fast they go. And no favoritism on gender. Here, it’s first come, first registered. I feverishly fill in the form and get ready to pay. New bug … I had opened my Paypal account in anticipation of the payment but it was disconnected for non-activity after 1 minute. Here we go again with the double authentication. Phew, it goes through and I’m registered! The organizers announced that 50% of the places were sold out in 5 minutes but it will take a week for the race to be sold out. In the end, 280 participants (including 38 women) from 40 countries will start from Turin on July 22nd 2023. Now, I only have to train …

Before telling you about my training, I’ll go back to what the North Cape 4000 is. It is « simply » the crossing of Europe from South to North. It is a race that starts in Italy and ends in the North Cape. It crosses a lot of countries to do so and reaches 4000km. It is in 2019 that I discovered this crazy adventure. The route passed through Italy, Switzerland, France, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. It is a route that “spoke” to me a lot. The one in 2021 was much less so. It goes further east and the countries are of little interest to me. The 2022 itinerary hypes me up a bit more and then, Gerger is participating! I will have a dot to follow that I know in real life! It’s not just a name I’ve seen on other maps. In my ultra race planning, I could see myself doing the NC4K in 2024 or 2025. But when the 2023 route was published, I jumped right in! It almost looks like 2019 (minus the Grand Duchy)! This is a sign! I was hesitant to register because it’s a big budget to gather, but after some calculations, the choice is made. The Pan Celtic Race will be for 2024 and the NC4K for 2023.

Another thing to keep in mind is that I’m a bike messenger in Brussels. So I do 100-120km for work every week and 55km per week to commute. So I’m quite a lot on a bike. That’s why my winter training isn’t focus too much on it.

My training schedule

Thanks to the teasings of the organizers, we know that the first difficulty will be the Col du Grand Saint Bernard. Just a « small pass » perched at 2469m of altitude (1870m of D+). Oh, the average percentage is around 6% so nothing too hardcore, but the climb is 32km long… 32km! At the moment, my brain can’t conceive of climbing that long.

The longest and highest I’ve done is the Mont Sainte Odile (via Ottrott): 761m of altitude (515m of D+), 10km of climb and 5% average. And it was with my Décathlon city bike please! My GPS crashed, so I don’t have all the data of this ride but from memory, it took me 1h15/30 to do this climb. So I have to prepare my brain to climb for 4 hours… As much as I understand the concept of training my body, preparing my brain is more abstract. Following great conversations with Gerger, I bought « The Bible of mental preparation ». I’ll have to come back to the book a few times to find what is useful to me but it helps!

For physical preparation, my main objective is to build up my legs to make it easier to push on the pedals. After a little research on the web, I discovered that there are several sports that can help with this. The idea is to do something else than cycling to not get tired and to work other muscles. My choices went to swimming and rollerblading. During the winter, I also plan to do some 50km bike rides with 500m of D+ to keep the legs turning. I also plan to do 2-3 fitness sessions at home (push-ups, dips, crouches,…) per week so that I don’t forget other parts of the body. These are pretty short 10 min sessions but the goal is to slip this in at the end of the day so I know I won’t have the patience to do much more.

Another change I’m making is on the bike. I’m fitting my Genesis with Donnelly X’Plor Ush 35*700 tires, which are 5mm thinner and have a smoother center tread than the full gravel tires I have now. The goal is to keep a versatility that I really appreciate when I leave the road but also to be less « stuck » to it. I will have all winter to get familiar with them.

And what about the family ?

I’m going to talk about a subject that is not very much talked about, at least that’s my impression, in blog posts or videos about ultra cycling: the family. I asked my relatives what they thought of my registration for the North Cape. None of them are surprised. Well, I have to say that after two Race Around The Netherlands and other days with a lot of kilometers in the legs, I think they are almost ready for anything I tell them. My father just said that it would require a lot of training! Oh yeah, we are not climbers in the family! But, they are all confident that I will make it. It’s nice to see that I am supported. Well, we all have the same fear in the end: that I will have a bad encounter on the road. But we can’t predict that. Just be careful. I asked them if it had occurred to them to stop me from doing this and no one said yes. Apparently, I would be too stubborn to listen to them (I’m crying with laughter as I say it, but it’s true). My boyfriend has the same fears: a problem off the bike. But he also says that if you are afraid of everything then you don’t do anything and you stay home. Which is no way to live.

The budget

I’m not going to lie, the NC4K is a rather consequent budget which required changes in my daily life. I arrive at 3600€ for the 22 days of races + 2 nights in Turin + the week to return by trains/buses/ferry. And that’s not counting my rent and utilities to pay for August. Because I only have 12 days off per year, the majority of my North Cape will be without pay. That means no salary and in August I will still have expenses on my apartment. I can add almost 1000€ to the budget to cover all this. Before signing up, I had to calculate when my year-end bonus would fall, when my paid vacations would fall, …. Luckily, I have a 10% salary indexation in January 2023, so that will help! But I still had to adapt my daily life: no more meals at the snack for lunch or dinner, it’s back to sandwiches or home cooked meals, no more thousands of biscuits per week, just one kind and one pack per week, no more fruit juice or soda, just water with syrup, no more snacks in the evening,… At the time of writing, I have already spent 642€ for the registration fee + my return ferry from Norway to the Netherlands (the latter having already increased by 80€ since I checked in September…).

A first assessment after 6 weeks of training.

Rollerblading

• December 4 : 3,4km in 40 min
• December 18th : 5,11km in 42 min
• January 1st : 7,20km in 41 min
• 8 sessions in total

I am very lucky to have a personal trainer on this subject! My boyfriend has over 20 years of rollerblading in his legs. Well, I’m not going to take full inspiration from him because that would mean breaking both my elbows and I don’t want to do that, but he’s good advice otherwise. He makes sure I don’t push too hard too fast but doesn’t hesitate to give me a back and forth by going faster or talking + going faster and that sort of thing. Having a brand new Ravel (bike path) not far from his house has helped a lot too. Although a bit dirty from the fall, having a path with little traffic and no cars is handy. After the third session, I had no more discomfort in my feet and the pain in my back only appeared after 35 minutes. « Normal, you don’t have a broom in you’re a** anymore », my boyfriend told me. We were even « lucky » to have quite a bit of headwind at the end of December, which forced us to push to get ahead. I can tell you that I felt it right away!

Swimming

I did only one session so far, on December 13th, because I had completely skipped the school vacations and the closing of the pool. I did 475m in 16 min. I could have done another 100m but I broke my glasses and I don’t swim without glasses. I took a 5sec break every 100m and 1 min break after 10 min. I felt good after the session, but it was still a bit short I thought. I would have needed a longer break if I wanted to swim another 10 minutes. Add to that the fact that I have to bike 5km to get to the pool, so it’s an extra physical effort before and after the swim.

Fitness

I did about a dozen sessions. During the first one, I did a series of squats (2×10), push-ups (2×5), sheathing (20′), bridge (1×10), dips (1×10) and crouches (1×10/leg). After three sessions, I was already able to do all 10 push-ups at once! Even though these sessions only take me ten minutes, I missed two of them because I had no motivation after work. The idea is to increase the number of exercises as time goes on but I’ll wait until I’ve easier to do all of these before doing more. I also added some exercises where the back is more involved because I’m going to sleep a lot on the floor (or almost) so I might as well strengthen it preventively.

Feel free to ask your questions.