I always say that harsher weather favours riders like me who are on the slower side of slow but have strong cold-weather skills. When everyone is pushing their bikes through deep snow, then everyone is basically going the same speed as me.
This was not a year for harsh weather, so I am thrilled to have come in at 5 days 2 hours 18 minutes on the ITI 350. My total distance was very close to 350 miles with the bonus miles I put on finding Rohn and making a wrong turn on to Cow Lake and beyond.
I worked to my strengths, and pushed myself hard, but did not compromise safety. I’m glad to be home. I believe I have enough footage to piece together a short video, but I was definitely not as focused on photography as I was on riding. My GoPro was also cutting my video clips short due to the cool weather. Stay tuned for more.
I’ll definitely have more to say about this later, I always try to pull lessons out from my experiences, and no matter how happy I am about this result, like everyone else, I have room for improvement.
Congratulations Doug! Nicely done sir!
I found your site after your ‘recent’ appearance on bikepacking adventures podcast! Well done, curious about your training leading up to this event. Hours/km’s a week?.?
It’s always difficult to judge fatbike training by distance, so I mostly used time. I tried to fit in about 25 hours per week of riding, and I mixed it up between intervals, tempo rides, with at least one 5 hour ride per week I feel like I still have lots of progress to make in the training realm. My biggest strengths are the survival skills, for instance, I found I could stop and be in my sleeping bag with a pot on the stove to boil in just a minute or two.