Tweedaagse van Brabant [NL] - day 2 + Final results

The very challenging map of Weerterbergen decided the final standings in this two day event. The courses of today were far more difficult than yesterday and most runners found their race physically harder than their race earlier on Boshoverheide. The races all started with a few short legs in sand dunes terrain, with numerous tank tracks all over the place. After that, there were some long legs. These were quite boring, but they nonetheless decided much of the race. You have no choice but to run very fast in the pretty rough forests, knowing that everyone would do so. After the long legs, the course arrived in the same area as the first controls, but now, the situation was different, runners are exhausted and make mistakes.

In the M21 class, we saw another great performance by Geert Simkens (KOL), who was very satisfied with his race today. He had 2min30 advantage to Jeroen Hoekx (hamok). This meant that Simkens took the victory in the overall standings. On the third place, we find another hamok runner, Gunther Deferme, who showed his shape for the upcoming military champs by running two solid courses. In the final results, Deferme had just 2 seconds left to defend his third place to Paul Goossens, 4th place of today.

Simkens, however, did not win today's race, as the victory was for hamok talent Thomas van der Kleij, whose season has ended to spend some time on school work. His shape proved to be still good enough to beat Simkens. He's got only one race marked on his calender the next weeks and that's the slok beer relay on tuesday.

The victory in the women's class was once again for Miek Fabré, by an even greater margin than yesterday. She had a 10 minutes lead to Tjitske Breimer and 15min's advantage to Veerle Tulleneers, still on the third spot in the Belgian elites ranking, but once again plagued by mistakes in this hard terrain. In the final standings, Fabré had about 20 minutes advantage in just two days. The next weeks, she will concentrate on her studies and try to improve even more during the summer for the National champs and the main goal of the Flemish junior team, JEC in Millau (FR).

The two days of Brabant always provide nice maps, fast competitions and that Dutch feeling. This year's edition was no different. The printing quality of the maps, which was plain bad last year was really good now. We did however miss the legendary "3, 2, 1 succes" at the start!

• Results
• Splits
• Map M21
• Overall standings