mediocre mountain biker: Langdorp Toertocht

What's a Tour Tocht? Every weekend in Belgium there are multiple organized mountain bike rides call tour tochts. Hundreds or even thousands of belgian mountain bikes show up and pay around 3 euros to ride a marked course, followed by the ubiquitous beer (or 5). Riders can choose one of three lengths, those generally being around 25, 40, and 60km. And while you could hardly call them epic.....they can be super fun, especially if attended with friends, especially if it is not freezing and raining (which does happen in belgium), and ESPECIALLY if you're riding a single speed. Because it seems that just about all these courses were designed for single speeding.

The registration/beer hall can be a soccer field clubhouse or community center.

Every good toertocht has a halfway break with chocolate covered waffles and bananas and sportsdrink.

By far, the perfect machine for such a ride is a single speed. Especially one with green grips.

The gang prepares for their ride. Thankfully, no suicide 7:30am start.

A weekend or two back Peter from work invited me to do the famous Langdorp toertocht. Langdorp is reputed to be one of the finest trail areas in Flanders. It's where Sven Nys lives and does all his training. It's where Davy Coenen won a flanders cup race. It's where Peter has been trying to get me to go for about 2 years now.

Peter's brother Stijn is on a racing frenzy and super fit, luckily for the rest of us he was sick and taking it easy. So we meandered through the 40k course fairly easily, grunting up the climbs and enjoying what I must admit was some tasty bits of singletrack.

The great thing about a tour tocht is that you see all types of bikes out there. A lot of people are road riders staying fit, others just riding what they have in the garage...the new mtb revolution is on in Belgium, and although nobody is riding a mtb fixie with a full sleeve of tatoos...slowly but surely we're seeing fewer hydraulic rim brakes and cable v-brakes in favor of real live disc brakes. Every once and a while...a riser bar...can you feel the excitement?