So Polar Roll MS30 is seemingly the low hanging fruit here. 26miles, 4000' climbing, Ramba trail system. Oh and apparently a pretty solid storm system coming through throughout the race week timeline.
The Fat recumbent concept had been rolling around in my head taking form since the FS Offroad recumbent saw it's first winter. That bike would simply sink it's 27.5x3 front tire in the snow, the back tire would spin, and you were done. So the front wheel would need to be driven as well. Maximum floatation would be key. Some sort of centralized drivetrain. A built in rack for gear(I mean if this actually works, maybe I'll give fatbike ultras another round and relive my Arrowhead/Tuscobia/Triple D days).
On my fourth iteration of the bike I had successfully built something deemed durable enough not to mechanically fail, and fully functional in having a visibly functional 2wd system(not something I've seen in other attempts). The primary drawback being that the thing weighs in at 93lb dry. Anyway, time was up, so it was time to see if I could get it across 26 miles of Polar Roll.
Race week: watch UP weather go from a solid season of accumulating snow to a week long meltdown the week before the race. Try to prepare for everything. Studded tires, spare layers, all the different levels of temperature preparations packed. Spare clothes in the truck in case of travel issues. Tractor suitcase weights in the bed for added traction. Farley packed along with the 2wd recumbent in case something hits the fan before the race. No snow till an hour and a half south of Marquette on the drive in Wednesday night, increasing till the 3-?' tall piles throughout Marquette. No riding Thursday due to warm Temps and soft trails. Out early Friday to try groomed trails on the 2wd fat recumbent. Heavy, wet, wind blown snow basically plastered to me by the time I ride from Ore Dock to South trails, melting and soaking through my soft shell pant layer as i go, couldn't find my mini pump prior to the ride.(Might have address that before race start). 20ft into a not recently groomed leg of trail, I bail back to the road and notice the front wheel has lost drive. Drive side cog spider on the CV joint has peeled apart at my crappy tig weld.
Off to actually meet some local machinist. Been on my to do list to get a better handle on how running a machine shop up here might look like anyway. Shop in town is closed. Give Solid Bloch a ring and Kyle fits me right in. Super nice guy, melts the spider back together super solid. Back in time for packet pickup and final prep. Find a nice set of rain shell pants with full side zippers and a nice Topeak mini pump that's actually an upgrade over the fiddly nature of screwing my Leyzne mini floor pump connector on during pressure changes.
Race day: Drive to Ishpeming, more snow overnight, Temps dropped a good 10-15 degrees, a good thing. Chip ice out of the belt drive, makes for a slightly frustrating time getting the front wheel on. Realize I forgot my Oat bars, so it tots, hot chocolate, and whatever I find along the way for nutrition. Not a great start.
Gear: Grid fleece balaclava, Epic pogies, flip mitts, Byrnje mesh base, expedition weight Wool, Mid weight Mavic winter jacket, Desoto shorts, grid fleece thermal bottom, Black Diamond rain shell pants, 12" Swiftwick socks, Lake MXZ400 boots(last minute upgrade over my MXZ304s). Spare base layers, mitts, down top/bottom, heavy mittens in the dry bag. Outbound Headlight, Orfos USB powered head and tail lights for visibility. Nitecore Summit 10,000mah battery bank. Been riding with all this stuff(aside from the boots) for a month and a half through our new normal Iowa bi-polar winter. Alternating between snow and mud weekly. Felt it all worked well in conditions and terrain I have to test in. Wanted to upgrade layer systems, but simply didn't happen in time.
The start of the debacle: line up towards the back of the chute with my experiment on wheels, listen to Todd's metal, bell's, cheers, wtf is that thing, did you build that? Count down and up the hill towards the trail. Some snowshoe folk outpacing the bikes on pavement! Climb past Eddie, hi Eddie! Some energetic dudes with a chainsaw at the end of the pavement climb. The bike pushing begins.
Push the pig: the bike pushing continues. For 12 miles...Generally speaking the trail surface is an 18" wide set of stomped in shuffle steps kicked into the left side of the trail next to a 6" wide tire rut on the right side of the trail. Any attempt to ride without perfect balance has you falling off the tire rut into the chewed up steps and stalling out. Downhills are the respite, jump on, tripod ski down, jump off, continue pushing. A few of the larger climbs have me losing footing or simply running out of MOJO to push the beast without rest. The wide-ish seat, useless stoker handles outside the seat, and thermos sticking out the side have my bashing my legs when pushing closer to the bike.
Push, push, push: just keep pushing. Note that my relatively new to me Garmin 1050 is set to start/stop at a set mph and hasn't tracked a bunch of slow miles, so at least half of them. Fiddle with trying to find that setting, but not really in the mindset for electronics diagnostics for some reason. Well, I'll know I'm at the finish. Just go till then. Drained one thermos, working on the other. A few mouthfuls of tots. Those are actually pretty solid winter ultra fuel, well salted, Cinnamon, sugar, Chile powder. Those nice rain shell pants are sticking and squeaking on the knees of my thermal under layer. Extra energy required to get feet on pedals. Finally get to a little firepit checkpoint of sorts. Grateful for a handful of grapes. Two cases of beer, if only i could convert beer into water. Alas. Onward.
Up the hill, down the hill: big loop out and back. A little less traffic here, as sane people saw they could bail and skip this loop did so. A few moments of extended downhill riding, even some pedaling! Still not really rideable. Kinda have a little crew in here. Some chats. Back to the little firepit checkpoint. A mile or so to the road crossing they say, probably better trail after that. Ramba.
Chicken crosses road: finally to the road. It's like 3pm. Well, that's not great. Fill the thermoses with water, drink them back down, more aid ahead they say. Pickles, Nerd clusters, more water, heaven. More aid. More pickles, more Nerd clusters, coke. Try to convince a fellow sufferer to continue suffering, choices made, keep moving. Starting to look a little dimmer out. Concerned that I've been pushing most of the day with my jacket fully unzipped, but still managed to soak it through. Would have taken it off, but feared it'd freeze solid, and then be unable to put it back on. Voice concerns to a trail Viking that I may very well run out of light. He ensures me that this next section is six miles and spits me back out just down the road. Off again. Somewhere here I come across a fella looking for the quickest way out. Then another fella stuck in the snow up to his waist. We unstick the guy and head on down the trail. I voice that I'm having doubts to the guy looking to bail and he offers his water up. Solid encouragement.
Trail is definitely more rideable. Still pushing a bunch of the climbs, but hey, 4mph is still 3x faster than I moved all morning. Some super cool trail in here, super pretty. Long squiggly uphill on a ridge, turn around and go back down the valley, repeat three times. Still pretty neat. Some tight corners to drag the bike around in there.
The end of the beginning: Pondering my future here. Managed to lose a thermos somewhere. Rusty bike. Down, down down. Soaked layers high in mind. Could swap to fresh thermal layers, but fear the soaked coat will soak it from outside in. I know I can stay warm with effort, but fueling, hydration, and pace limitations make that a risky endeavor. Good on lights, good on bailout survival gear, trail is more rideable. Starting to get darker in the woods. Start up Sissy Pants, heading towards Pickle Jar. Up, up, up. Meet a snowshoer coming down. She chuckles "big balls.." I respond "Yet not successful". Pull up the map, where exactly am I? Long ways up yet. Chances of finishing this year? Yea, could probably do it. Would likely take another 6 hours. It's 6pm. Think I've learned what I'm gonna learn this year. My ultimate responsibility is to come back home safe so I can revise the weak points and try again next year. 1.5miles down the hill to the high school. Wet gear off, dry gear on, puffy on. Bike back in the truck. Hey there's that missing muni pump right there in the bottle pocket under the bars, ffs..Race coat is indeed frozen solid by the time I'm driving back to Marquette.
Lessons: Lots learned with this one on many fronts. Happy to experience a more plentiful winter up here. If we going to achieve our goal of living somewhere on the superior I'll definitely be upping my snow removal game.
Walk behind snowblower, skid steer mounted snowblower, utility sled all seem pretty mandatory if I'm going to be fully functional here.
All bike builds going forward have to be lighter and be built with pushing in mind. Driveline on the 2wd fat recumbent was good(after Kyle fixed my weld). The Pinion C1.12i worked well when i could ride. The 24x6.2 Molenda/Nextie 24x120 wheelset will be on the next build. I'll probably attempt full belt drives in attempt to remove chain weight. The bar/stem setup needs to be one piece and pretty burly. The bar slipped in the clamp which changed the steering a few times. With all the pushing and crashing that interface took way more pressure than it was designed to withstand. Definitely doubling water carrying capacity.
If anyone finds my flip top thermos out there, I'd love to have it back. That design works super well in extreme cold.
The untested MXZ400s did well. Toes stayed toasty throughout. Minimal snow got inside the boots, even when waist deep postholing ensued. The forefoot Boa dial did get popped loose when postholing, so that was a little annoying. I'll be trying an un-insulated active wind shell over some variety of active thermal layer(Primaloft Activ Evolve/Alpha Direct/Octafleece), over the Byrnje mesh baselayer next year to prevent my primary failure this year. I'll probably do something similar with the pogies, as a more adjustable windshield over thermal layer system there would aid in reducing weight and preventing excessive sweating.
I'm going to build a custom tyvek roll top duffel to more easily access and organize gear. Should be quite the weight reduction over the rafting drybag I used this year.
I've already addressed the Garmin hijinks with setting up a separate mode for Fatbiking with start/stop disabled. Maybe I should rename it 906 mode.
The rest is just continued training. I've got a good couple months of consistent 3-5day riding weeks, and we'll just keep doing that and extending mileage till Crusher seems more within my base.
Crusher bike build is imminent. Carbon frame, carbon wheels, 2.8s, 2x11, at least rear suspension. Pushable.
Thanks for reading. I'll probably try to write a backlog of bike builds. As stated, this was revision 4 of this bike with lots of lessons along the way. And that front wheel drive assembly came from the V2 attempt of an Offroad recumbent, which was 2 wheel steer with dual linkage suspension, belt drive, with the C1.12i Pinion. Been a journey since that first Margi 50 on recumbent.
No comments:
Post a Comment