jambee
06-03-2015, 10:01 AM
Last weekend a bunch of riders from Europe got together to ride in an area called Dalsland in Sweden.
Some initial pictures and description are here: http://pages.rapha.cc/rides-cat/dalsland-runt.
As one of the riders I can attest that the ride was epic. After landing in Gothenburg airport, meeting some mates from the Netherlands and Austria, we built our bikes, stored the bags in the airport lockers and rode the 100km to the meeting point.
Then the ride started. The first part was a beautiful, but mostly road, ride to a huge lake where we all got assigned little cabanas and had dinner.
That ride was only 84km with very little gravel.
Day 2 started with rain and did not stop. The temperature dropped to 7 degrees (that's 44 F for you) and the rain was relentless. The ride was mostly on gravel roads that day which meant that within a few hours of riding we were covered in mud and dirt (https://instagram.com/p/3UTiXQyRXV/?taken-by=jambi). It was a miserable day especially once almost all disk brakes stopped working and road brakes lost most of their rubber. I have never seen so many completely gone brake pads. In one of the best descents I had to brake with my shoe. It was infuriating since my brake pads were fine, but I needed to tighten the levers. This was not possible since I had no sensation left in my hands and my hands were shaking too much. Even the Swedes were horrified, but we rode through and had a lot of fun in the mud.
Day three was a great ride through the beautiful and now dry Swedish country side. The ride could have been done quickly, but the route took us through loops in a nature reserve, again mostly on dirt, and the views were stunning.
Something that really stuck with me was the diverse bikes on the ride. From the 65 riders, there were probably half with road bikes using 25 mm tires. There was even a lady riding a BMC all carbon road bike. She smoked me easily. The rest of the bikes ranged from Specialized AWOL (two riders had the limited edition AWOL X Polar) and all sorts of mutant all roads.
Great adventures and stories for days.
Some initial pictures and description are here: http://pages.rapha.cc/rides-cat/dalsland-runt.
As one of the riders I can attest that the ride was epic. After landing in Gothenburg airport, meeting some mates from the Netherlands and Austria, we built our bikes, stored the bags in the airport lockers and rode the 100km to the meeting point.
Then the ride started. The first part was a beautiful, but mostly road, ride to a huge lake where we all got assigned little cabanas and had dinner.
That ride was only 84km with very little gravel.
Day 2 started with rain and did not stop. The temperature dropped to 7 degrees (that's 44 F for you) and the rain was relentless. The ride was mostly on gravel roads that day which meant that within a few hours of riding we were covered in mud and dirt (https://instagram.com/p/3UTiXQyRXV/?taken-by=jambi). It was a miserable day especially once almost all disk brakes stopped working and road brakes lost most of their rubber. I have never seen so many completely gone brake pads. In one of the best descents I had to brake with my shoe. It was infuriating since my brake pads were fine, but I needed to tighten the levers. This was not possible since I had no sensation left in my hands and my hands were shaking too much. Even the Swedes were horrified, but we rode through and had a lot of fun in the mud.
Day three was a great ride through the beautiful and now dry Swedish country side. The ride could have been done quickly, but the route took us through loops in a nature reserve, again mostly on dirt, and the views were stunning.
Something that really stuck with me was the diverse bikes on the ride. From the 65 riders, there were probably half with road bikes using 25 mm tires. There was even a lady riding a BMC all carbon road bike. She smoked me easily. The rest of the bikes ranged from Specialized AWOL (two riders had the limited edition AWOL X Polar) and all sorts of mutant all roads.
Great adventures and stories for days.