July 29, 2009
Getting ready for a kermis race – 30 steps
Kermis racing is Belgian bike racing’s meat and potatoes. I discuss the topic plenty in my book and plan to give you more info from time to time here on the blog. While we’ll get into other details later, you should understand some of the insanity that is bred by this type of racing - European pro racing in general.For most riders, getting ready for a race is an incredibly ritualistic ordeal that would make Howard Hughes feel right at home.
Do you think you might have what it takes to be a kermis racer? Let’s see if you have the necessary changing room PrOCD.
1 - Enter the changing room and choose your chair. In most pro kermis races you’ll be hosted by one of the many cafés that line the race course, in which case you’ll change in a banquet room or courtyard behind the café. There are typically chairs arranged in a large circle.
2 - Place your gear bag next to the right side of the chair, ensuring that it extends past the front and back of the chair by equal amounts. Unzip all of the main zippers and any small compartments that you may need access to.
3 - Sit down. At this point it is perfectly acceptable to make eye contact with and converse with other riders in the room. However, if asked how you’re feeling, the answer should always be something fairly negative. “Tired,” or “Not so good,” are perfect answers.
4 - Wait. Starting to get dressed more than 30 minutes before a pro kermis is nearly a felony.
5 - Check your watch. At 45 minutes before the start, it is okay to start pinning on your number. Reach into your gear bag and pull out the Sucrets or Altoids tin. This will contain large safety pins. The pins should be all the same size and in similar condition. If they have collected any scuffs or rust they should be discarded. If you don’t notice this until opening the tin on race day, you’re jinxed. You can pretend not to see anything, but it may be too late.
You’ll now pin on the vinyl number, muttering “rugnummers links” (or rechts) under your breath as you parrot back the instructions you received at the sign-in, and prepare the first pin and position the number on the appropriate side for the day.
Each pin needs to point in the same direction, no matter where it is located on the number itself.
6 - Stand up and drape the jersey over the back of your chair, so that the number faces outward and behind you.
7 - Sit down and check your watch once again.
8 - Remove the small towel that you will use on the floor and place it neatly at your feet.
9 - Check your watch again.
10 - With 30 minutes to go you may remove your street shoes and socks, placing each sock in its respective shoe. The shoes should then be placed underneath your chair.
11 - Remove your race shoes from the bag. You will have packed them with the bundled pair of socks in the left shoe and they should stay this way as you remove them from the bag. Place the shoes together, heels pointing back, approximately 10 inches from the left front leg of your chair and at a 45º angle, but not touching the foot towel.
12 - Remove your base layer from the bag and place it on top of your race shoes, being careful to keep it from touching the ground.
13 - Take off your pants, fold them in half and then in half again. Sit back down and then roll up the folded pants. Put them in your gear bag.
14 - Remove your bib shorts from the bag and turn them inside out.
If you’re using any kind of chamois creme, this is when you would apply it to the chamois, not your body.
15 - Lay the shorts on top of your bag, trying not to get any chamois goo on it or the shorts themselves.
16 - Take off your outer shirts, fold them then roll them up and put them in your bag.
17 - Quickly pull on your base layer.
18 - Tuck the front of your base layer into your underwear and cover your private parts.
19 - Remain sitting and take off your underwear. Do your best to keep the base layer in place. There are lots of women, kids, café owners, café workers and other folks who wander through these changing areas. Sure, they’ve seen it before but even though we’re semi-sociopaths, we don’t want to embarrass or offend anyone.
20 - Grab your shorts and pull them on until the leg gripper is in just about the right place on your thighs. You’ll put the same side leg in first every time. (Yes, they are still inside out)
21 - With your feet clear of the bib straps, stand up, spread your feet slightly and pull the bibs on the rest of the way, rolling them from inside out as you go.
While this technique may seem absurd, there is actually a reason for it. Kermis races can be entered individually but in many of them you’ll be with your team. When this is the case there might be 20 riders to just 1 soigneur, so he might have to smear some sort of nuclear embrocation into your legs before you have a chance to get your bibs on. Rolling them on ensures that you will not get any of the caustic ointment onto the chamois as you pull them on. I don’t think we need to discuss why this would be a bad thing.
22 - Adjust your shorts so that everything is in the proper place.
I’ve seen the placement of the leg gripper/bottom leg opening of a pair of bibs take 10 minutes.
23 - Sit down and check your watch again. You will not get dressed further until 20 minutes before the start.
24 - This is the best time to eat all of the food you’ve brought with you for the race. This is a kermis race and will not last longer than 4 hours so you eat everything you have before the start. My tart of choice was frangipane - 2 to 3 of the suckers before every race.
25 - With 20 minutes to go, put on your socks and shoes, being careful to remember which side goes on first. This is the only time that it’s acceptable for the shoes to come into contact with your foot towel.
26 - Next, pull your helmet from the bag, check to see that your Saint Christopher is still attached and place it in front of your feet on the floor.
We wore leather “hairnets” and nearly every rider, catholic or not, had a Saint Christopher medal sewed to the front of his helmet.
27 - If you wear gloves, this is the time to pull them from your bag and put them on top of your helmet.
28 - Grab the jersey from the back of your chair, put it on and zip it all the way up.
29 - Put on your gloves, if you wear them.
30 - Grab your helmet and stand up. Make your way to the bathroom one final time and then walk outside to find your bike.
Though kermis races are blazing fast, no warming up is ever done before the gun goes off. It is just get on the bike and go.
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12 Responses to “Getting ready for a kermis race – 30 steps”
Hi Joe, Loved the book and this post, keep up the good work! I was really pleased to find that you’ve got a blog/twitter.
I raced wih the elite zonder contract crowd in the 90’s. Leather helmets and linament oils meant race day. Kleedkamers full of wonderful smells and good Flemish humor with boys knowing this day was better than any day at the office. One summer I’m going to take the family over there for a few weeks and relive the life. Rent a farmhouse, race every 2nd day and hang out at night in the town square soaking up the old Euro culture. I remember square-jawed old guys lining up at the start sometimes, think I’ll fit right in.
I wear a La Madonna del Ghisallo medallion and recommend it highly
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Hey Joe. We briefly met back in ‘89 when I came over for the summer to race, and you sent me over to meet Staf Boone (a book in itself).
Thoroughly enjoyed you book, I’d hadn’t thought about the kleedkamers scene for years… always amusing. The undershirt and that light tan chamois vest thing had to be put on under the jersey in all conditions! Even on the rare +30C in August, some rider would sitting in the room after the race, face bright red with sweat pouring off them, and they’d take off their jersey to reveal the vest, which now was thoroughly soaked and the color of a brown paper grocery bag.
This was great… very detailed, so I was surprised when you didn’t say: “put on your jersey”?
I hope this blog just supplements whatever book you end up writing. It’s all great stuff, just like the book.
I started reading this post and realized that I had to stop before I got too far. However, it was too late for one thing: now all my pins will want to face the same way. (How do you pin the middle ones – right now I’m using 9 pins – I know, excessive – to pin my numbers). Can’t they go in a circle with a dash in the middle?
Luckily I didn’t get too far down the list. Luckily we have no changing bars at the races on this side of the Atlantic so the bag position doesn’t matter. But as soon as I read about the pins, I tried to skim over anything that had to do with what I deal with when I race.
hey joe, we raced together as liefhebbers so long ago. I remember you in a race in your hometown, maybe a crit and you fell on the 2nd or 3rd ronde. I knew you wanted to win, felt bad for you. I lived and raced in and around Lokeren and Wachtebeke for almost 5 years. Was married to a Belgian girl and worked in a factory. Some of my close friends were Stefen van Leeuwe and marc macharis. PS Patrick Cocuyet is racing again, so is franky van oyen. tot ziens, david
Hi Joe, I was racing in Belgium in the early 90’s with first Gatorade-Velonews and then LADA, had plenty of experience with the aforementioned Mr. Boone and a host of other characters (remember Freddy Misotten?). You should do one of these posts on the whole post-race thing. i.e. Pour warm water in the small basin you have brought, step in and wash and so forth. I remember those small cafe’s well! Love the page and I’m following you on twitter (I’m @locosphinx). Thanks!
First time I lined up the pins in the same direction (last Tues), I broke my pelvis in two places and screwed up my shoulder. I’m relieved that I can revert to my own pre-race idiosyncrasies. So of course I read the rest of the post.
Joe you kicked loose some great memories…
The carnivals with all their sounds and smells, fritjes stands serving up piping hot 2x fried fries wrapped in a cone with curry sauce…The old Belgian guys huddled around a betting board leaned outside a bar wall, arguing like magpies about the day’s prospects, last week’s performances… the names of the locally-known kermis stars scrawled in chalk at the top, the odd Panasonic pro trying to stay fit between stage races or picking up a couple of francs start mondy, added in for today near the top of the list…
The kermis die-hards, bikes still in the trunk from yesterday’s race, everybody keenly aware of the pecking order even though you’ve never heard of these misfit Belgians except maybe from some long-forgotten stint on a 2nd tier team years back, beware the knowing wink that indicates that today’s going to be a special day for them, 100 jet-fueled attacks in the first 5k, maybe netting a podium spot with dilated pupils and an erection… their wives clucking together, decked out in bling that’s commensurate with their husbands’ performances, pushing baby carriages, deep orange-hued tans, competing for queen status while standing in medieval fields drenched in chicken shit…
Don’t get me wrong, I loved every minute of it. The first one I did I was fairly fit, but nothing could have prepared me for what i was about to experience. At one point I found myself hurtling along a narrow farm road at 55kph, staring at the skinny black tire in front of me with tunnel vision, spun out in the 53×13, chin bouncing off my stem, trying to cling to those precious millimeters of broken pavement in the hopes of staying in the draft, peering around the bony ass in front of me periodically to avoid smashing into a tractor or septic tank parked on the side of the road, thinking how long can this possibly keep up? It went on for like 20 minutes, an eternity of pain, and when things finally let up I found out that Jelle Nijdam had been off the front the whole time and *was still out there*…. a fucking inhuman performance, a reality check…
The next kermis was in the pouring rain on a course through hellish shit-stained fields and roads, brutal gusty crosswinds, turn right slam left, turn left slam right, everyone in kill-or-be-killed mode, people spat out of one echelon couldn’t recover enough to stay with the next, they just disappeared down a bottomless pit, no one even looked back. Nobody bothered to eat because there was a constant stream of animal feces spraying up at you from the wheels ahead, no way you could keep your mouth closed, plenty of sustenance in that, “it’s normal, eh?” i never bothered too much about germs after that experience.
Anyway, good times, looking forward to your next book.
Joe… you forgot to mention a golden rule: never, ever turn up to the ‘aanschriwing’ (sign-on) on a skateboard! You will be roundly vilified!
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