The race started with about 25 km of Dutch beach, followed by a long stretch of tarmac over the famous Oosterscheldekering (which is part of the Dutch Delta Works). The last section was another 8 km on the beach. The challenge was to finish this race as fast as possible. Like many other cyclists, I took some CO2 cartridges with me, which would allow me to inflate my tyres from about 1.0 bar to 2.5 bar by getting off my bike just before hitting the tarmac. This would significantly reduce the rolling resistance on that section and would help me to keep up with the front group of cyclists… But, in the end I chose to not inflate my tyres: filling such large beach tyres with single CO2 cartridges proved to be almost impossible and way too time consuming. Being able to keep up with the fastest cyclists proved equally impossible…