De Ronde van Vlaanderen is one of the greatest races on the cycling calendar. The professional version of the race culminates the Belgian spring cobbles classics and is held on the first Sunday of April. It is a great pleasure to watch the race from the sidelines while enjoying the Belgian beer, but it is even more fun to test the grit of the cobbles, bergs and betonwegen yourself at the amateur version of the race the day before.

Is it a race? Is it a tour? It is a Toertocht!

Cycling is the second biggest sport in Belgium after football and the amateur federation reports more than a million members. For a country with population slightly more than 10 million people, it is 1 in 10 citizens.

Any cycling event in Belgium attracts so many participants that closing the roads and holding a proper race is simply not practical. What is a Belgian solution to the problem? A Toertocht.

A Toertocht is an organized mass cycling event with an entourage of a bicycle race, but without a time keeping.

The Ronde van Vlaanderen Cyclo or We Ride Flanders - as it is known by commercial name, is one of the biggest Toertochten events on the Belgian calendar. The event in fact is so big, that participation requires registration in advance and starting numbers are being sold quite quickly.

I had a pleasure to ride this event twice and must confess - it is a great experience. For many, to finish the amateur Ronde is a challenge in its own right, but some treat it as a race and give it all they’ve got.

Virtual ranking and performance prediction on Velometria

I’ve found it rather unfortunate that the tourtochten do not keep the time. To resolve this omission I’ve created the service Velometria. It collects Strava data for many cycling events and serves the collected information in form of visualized finishing time distribution alongside the weighted power in Watts or Watts/kg.

If you took part in the event you can compare your finishing time with other cyclist and estimate how high would you rank if the Toertocht was a race.

For registered Strava users the Velometria will also analyze your recent cycling performance and would try to predict the finishing time if the event was held today.

I am just getting started

Velometria is a work in progress with a mission to utilize the vast array of cycling data collected by Strava users and provide the novel insights into the amateur cycling events we all love.

At the moment of writing the service is in its alpha stage and can be sketchy in places. I would love to hear all suggestion and recommendations on how to improve the existing features and absolutely welcome any bug reports.