Sport through the lens

Finland is one of countries with endless forests and countless lakes. This means it has to have endless forest roads leading from one to another lake, right? Yes quite right, but not being local brings some “problems” and problems. On the other side, the reason we took our mountain bikes with us, is to solve those “problems”. :)

As I wrote in one of previous posts, we packed our mountain bikes in car, and drive up north, all the way to Finnish Lapland. We unpack them few times in between already, especially because “unpacking” meant taking them out of car and putting wheels on them, so 2 minutes of “work”. But until Lapland, we only made few short trips not longer then 25 or 30km. But then comes Lapland and nice partially cloudy day, and my first ride in Lapland :)

For beginning, I packed too much stuff into pockets of my cycling jersey. To be sure, I took for first time in my life spare tire and one of those small CO2 pumps, just that I wouldn’t be walking for 20km if something would go wrong. Then again for first time in my life I packed small pocket camera, which looks small compared to my usual gear (Canon 1dmk2 with 70-200/2.8 or 300/2.8 lens), but once packed into pocket of my cycling jersey, Canon A710 IS didn’t look that small anymore, so after adding my phone and bluetooth GPS antenna, of course that’s only map I had, pockets were completely full. If I would need to take my sleeveless jacket off, I couldn’t fit it in pockets anymore. But of course I won’t need to remove it anyway, since it’s not that warm. Well wrong :) It got warm, but with no place in pockets, I was forced to keep it on.

Before I went, I planned approximate path on those forest trails on map, and quickly calculated it will be only about 40 to 45km plus “a little bit” to come to beginning of that forest trail and back from end of other end of trail. I don’t know why, but I’m used to streets in Slovenia, so if everything ends on same street, this “a little bit” can’t be much, right? Wrong… again! This “a little bit” was a bit more then 10km to come to beginning of trail, and about 20km to come back “home” from end of trail.

So if everything would be right, whole trip wouldn’t be “only” 40-45km, but about 70km. Of course that means not getting lost, which is pretty much impossible thing to do with my way of riding, when I take map out only when there’s no other chance anymore, and that means when I’m 5km off the trail already :)

Of course I didn’t pack any “road food” for so short trip either and for so short ride, I don’t need much water either. Remember I was thinking I will do only 40km :) On top of that, I started fast, and after I turned to beginning of forest road, I was getting about 30km/h on bad road with my heart rate constantly between 170 and 175 (normally I ride around 140). Of course, it’s just 40km so I can do it faster, so it will have at least some sense :)

After about 40km with average speed of 29km/h, I already emptied 1 whole bottle and half of other 0.75L bottle. At that moment I slowly started to think, that whole trip won’t be done in 1hour and 15 minutes, and it will take “a little bit” more then just 45km. 15km later, with only about sip or two of water left, with my legs feeling empty because of pretty fast pace, I finally realized that I have another 20 to 25km to home. There were only two chances after this… go “slow”, which means for me on normal forest road and 2.25″ trail tires somewhere around 24km/h, or keep hammering as fast as possible. And as normally in such occasions, I went with second option… afterall I will be done faster this way :)

But good thing with being in Lapland is, there’s no problem with being late. Sun is still shining at midnight, so I didn’t need to worry about dark catching me on trail. But those 20km of gravel with surprisingly huge uphills for flat country were pretty bad, but I survived :) On the end cyclemeter stoped on 83km and 28km/h average speed. Not bad for my first ride in Lapland. And definitely worth carrying bikes all the up to north of Europe :)

Now few more kilometers of traveling, and we are in Yllas and Levi, one of main sport centers in Finland, where I hope there will be even more chances for some great mountain bike riding. Until then…