I had a week long holiday last week. Residing in Sports Institute of Finland,in Vierumäki (Near Lahti city).

While the Sports Institute has a wide variety of activies to choose, one quite unknown factor is that the mountain biking in the nearby trails is pretty damn good. In fact I wonder that they seem to have dropped all kind of outdoor sports from their marketing, at least for the individuals (there are several companies that offer horseback riding, trekking, ATV riding etc. to (business) groups though). All in all I think that the marketing of Finland’s travel oppurtunities is pretty limited. Finnish tourism marketing seems to forget several outdoor activities and beautiful nature we have, or show them in a pretty limited way, in my humble opinion of course (and just to add some background: I’ve worked some four years with development of the tourism industry in Southern Finland, so I think I might know something about the issue…)

Anyway, pictures talk more than thousand words. So, do your own evaluations. I will add some more information to this post later (trail maps,trail information, accommodation etc.) but right now I am so busy at work that I have to delay this job a bit later in the summer…

What is also quite funny that only about four or so years ago I would have probably laughed to this kind of riding and “riding” pictures, as I started as an “angry freerider”. I thought dh/freeride would be perfect summer sport for the skier, and kind of dispised all the “traditional” aspects of cycling. But as an adult start-up I was maybe a bit too keen to learn “all” at once, and hurt myself quite badly couple of times…after one semi-serious neck/back injury I started to give a more xc-ish riding a go, got myself a set of clipless pedals and a longer seat post, and since that I’ve figured out that Finland has a wide variety and huge amount of GREAT trails and “just” riding in the wilderness can be very fun too. You still always have the technical sections, where freeride background is great and you can kind of combine the best of both world…well, I guess there is even a name for this kind of riding, namely All Mountain/Trail riding (do’h)…Btw. these days I also enjoy all the other kinds of cycling: road, cyclocross, urban commuting etc. too.

Ok, let’s move on to the pics…

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