Birkebeinerrittet Tomorrow

Well, tomorrow’s the day when the regular birkebeinerrittet mountain bike race is held (over 3000 people already finished the race today, in the first “Fredagsbirken”). The organizers had to set up an extra race day because of the number of people signing up; the primary spots were gone in 90 seconds. I’m one of those who managed to get my spot during those 90 seconds, so tomorrow at 13:00 I’m starting from Rena, hopefully finishing in Lillehammer somewhere around five hours later. I’ve just added 3kgs of dead weight to my backpack, as all participants have to have at least 3.5kgs on their back. My dad actually still had the led pack we made for dead weight when I last competed in the race in 1996, so well, it’s going on it’s second run!

Primary goal: finishing Secondary goal: finishing below 5 hours. Third goal: escape death.

Gadgetting Up The Bike

A good day for internet shopping! After spending some time riding my bike the last months, I’ve finally decided to purchase a proper cycle computer. After riding the regular track together with Anders today, he sent me the files from the run from his Garmin Edge 305. I’ve delayed this decision for a very long time, but when I saw that the files were pure XML and that the bundled training software actually weren’t that bad, I were sold.

So off we went to the internet to search for a Garmin Edge for a fair price here in Norway. Kartbutikken turned out to have the best prices, and they have the Garmin Edge 205 for a special price right now! I do however want support for heart rate monitoring and more importantly, the rate of pedaling (cadence). This meant upgrading to at least the Garmin Edge 305, but as it turned up to be hard to get it for a fair price, I rather went all the way and got the Garmin Edge 705! It’s a bad mother.. lover, and supports everything. Being a bit of a map nerd, I’m getting excited just thinking about mapping these beautiful paths on a map. Yeeehaaaw!

I’ll be sure to bring it along when I’m doing Grenserittet in just about two weeks time (~80 km).

Bonus points for using “gadgetting” for the first time.