This is a supplement to our winter biking booklet, which covers trail riding in the Fairbanks area. Here we go into more detail on points that may be of interest to Iditasport participants.
Setting up the bike for Iditasport is relatively simple. The human is the complicated part of the system. You, the rider, will have to keep extremities and body core warm, stay hydrated, minimize sweating, eat enough, avoid damaging muscles and joints, keep up your morale and find your way on the trail. All the bike can do for you is help you go faster and not cause extra problems.
Drinking enough water is critically important. A number of racers scratch each year when they fail to drink enough, get severely dehydrated, lose the ability to digest food and become sick and/or hypothermic. It's possible to recover from this with rest, rehydration and careful eating but the process takes most people at least eight hours and being sick on the trail is no fun. It's easier and more pleasant to stay well hydrated. An average person exercising in dry cold needs at least one quart of water per hour to avoid dehydrating. It's unlikely that you'll be able to consume at that rate during the event; you will become dehydrated. By drinking as much water as you can, you'll minimize the effects of dehydration and you'll feel better and go faster.
Camelbaks aren't trouble free. They can leak or siphon their contents onto you and their drinking tubes can freeze. The first two problems aren't common, frozen tubes are. Work with your drinking system, under winter conditions if possible, before the event to find and cure its weak points. Try insulating the drinking tube, keeping it under clothes and blowing back into the tube or raising it while pinching the tip to drain it after drinking.
Some riders have done well with homemade insulated covers for their frame-mounted water bottles. Try running a drinking tube down into the bottle to get past the frozen top layer. Carrying the bottle upside down will keep the top from freezing before you can finish what's inside.
If you're adding powdered food to your water, premeasure the powder into the amounts you'll need for each water bottle or Camelbak. Use ziplock bags to carry these portions. A light plastic funnel will speed up your refill operations.
Several racers become sick each year from using unfamiliar food or overconcentrating their liquid food. Test your race food on training rides, especially long cold rides. Find out what works for you and don't make last minute changes. Remember that liquid food is still food; you will need to drink additional water.
If you'll be spending time at the checkpoints (most people do) bring your own cup and spoon.
A lot of that water you'll be drinking will leave through your skin and will need to pass through your clothes. At temperatures much below freezing, the pores in Gore-Tex and other breathable-waterproof materials quickly clog with frozen moisture, leaving you no better off than if you were wearing coated nylon. Use outer clothes with highly breathable back and sides (light pile or knitted fabrics work well) and windproof fronts. Our favorite brand over the years has been Kucharik.
No matter what your outer layer, you'll saturate your clothes in a few hours. Wear the lightest clothes that will keep you comfortable, with a wicking layer like Capilene or Drilete next to your skin. Overdressing and sweating will leave you just as cold as underdressing and will also waste precious water.
Carrying a second base layer will let you change into dry clothes about midway into the ride.
Heat packs are small envelopes filled with powdered iron and oxidizers. They can warm hands, feet or water bottles for hours. Some people use them as part of their standard winter set-up, others carry them for emergencies. Grabber Mycoal is a widely available brand.
Any mountain bike that's good enough for serious off road riding will work for the Iditasport. The top finishers' bikes over the years have mostly been quite standard, with special rims and carefully chosen tires. Suspension, hydraulic brakes, disc wheels and other trick equipment haven't offered any real benefits. Two-wheel drive looks promising but the only one tried so far broke about one third of the way through the race.
Lightening your bike is always a good thing but unless you have an unlimited budget you can save more weight for less money by lightening your other equipment first. For example, by eliminating rear rack and panniers, mounting your sleeping bag under your handlebars and carrying your other gear in a large seat bag and a main triangle bag, you can save about three pounds in bags and racks. You'll actually save more weight since you'll have to reduce the size and amount of your other equipment.
Set up your bike carefully and test all your equipment thoroughly before the event.
Use Loctite on all the small threaded fasteners.
Make sure that your freewheel or freehub will work in the cold. If you can't test ride at -30 F, the safest route is to degrease the freewheel or freehub. See your favorite bike shop or call us for details.
Glue your tires to your rims with tubular tire glue or 3M Fast Tack all the way around one side.
Install a new chain at least a week before the event and put some miles on it in all gears.
Repacking hubs, bottom bracket, headset and pedals with lighter grease will make the bike easier to pedal and steer in the cold. We use Lubriplate Mag-1 since it stays the softest in extreme cold.
Clean your gear and brake cables and either leave them dry or lubricate them with something no thicker than Triflo. Thicker lubricants will interfere with indexed shifting in the cold.
Goretex RideOn cable and housing offers a real advantage in extreme cold since it requires no lubrication and has less internal friction than conventional cable and housing.
You can reinforce the housing with 3/16-inch heat shrink tubing to avoid having the plastic crack in the cold.
The most common bike problems we see in the Iditasport are flats due to tire creep, racks and panniers damaged by rough trails and crashes, and broken chains. So your repair kit should include spare tubes, pump, chain tool and spare links and some tie wire and duct tape. Beyond these essentials, consider what's likely to go wrong with your bike that would keep you from riding on to one of the tech support checkpoints. Keep in mind that you'll be working under difficult conditions so only the simplest repairs will be feasible.
For riding on soft snow, tire width, tread pattern and pressure are the critical variables. The double wide rim (Snow Cat) has proven itself a major advantage in the last five runnings of Iditasport.
The tires that have worked best for us on snow so far (as of 11-96) are the Continental Competition Pro-2 for the rear and the Smoke Dart 2.2 for the front. WTB's Velociraptors are unusually good for having a smaller casing. Appropriate tire pressure varies with conditions. You'll have to experiment. It's usually better to take the time to make pressure changes as soon as you think they're needed, rather than wasting energy fighting the bike on tires that are too hard or too soft.
Beginning snow riders almost always run their tires too hard. As the snow gets softer, so should your tires. "When in doubt, let air out."
Mini pumps offer performance similar to that of medium-sized frame pumps. You can keep them warm inside your jacket so they work better in the cold.
Presta valves are less prone to freezing up and easier to inflate and let air out of than Schraders. If your rims are drilled for Schrader valves, you can use either type of tube in an emergency.
If you use conventional pedals you'll have the easiest time choosing and setting up your footwear. If you want to go clipless you'll have to devise a way to attach cleats to winter footwear or to insulate compatible riding shoes. Many people have done this successfully.
Some riders are comfortable in a summer racing shoe with thick socks and booties, others find heavily insulated winter boots to be barely enough.
The popular SPD-style cleat (Shimano, Onza, Ritchey etc.) attaches to the shoe with two closely spaced bolts. In a soft sole these bolts don't resist the torque required to release the cleat very well. Some stiffer layer must be attached to the sole and the cleat attached to it. You canmake your own from metal or plastic or buy the adaptor made by Syntace, which is meant to attach SPD cleats to Look-compatible shoes. The three widely spaced Lookholes give good support for the cleat.
Powergrips have also been popular for Iditasport. They're available in an extra-long version for winter use.
Go on long rides (6-8 hours) under the worst conditions your area has to offer. Try setting up your stove and sleeping system at the end of a long cold ride. Do you need extra clothes for this job? Can you wait in the cold while your stove melts snow?
Evaluate your survival gear in terms of what you would need to get through 24 hours if you had to camp out while you were already soaked, cold and too sick or hurt to keep riding. The Iditasport organization has done a remarkable job over the years of finding and rescuing all of the participants who have gotten in trouble but it's just a matter of time until someone, maybe you, has to rely on their own survival gear.
Starting in 1995, participants have been required to carry a minimum of 15 pounds of gear. Since the serious weight reducers have gotten their setups below 10 pounds, this rule should encourage you to carry equipment and supplies beyond the absolute minimum for survival. For example, take more or better food, extra clothes or a warmer sleeping bag.
The sheer exhaustion that comes from riding in the cold for 24 hours and more surprises most people. Pacing and attitude become extremely important in such a long event. All of the first-time Iditabikers I've talked with have said they wished they'd done more long rides. If you can manage a weekly eight hour ride, with some twelve hour rides in the month before the event, Iditabike will be a lot more pleasant for you. Speed isn't important, you just need to get used to spending long hours on the bike in the cold. Building endurance takes time; start your Iditasport program in the fall and back off if you feel yourself getting burned out mentally or physically.
You can expect to do some pushing even in years when the conditions are most favorable. An average year will require some long walks. Many strong cyclists find pushing a bike alone through the wilderness very hard psychologically as well as physically. Run each week to help prepare for this. Some top finishers have done weekly bike pushing workouts in deep snow.
| Back to AWS MainPage | Back to Iditasport Tips Page |