Alpinum wrote:Congrats to all.

Did you finally finish off pizzilla?

Ian, do you believe you would have benefited of full fat?

Last weekend I was out with a friend. He ran 90 mm rims (guess) and 4.5" Juggernauts, I 83 mm rims and 4.8" Bud/Lou. We both believed to see a slight difference. Of course it's difficult to say due to pressure and tread of tires, but he seemed to struggle more on really soft stuff.

Love the idea to ride for days up north from Rovaniemi. Be it in a race or not.

There has been much debate on tyre width post-race. Three out of the top four ran ~5" tyres, but the guy that won was on 4" Husker Dü's. In the end they all finished together and the first person into the designated room at the hotel won, but he was able to maintain pace with all others guys to be in that position at the end.

What I think I've learnt is that 5" tyres are a safer bet - you spend less time changing pressure (if at all, if you get it right) and are able to deal generally with softer snow. Rider ability is a factor. I saw some folk clearly not getting on well in the soft snow when their tyre choice ~5" would suggest better control and flotation. However, I've run my 4" tyres ridiculously low this past week and yesterday crossed some crazily soft snow on the lake to get to the Laavu we bivvied at. In that scenario, they performed as well as 5" tyres did, which is what the two guys I was with were using.
Fact is though, I can't get something like a 5" Lou in the back of the Puffin. I might give Dillinger 5's a go though, which are about 4.5" on a 85mm rim.

Cheers Ian

Might want to wait for the new 45nrth rubber:
http://www.bikerumor.com/2015/02/21/gro ... nderbeist/

It's really close with a 83 mm rim and 4,8" on my bike and can imagine to upgrade to plastic rims with 90 mm come next winter, making tires like the above very interesting.

There's also a huge difference in pace when riding in some one's tracks
Guess that's like drafting for roadies...

p.s.: Lots of info on tyre widths on mtb-news.de forum. Just search for rim and tyre. Or ask me if lost in translation.

Finally caught up with everything now. Congratulations to Nigel for winning 66 North
Sounds like Ian had a great race too (9th on today's published results), the difference in his kit setup to mine is staggering!

The pace from the off was crazy, those front guys were flying. Did I see Nigel go over the bars on the river?

I'll do a full write up soon and link it in. Was a great event though, once tiredness sets in, it's a long ride with little chance to recover. Massive learning curve for me too, was still trying different tyre pressures during the race. Went down to 4psi and was still pushing, can't believe Ian went to 2

Official results here for the 150
http://www.rovaniemi150.com/results/

voodoo_simon wrote:The pace from the off was crazy, those front guys were flying. Did I see Nigel go over the bars on the river?

Maybe.....I was using Ian as my pacemaker and the pack split and I went left....up to my hubs in snow!

johnnystorm wrote:...up to my hubs in snow!

There's a pattern here...

Nothing if not predictable! I pity anyone who follows my line choice!

Finally, I have got around to writing up about the race!

Pictures are taken from facebook from various sources

https://singlespeedsimon.wordpress.com/ ... ospective/

voodoo_simon wrote:Finally, I have got around to writing up about the race!

Pictures are taken from facebook from various sources

https://singlespeedsimon.wordpress.com/ ... ospective/

Great ride and read.


Cheers

Cheers Alpinum, learnt a lot of lessons during the race

Was a great experience for anyone wanting to race or ride in such conditions, highly recommend it to anyone (well, to the right person at least!)

Managed to get a few blog posts together ...

The race

http://shoestring-racing.blogspot.co.uk ... event.html

The gear

http://shoestring-racing.blogspot.co.uk ... -gear.html

That was good read, Simon

Gives a better impression of the general conditions and difficulty of the race than perhaps my write up did...

Edit: and Paul too - good account of the gear there. Guess I should pull something together along those lines myself...

Cheers Ian. It's funny the contrast between us two in the race. After checkpoint 6, you dropped tyre pressure to 2psi and rode the tricky section for 1 hour, whilst I didn't go lower than 4 (for fear of a pinch flat) and so pushed for 2 hours to the road. That was only about 8km too

lovely write-up Paul, both articles make a good read

Great reports guys

Reading them all was a beard part of the minimum kit list?

Even the women were sporting beards*





*This may not be true

I take it nobody saw any Aurora Borealis ?

There was last night (18th March) There are some incredible pictures coming from Finland today

I'm going to be in Finland (Helsinki) for one night only with work, long shot but I believe I have a 1 in 30 chance this time of year (clouds and background light not withstanding) of getting a glimpse if I bugger off in the hire car Gotta be worth a punt.

Zippy wrote:I take it nobody saw any Aurora Borealis ?

I saw a lot of my front wheel as I pedalled head down. After that the pub would have needed a glass roof for Ian and me to see the Northern Lights.

Zippy wrote:I take it nobody saw any Aurora Borealis ?

The night before the race, there was a spectator viewing of the lights, sadly at 1am and I was in bed. The night of the race, a finnish lady pointed them out to me, and said it was the start of the lights, but I could only see different shades of black when I looked up

For the week most of us were there, it was cloudy. The week before was (apparently) much better

Mike and me saw them last Tuesday night from near Nant y Moch ... we only realised what they were the next day.

We can't even see a blinking solar eclipse down here

Teensy pic of Ian and a couple of Simon in the Rov article in MBUK!

Yippeeee, I'm famous . Just ran out to buy MBUK, but got last months version

Think in the first picture Ian is mocking my choice of helmet