This channel is actually such a gem. To see someone who is such a huge fan of bike racing - and so knowledgable - on this journey to, as he says, become a not so shit rider is inspiring for all us race fans who don't get on the bike nearly enough.
It's actually funny that everytime i see 7-8% percent in a race i say that it's an easy clinb... but then i ride on that gradient and i get destroyed 😂 Nice video Benji!
Your cycling journey makes me smile! So proud of all youve done this year and I hope you ride with the Mrs. Good luck heading toward de Ronde and keep the fun-factor!
That is better...you are Belgian doing Belgian things....OUDE KWAREMONT in the rain!! You don't need any Andorran mountains!!! Great video, love seeing your adventures and your progress!
I did the Kwaremont with my partner recently from Australia in September, we got lucky with the weather and had 30 C and sunny. Lucky us! Great climb, great content! Keep it up Benji
I went to flanders in the summer on a family holiday and got to do a quick 60km loop, the hardest 60km loop of my life! I did the Varent, Molenberg, Kerkgate, Holloweg, Paterburg, Oude Kwaremont, Koppenberg, mariaborrestraat-stationsberg and finally the Taaienberg. All i can say is flandrians are different gravy. I walked the Koppenberg haha.
That's Remco's favourite Andorran coffee stop at the top of the hill in Pal, isn't it? Really shows how high a level those top guys are as Remco made the stop there look like 'oh what a jolly nice place to stop, eat and drink.' Like he'd ridden on a flat.
I did that climb in July and loved it so much. Riding the climbs I could only have dreamed of as a kid was an amazing experiance. So fun to see you do the same climb, takes me back to my trip in the summer! :)
Thanks! I want to try to become even more vlog-style instead of sitting at my desk in parts of the video, but it's been hard to transition to that. I hope I can do that in the coming months. :)
Keep it going Benji!! Question, what gearing do you have on your bike for these climbs? You may want a cassette with an easier gear or smaller chain rings when you visit LR world HQ (spoken as a fellow big guy with race gearing)
I have one bike with big boy gearing. It gets put away about Oct 14 and comes out of storage in May. 53-39 with a 13-25. Triples and friction on the other bikes. :-)
Congrats on the achievements this year! Your handlebars on your specialized look like they are on a diagonal from the frontal view. Is that the case? I only ask because my Specialized Crux had a reversible head set spacer that could be rotated to increase or reduce the angle of the stem and I only found out about it after I completed a bikepacking trip when I felt like I was crooked the whole time. Fiinally checked out my bike and saw that I had the spacer rotated halfway between the settings, so one side of my bars was higher than the other! Haha
Basically, I record my video footage with the Insta360 X3 camera, which is just generic footage without data, and then I use the GPX file of Strava combined with the Garmin VIRB software to put the data on the video.
Love the vids Benji, well done and thanks for the pod too - love 'em. Can I ask - why do you have your garmin mount on the right of your stem? Looks like it should be on the left for the centre display. Is it because of your cameras? Losing watts right there 😉
What does him riding on rim brakes have to do with anything?😅 In fact he can even go faster because rim brake equipped bikes are lighter that disc brakes lol
@@kidgugstev6406 I've done the flanders sportive, saw lots of rim brakes collecting mud and with pads wearing down during the course fast in the gritty, wet, muddy environment. No impact on the climbs of course, but I took my disc bike for good reason.
Don't you feel the desire to have a better bike? i have my giant contend 3 for 3 years and im already desperate to buy a carbon aero bike now and i just ride like 50km a week. lol
You need some more appropriate gearing. Grinding up 5% grade is no fun, and your knee cartilage surely doesn't enjoy it. Need gearing that lets you average 90-100 rpm up your favourite climb. Just look at the cadence of the pros spinning past you....
Fortunately, they only look wide because of the 360 degree camera lens, haha. They might be marginally imperfect in real-life but the way it looks on video is completely different, fortunately, haha.
