Ah, it's the race named after a highway - E3 ~~Harelbeke~~ Saxo Classic. Not the oldest classic - in case the name change didn't give it away - but a really entertaining one, the E3 is ridden in the Flemish Ardennes and is part of the series of cobbled classics which take place in March and April every year.

Traditionally, the E3 is the beginning of the Flemish Cycling Week which also counts Classic Brugge-De Panne, Gent-Wevelgem, Dwars door Vlaanderen, and of course De Ronde van Vlaanderen.

The route is full of hills and cobbles, and features many of the most famous climbs of the area - Katteberg, La Houppe, Kruisberg, Kortekeer, Taaienberg, Eikenberg, Paterberg, and Oude Kwaremont - though the composition will change every year.

Think of this race as a mini-Tour of Flanders.

As always, the "list of favourites" could be 25 riders long depending on defects, but here are the most likely contenders:

• Mathieu van der Poel
• Mads Pedersen
• Christophe Laporte
• Florian Vermeersch
• Tobias Lund Andresen
• Jonas Abrahamsen
• Jasper Stuyven
• Tibor del Grosso
• Joshua Tarling
• Matteo Trentin
• Romain Gregoire

Of course, barring accidents and tactics, it's difficult to see beyond van der Poel on the climbs, and Mads Pedersen is looking surprisingly strong for a man who broke his collarbone and wrist only 4-6 weeks ago.

Enjoy!

It's time for the first monument of the year and the longest race of the year - 298 km without the neutral start. Yes, boysngals, it's the Milano-San Remo weekend.

Legendary Danish poet, sports commentator, and film director of the Paris-Roubaix documentary A Sunday in Hell (1976) said it better than I could:

Milano-San Remo is a race where for the longest time nothing happens, and then - suddenly - everything happens!

He said it in Danish, of course, but you get the gist of it. If you watch this from start to finish - and I recommend it - you'll have time for a nap, a snack, and a board game while you wait for the riders to approach the final 70 kms at which point your pulse will slowly start to rise as the climbs start to come - Capo Mele, Capo Cervo, Capo Berta - steady breath - and then.... leading into the Cipressa, your mouth will start to go dry as the peloton fights like madmen to get their hopefuls into position for the climb and then POW, it's the finale and it lasts for the next ~25 kilometers and if you have a heart, I guarantee that you'll hit pulse 200 somewhere along the way.

So who'll win? Well - that's anyone's guess. Here are the PCS top competitors:

• POGAČAR Tadej
• DEL TORO Isaac
• PEDERSEN Mads
• VAN DER POEL Mathieu
• PIDCOCK Thomas
• MAGNIER Paul
• MCNULTY Brandon
• VAN AERT Wout
• BRENNAN Matthew
• ANDRESEN Tobias Lund

Please don't let it be Pogacar, though.

My work is forcing me - a non programmer - to learn how to use codex, so I decided to use it to build a sort of lightweight cms for NomadNet.

It allows you to use markdown to author content and make pages dynamic by using directives to e.g. show a list of pages (for blogs), make all files in a folder available for download, and embed images which are then converted to micron.

I built it for me, but this is a cleaned up version which is easy to clone and configure to look like you want it to look.

Hope it's useful for some of you 🙂

Been getting into Reticulum lately, and I was wondering if I can flash a T114 with the RNode software and have it connect to other peers using the meshtastic mesh already in place? Or do all nodes need to use RNode?

It's the opening weekend - what cycling snobs like to call the start of the season!

Saturday we'll have the Omloop Nieuwsblad for both men and women, the first cobbles of the year, and usually a fun race. A race which usually favours heavier cobble-specialists and flandriens, the new crop of semi-sprinters also stand a chance.

This year it will be hard to look past Mathieu van der Poel, Paul Magnier, and Tim Wellens who've shown excellent form. But others - like Brennan, Pidcock, van Aer, de Lie, Turner, and Philipsen - will surely also be in the mix.

Sunday we'll have much of the same peloton at the line for Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, a race which has traditionally been won by a sprinter or something close to it, but also in recent by strongmen such as Asgreen, Benoot, van Aert, and Stuyven.

The start list is not public yet, but keep an eye out for de Lie, Magnier, Brennan, Milan, Philipsen, Jeanniere, Girmay, and others of a similar vein!

Enjoy!

When a team reshapes the competitive order of the peloton, success alone is never the full story. In cycling, dominance inevitably drags history back into view. That is the context in which analyst Th...