Epica 2015 report

When we rode off from St. Malo Arena at 8 AM it was -29'C with a North wind blowing at around 20 km/h. Windchill was below -40'C but the race ran anyway, because there was some promise that the temperatures would rise some, and the wind would abate some. These two things did happen, but not until well into the afternoon.

We started out in a bunch, but it didn't take long for the pack to stretch.

At the first checkpoint in St. Pierre Kim Mitchell caught me with an ice goatee.

In Niverville the perogies and bacon were good and necessary, even while wearing creepy latex gloves.

With Ian about to leave Niverville. Still cold at this point. Thank you Lyle for the pogies!
I will be gettin' me some o' dat. I'm not sure how it would have worked without them.  

Finished! With Ian and Charles at 6:22 PM! About 10.5 hours total.

My "tracker" data looked like this:

St Pierre -            CP1 in 9:52 

                            CP1 out 9:55

Crystal Springs - CP2 in 10:58

                            CP2 out 11:27

Niverville -         CP3 in 13:06

                            CP3 out 13:41

St Adolphe -        CP4 in 14:32

                            CP4 out 14:48

UM -                   CP5 in 17:14

                            CP5 out 17:17

Forks                                 18:22

It went well. The ride was 2 hours and 14 minutes faster this year. I was on the bike for 8 hours and 35 minutes. I also screwed up the last cue (of course) and missed the turn onto a path to get down to the river, so I rode around along Churchill Drive for a while trying to find it. Maybe that took 10 minutes? I'm not sure. Time and space go funny on a ride like this. Even when you're fed and watered your brain can get away on you. 

I also learned that on this ride I'd rather have more cold than more snow. The tough spots of last year's ride - the slogging through drifts of knee- and hip-deep snow and over fields of snowdrifts - were, for the most part, completely rideable this year. And in the cold, as long as you keep moving and don't get too warm or too cold you're good. I had planned to do a full top layers change twice, at checkpoints 2 and 4. I changed at Crystal Springs, which was necessary, but then I didn't need to for the rest of the ride.

Speaking of your brain getting away on you, before a race starts I've got all this nervous energy that can completely misguide me. I start wondering and having doubts and making insignificant changes or coming up with some new adaptation, probably just to manage the nerves. Anyway, at the time, in the moment as it were, I'm quite convinced that these adjustments are strokes of genius, rather than well-intentioned stupidity. 

Yesterday I had one of those moments. At the pre-race meeting on Friday night talking Ian about sweat and vapour barriers and managing moisture he said that he's heard that some guys strap diapers to their chests to both keep out the wind and to manage the sweat. In fact, I had wondered about doing something like this myself! I wasn't about to buy a package of Pampers to try it out, but I thought about some makeshift way to make something like a diaper for the ride. 

In the morning on the shuttle ride from Winnipeg to St Malo I had a breakthrough! I dreamed up a way to create my own diaper! A complete makeshift innovation! I cut a plastic bag in half and pinned my folded into quarters cotton hanky to it. Then I wrapped it under and around the straps of bib knickers to keep it next to me, and then put on my layers. Genius right!? Right. Well ... at Crystal Springs I once again (see an earlier post) had a clump of ice in the middle of my chest again, and I couldn't get the zipper of my jacket open. Pete helped me pull it off. Every layer above the diaper was completely soaked, and so was the hanky that was the diaper proper. No advantage. In fact it made things worse. No breathing, no drying.

On the whole the rest of the race went really well! The planners and organizers and volunteers of Actif Epica are first class! Supportive, caring, and helpful. Some might be able to do this ride without the food and encouragement at the checkpoints, but there'd be a whole lot less fun in it. Thanks guys!! I expect I'll be back at it next year. 

Bunyan Velo Story

A story I wrote about last year's Actif Epica race has been published in the latest issue of Bunyan Velo. It's a beautiful magazine about two-wheeled adventuring and I'm honoured to be included in it.

You can find the issue my piece is in, here at http://issuu.com/bunyanvelo/docs/bv05 at no cost, but please consider purchasing a hi-res pdf version of this issue and the four previous issues of the magazine. They're only $5 and it will help a small but vital publication keep working! We want these sort of "nice things" so sometimes we should be prepared to pay a little, don't you think?

Also look for a great piece by Mark Reimer about his and Graham Madden's summer Muerto ride. The cover features Mark's shot of Graham.

Actif Epica - Report 1 - The basics

I finished, in about 13 hours, and about 13th place. This is me coming in at The Forks, getting hugs from Bekah and Sara.

There was (and still is) a lot of snow out there, and the wind came in steady from the North at between 20 and 30 km/h for the whole day.

It was hard and I learned a lot about several things, most of which had to do with riding a bike in winter for more than 12 hours. This was not a commute.

Thanks so much to the organizers and volunteers and to Graham, Kevin, Luke, Mark (and at the end Svetlana) for riding along with me. My dogged inner spirit needed other dogs to keep me going at a few points.

Shortly I will say more about this, I'm just going to take enough time to say it with care (and hopefully with a few more photos).

Epica Prep 2 (and final, besides commutes of course ...)

It was colder today than last weekend (-25 ish with a 26 km NW wind for a windchill in the high -30s), so naturally I decided I'd go farther. Well, not naturally. Not naturally at all. I just considered that it would be a good test of equipment, and me. Mostly me. I'm excited about the race, but there are always doubts to contend with. It's better to put your head down and dig in a la Boxer: "I will work harder. [Suffering] is always right." Which was, in fact, half of a two-pronged meditation delivered at church today (glory be I attended church for the first time in about two months and the message fits) in which the pastor quoted Richard Rohr who says, reasonably I think, that there are two ways available to all human being to experience "transformational change" (all right, I admit, that that term right there leaves hanging the question, "change for better or for worse?" and I'm thinking Rohr was thinking "for better" but there's no way of guaranteeing that sort of thing), through great love, or through great suffering. Which begs the question, "If you bring 'great suffering' on yourself, does it count?" Of course I'm inclined to say ... it depends. But it is possible. I believe it. It's my religion. It must be. It's the thing I'm most consistent at in my spiritual endeavours, I bring suffering on myself. At least that's the way I see it, from way over here in "first-world-problem-land." At the end of the ride, I looked like this:

Anyway, it was cold and windy, and I worked harder. I rode 16 miles. For four of those miles I followed dirt roads that are not used in winter (intermittent, and often significant drifting - "sculpted," as Ian so eloquently put it), and for two of those miles I rode the Trans-Canada Trail, which the snowmobilers around here seem to think is fair game for them, despite the signs (just proving that people who sit on their asses and move themselves around by twitching a thumb are indeed illiterate asshats). From this I learned that it's better to ride on snow drifted in and hardened by the wind then it is to follow a snowmobile track, which may or may not hold you and your bike up. The remaining miles were on gravel, with a one mile or so reprieve of pavement and paved trails in town (A-town).

Which brings me to what I learned today.

The bike which looks like this,

works, though I would like to do a parallel ride with a fat bike, just to see. Adjustments from last week's ride are: added bar tape to my "aero" bars (bar-ends that I installed on the centre of the bar, to give me a few options for riding position); strapped and bungied my pannier on top of my seatpost (because it's bigger than most rackbags and seatpost bags, and because it works - for me), and removed the traps on the pedals (which impacts my pedalling efficiency, but makes remounting and starting in the middle of snowpack way easier). By Saturday I'll have added a handlebar bag for a bit more storage - likely for food, and somehow strapped my cue sheep/map bag (Sealline) to the front bars ... somehow.

My face and eyes worked today. What I mean is, I tried petroleum jelly on my face (as a wind barrier) rather than a neoprene mask, which made the goggles stay frost free waaaaaay longer. Although there was some frost on them, and if I was going to try to read the cue sheet I'd have to lift them up, I could use them for the whole ride today. Nice. And it seems, as I write this now, that my cheeks and nose have not been frost-bitten. I did not believe that petroleum jelly would work. Now I believe. Yet another small conversion for this small doubting believer.

My feet were warmer, but not entirely. I was wearing my Sorels, with new inserts, but I needed to stop when I did. It took about 15 minutes after I stopped for them to be right. It was a longer and colder ride, so I'm finding some comfort in that, but now I'm thinking about buying some plastic pedals to reduce the cold transfer. It can't hurt.

The water situation is solved. I bought a 2L Platypus bag (on sale at MEC) and put it into an old "Mountain Gear" camelback knockoff bag (from MCC). I put it on top of my base layer, and then put a thin fleece and wind layer over top, and ran the waterline up my sleeve and clipped it at my wrist. Just over half-way into the ride the waterline worked. It actually seemed warm. I also bought a line insulator for it, but I didn't use it today, and I don't think I'll need too. This set-up was less intrusive than I anticipated. I hardly noticed it at all. Win.

Food. I didn't bring any along, which was a mistake, because I'm going to stop halfway through most of the legs on Saturday and eat something, because, well, food, it does a body good. During the week though I threw a variety of bars, etc, into the freezer to see how hard things would get. My results have led me to decide on using dried figs (still pliant when frozen), Oskri fig bars, and Larabars (though I don't really like them). Each of these are dense with sugars, and stay pliable in the cold. I'm interested in other ideas too, but this is what I've got so far.

Baselayer. I bought a merino wool base layer, and it does keep you feeling warm, even when it's wet, but it doesn't solve the sweaty-wetness problem. I'm scared shitless about how wet I was after this ride. I'm going to bring along numerous dry base-layers to change into, along the way. I'll keep the merino wool on, even when it's wet, but I'll add a dry layer overtop of that, hoping that it will wick up some of the wet and help to keep the chill and shiver out.

Looking forward I love it that the race route has so many turns and changes, and that there aren't many long stretches on one road or trail. The mental distraction of navigating, and changing terrain, will help with managing the discomforts.

Here we go!

Epica prep report

The Actif Epica is a 130 km ride/race from St. Malo to Winnipeg, via dirt roads, gravel roads, and the Crow Wing Trail. It happens on Feb 15, in two weeks. I've signed up. The course map indicates five check-stops with "stages" varying in distance from 12 to 30 kms. Today I rode 12 miles (19.2 kms) to see what that might be like. I rode a circuit of 9 miles of dirt roads that are not cleared, with three miles of gravel all-weather roads. It was -18'C and the wind was about 13 kms from the NW. I rode North first, for 4 miles, West for 1 mile, South for 5 miles, and so on. There were a lot of drifts.

 Here's what I learned:

The bike

I commute to and from work (16 kms round trip) all winter, so I have an idea of what I'm in for. But I'm not going to use the cross bike a commute on for this race. On the advice of a racer from last year's race, who did use a cross bike, I've decided to ride a 26" mountain bike (no cash just now for a fat bike and, though I'm sorely tempted by them, I'm not certain yet), on which I have put the fattest tires I could find (2.65 inch downhills). They worked pretty well today. I had to get off three times, but for the most part I could ride over the drifts or follow the tracks of a whatever truck or tractor or snowmobile had gone before. I'm happy with the bike decision, though I'll have to adjust the set-up to get the right riding position. It's too upright for me. 

Shifting

You have to be patient, and anticipatory, when you shift. Even when it's only -18'C, the shifter and derailleur are pretty slow to "click" into place. I've got some aerosol de-icer I'm going to spritz into the levers to de-grease them. 

Goggles

I sweat. Even without a face mask, my goggles were frosting up at 4 miles. I didn't treat them with dish soap (which I definitely will), but I'm guessing it will be unlikely that I'll be able to use them for a full 20 kms. Either I'm going to have to slow down, and not generate as much heat, or I'll fog up. 

Sweat

Damn. I just sweat too much, and I have this lie I tell myself, that if I'm not sweating I'm not working hard enough. It's a pain in the ass, really. And it's really not great for this race. I wore three layers today: a lightweight hooded polypro baselayer, a lightweight zipped fleece, and a uninsulated windbreaker. I was not cold, ever. By the end of this 20 kms the base layer was completely wet, and my thin skullcap and the baselayer hood were fused, by ice, to my sideburns (shave them off?) and it hurt to remove them (1st world problem).

Boots

I was sure that my ankle high winter-rated Columbias would be enough, if I wore good merino wool socks. This has just proven not to be the case. I believe it'll be Sorels for me. I'll take the straps off the traps, and still use the plastic pieces to help stabilize my feet on the pedals.

Gloves

Awesome. Thank you Farm Service for your super leather-palmed, unbranded, work mitts. No problems there.

Legs

Two layers was enough. Bike shorts (obviously), a mid-weight base layer, and then a wind-barrier front overlayer (also tights) was just fine. Not hot, not cool. I may put something over my left knee, which has some sensitivity issues due to a past injury. 

All in all, I'd be fine with race day being a day like today. If I had a picture of the roads it'd look like snow drifts over a dirt road, and sometimes, just snow drifts, and no road. Good times ... sorta.

A pleasant holiday; a cold return

This year's winter break has been, well, wintry. As a clan we began by travelling to Canmore for five days of skiing. The weather never got colder than -10'C, and got as warm as 3'C. I spent four days skiing at the Nordic Centre and one day at Peter Lougheed Provincial Park. Four of those days were with fellow clan members, and one was solo, while the others took in the thrills and spills of Mt. Norquay.

(I have decided not to ski downhill. Maybe not ever again, but I certainly have lost my appetite for what used to give me thrills. Now I'm happy to avoid lifts and lift lines and lift tickets and equipment with weight like a stone to help gravity slam your ass down the slope. I dropped the kids and spouse off at the hill and headed back for the Nordic Centre.)

The Nordic Centre was in fine condition, and two night skis were the highlight. They light 6.5 kms of tracks and keep the lights on until 10 pm. While there's a $10 charge per skier for day use, at night you ski for free. Sweet!

The day at Peter Lougheed began climbing for 4.5 kms up the well-tracked WhiskyJack Trail, and then skiing a long way back down following a series of untracked trails that, after about 16 kms take you back to the parking lot. A total of more than 20 kms. Beautiful.

Up the WhiskyJack

Obligatory family photo at the "top"

Tall tall trees and fairytale snow

A detour resulting from the summer flood

This, my friends, is proper, sensible winter out-of-doors activity, in Alberta winter weather. The return home reminded us that we were Manitobans, and winter weather has its variations. Which is not to say that Alberta doesn't get cold. It's just that Manitoba always does. It may be a little earlier this year, but let's face it, we knew it was coming. Why are we so surprised? I don't know, but after skiing in -2'C, I couldn't bring myself to squeak and lurch my way around the trails here, at -25'C. (I still haven't skied here this season.) 

Which brings me to riding in the cold. I commute by bike all year 'round. I have done so for twenty-two of twenty-four years of my working career. Currently my commute is a reasonable, eight km one way, gravel (6.5 kms) and road (1.5) ride. Every year there are a few cold rides. By cold I mean -30'C or colder. Today was one of those days: -36'C, -46'C windchill (whatever that means); the wind came from the WNW at 20 kms, and to get to work I rode into it. It took me just over thirty minutes to get to work today.

At work, after the ride, I looked like this.

I'm a slow learner, perhaps because of an unhealthy tolerance for "getting by on something that works ... sort of". My goggles usually fogging up by the end of the ride. I sweat a lot. By the time I get to work I'm wet and hot (except for the extremities: fingertips, toe-ends, and one other member). I'm trying to figure out how to juggle the heat and moisture I'm generating with the need to keep the wind and cold out. Generally on an 8 km ride, it's not much of a concern, but I've registered for the Actif Epica, so I need to figure out how to ride at a steady pace for a long time, and not heat up (and sweat) over much, but stay just warm enough that I don't slowly frost up into a block of ice. It's a delicate, and vital, balance.

That, and I need to manage the goggle fog thing. BP at my lbs suggested dish-soap on the goggle lens. I tried it today with some success. On the way too work, when it was really cold, there was much much less fogging (icing actually) than usual. At the end of the day, on the way back, it was clear that the lens needed a second treatment. So it's a solution, but a high maintenance one. Maybe that's just the way it is on a bike at -30'C.