Tag: rides

Birkebeinerrittet Tomorrow

(Yes, I recycled my headline from last year, thanks for noticing)

Yet again I set sail (Yes, that’s what you do when you’re biking) over the mountain between Rena and Lillehammer tomorrow! 94.5kms of gravel, dirt and mud awaits! The weather seems to be pretty OK tomorrow for the area (a mm of downpour), but the forecast for tonight seems a bit rainy. It’s going to make everything a bit slippery tomorrow at least, but hopefully the roads are up to standard and everything goes as planned.

I’ve recently bought a new bike, so this will be the first trip really long trip with a new set wheels (managed to do about 150kms during the last seven days to at least settle everything in). Looking forward to it!

Three goals for this year too, and amazingly they’re the same as for last year:

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

I finished in 5:47 last year, but I’m feeling a tad more optimistic this year (.. well, I always do). Five hours, here I come!

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.