Triple D

Some background:  I’m a novice recreational cyclist.  I spend most of my riding on a small set of singletrack trails not far from my house.  I had not touched a bicycle for about fifteen years, and then two years ago I spent about $600 on a Gary Fisher Kaitai.  It is sort of a hybrid bike with a heavy leaning toward a 29er mountain bike due to the frame.  The main shortcomings are the front fork and the rear triangle not having enough room for anything bigger than a 29 x 1.9 tire, and a narrow set of rims.  It came with 700×38 hybrid tires, but I’ve been running it off-road with 700×45 Panaracer FireCross tires for some time.  It works pretty well for me; the bike is definitely not the weak point in the man+bike equation.  (I’m not in ideal shape, unless round is an ideal shape)  Either way, I’ve been having a stupid amount of fun riding it in just about any way possible.  It’s taken me on countless trips through the woods, across Iowa, over a particle accelerator, through the hills of Wisconsin, and down a rails-to-trail bike path called Heritage Trail several times.  I think I’ve more than got my money out of it over the last 2000 miles.

Sometime last fall I ran across some links and blog posts talking about a winter bike race called Triple D that is held on the Heritage Trail I mentioned above.  It's 62 miles, and it's held in the dead of winter.  Biking in the snow sounded like an interesting set of problems to solve, and I was really intrigued by the dedicated snow bikes.  Maybe it’s my childhood spent playing on and around construction equipment, or time spent driving jeeps over ridiculous terrain, but I do appreciate the advantage of oversized tires.  (This turns out to be ironic later)  As the weather got colder, I set a goal of entering this bike race.  I had no delusions of being able to actually finish, having read previous accounts on various blogs, but I figured getting to the point where I felt comfortable enough to enter it would be a good way of forcing myself to not park the bike when the weather turned cold like I did last year.  So…  after continuing to ride as the weather turned nasty and maybe a dozen rides in actual snow and ice conditions, I signed up.

In addition to loading up on some clothing for riding in the winter, I knew I needed a different set of tires.  I borrowed some tires to try to go wider than my normal 700×45, but didn’t have much luck.  A set of 29 x 2.2s would hit the top of the fork in front and would rub against the front derailleur in the rear.  I bought a set of 700×40 Nokian W240 tires (thanks Peter White Cycles), and they proved to work out really well in some conditions.  I rode different paved bike paths with large sections of glare ice without any fear or lack of traction.  I rode through some really deep powdery snow, although only for short sections here and there.  On Heritage Trail, where most of the race would take place, they worked pretty well so long as there was a well-packed snowmobile track in which to ride.  I knew that how far I got would depend on trail conditions that day, but the last few times I tried them they were working pretty well.