Liège–Bastogne–Liège

On the eve of the race, in Liège by then, a huge surprise in the line: a group of Norwegians I’d met at Norseman the summer before — I’ll get to that story shortly. After the line for the kit, some last-minute shopping at the expo because the weather was turning ugly, and dinner, everything was ready. The start was just after six thirty, and it opened with a slow loop out of Liège, plenty of stops at traffic lights and the headwind we’d been expecting. One of the first climbs, a longer one, went unrecorded — the Garmin called in sick halfway up.

And then Liège started being Liège: the côtes one after another, groups forming and coming apart, classic riders, the Ardennes as a backdrop. There was one climb — the best-known on the course, straight through the middle of a village, a postcard, in three steps — that was nasty and hit my knee hard, but was too beautiful for me to stop on or to hold a grudge against. As the hours went by more rain came, and the groups worked harder as the wind picked up. At one point it was hail bouncing off helmets and glasses, and the gusts turned the drops into frozen needles.

My hands were so cold they hurt until the pain turned into numbness; at the main feed it was very hard to get the gloves back on. The knee took its toll in the worst possible way: at a certain point it took away, for good, any chance of riding out of the saddle — which has been, over the years, my escape hatch for when sitting down stops working. Without that release valve, I had to let the others go. I’d been handed a medical verdict not long before and I wasn’t having it. It doesn’t happen to me often for that kind of reason, but this was one of the times I got emotional. Sadness first, and anger right behind it. Channeled. It was this knee that took me to a well-regarded sports orthopedist. But that’s in Lisbon. Right then I was in a race, and I had to answer it.

And I answered. There was a bit of everything: a properly hard côte, the Stockeu, where Eddy Merckx used to train; a fast descent in torrential rain where I missed a corner coming into Spa and only noticed a third of a mile down the road — I had to double back and rolled into the feed covered in mud. And, of course, the mythical Côte de La Redoute, the camper-van crowd parked at the roadside cheering, kids reaching out for high-fives as you go past.

At the last feed I crossed paths with the guys — me going in, them coming out — and caught them again on the descent. By then the humidity and the heat of my own sweat were so bad that I had to stop and take off the cap and the buff. All that was left was the Roche-aux-Faucons, open ground on the right, then a long descent, one last stretch of pavé, and the finish. I finished in the kind of discomfort I’d only ever known at the worst Tróia-Sagres I ever rode — that 125-mile crossing (200 km) I’ve been doing since 2010 — the one where it rained for six hours straight and I was younger and dumber about kit and preparation.

Set against the classics I’d done up to then, Liège was, for sheer hardness, worse than Roubaix, which is very hard but more technical. And it was more destructive than the Ronde, which is long and has mythical climbs, but not this continuous massacre of leg-breaking terrain and cols sprinkled the whole way. Hats off to La Doyenne. It was a pleasure. Bring on Milano-Sanremo.