Riding with really really fast people

After a brutally hard 150+km at the amstel gold on saturday, on a "road bike", I thought it would be a nice morning to go ride the local toertocht in Rillaar. It was close to Aarchot/Langdorp, and was heavily promoted, so the chance that there would be some ok riding was pretty high. And if that wasn't enough, trails were dry as a bone, the weather was pretty damn awesome, and I hadn't ridden on Belgian dirt for months. So I decided to take the Spooky cross bike out on its maiden dirt voyage.

However, when I showed up I saw Kim Saenen (top Belgian racer lady) and a bunch of other people with former national champion stripes on their sleeves. "Oh, really really fast people", I thought, "this might be fun." Famous last words.

Let us fast forward to the first food stop where, having lost a lung and a spleen along the trail somewhere, I decided that 72km of super-duper race pace was not for me, and took a shorter loop home. Yes, it was sprint-from-every-corner, sprint up the hills...bleed from your eyeballs kind of riding. Or it was for me, at least. Most of the people in our group were riding with one hand on the bar, talking to each other, and sipping a cappucino as they dragged me all over the Rillaar area.



Do not let this distract from the pretty awesome (for Belgium) trail riding! Sandwiched between Aarschot and Scherpenheuvel, this tocht had the potential to be either really awesome, or really terrible. Luckily, it was really awesome. Lots and lots of fun little singletrack bits. Better even than, dare I say, the Langdorp toertoch. Technical, fast, tricky, fun.


Anyway. The bike was awesome and it was good to get back on the dirt. Going to need to get me a geared mtb here pretty soon...