The Spring Classics are perhaps the ultimate professional bike racing challenge – long sections of mud-slicked cobbles, steep climbs where you’re hemmed in by hundreds of your fiercest rivals and combined speeds/distances that most mere mortals could only dream of attaining even on perfectly smooth tarmac. So, if you know that they’re brutally hard, why would you try and attempt to ride the combined route of all of them, in one go, in the middle of winter? This was the challenge that Nol van Loon from the FatPigeon empire set himself and the inspirational film they created of his journey is about to get its premiere.
1,288 kms. 4 days of riding. 13,915 m of climbing. An average temperature of -2 °C. 38.000 kCal burned. Those are some pretty impressive stats, but based on the trailer of Cyclism, the latest film from the house of FatPigeon, the stats don’t come even close to describing how tough the challenge was that Nol set himself.
“All the bergs, all the cobbles, all the Northern Classics, in deep winter. This route was a beast!” is one of the lines in the film’s promotional material. Nol’s route took him from his start point in Ghent, across the combined route of all of the Spring Classics to his finish point in Valkenburg – a monumental challenge, even in the middle of summer, but he chose to do in the middle of winter. Why?
The film documents the early part of Nol’s life and how a series of life-changing events, including the death of his mother when he was just 16 and surviving multiple brain surgeries when he was 18, impacted on him. The subtitle of the film, Serenity, Acceptance and Courage is taken from Nol’s coping strategy to his early life-events, but he also applies the same principles to his life as a rider.
If you would like to see FatPigeon’s paean to overcoming adversity on a gravel bike, then you can see it in person at these venues:
Tickets are free, but you do need to book, so that the venues know how much beer & popcorn they will need to stock up on.
We’re hoping eventually it will be available on YouTube for non-Dutch viewers, but we’ll keep you posted on this.
All images courtesy of @nilsluypaert/FatPigeon