The FatViking Challenge 2021

Having heard about this by my good friends Crispin and Hans I thought Norway 2021 would be a good place to go in January and challenge myself by riding 150km in the snow on a fatbike with 4.6inch studded tyres. However, due to travel restrictions the Norway plan went out the window and the FatViking challenge was a great alternative. Nina, the organiser of the event had posted on Facebook the rules. Basically ride your fatbike (4 inch tyre or above) any of the following distances 50km, 100km or 150km. The time you were given was from Friday 12 noon until Sunday 6pm. That’s more than enough time for anyone I here you say. If normal circumstances were that everything was open and there were no strict measures in place limiting where you could ride then yes a simple enough task. However as we know the world is currently going through a pandemic so things are a bit different and the best I could do was split the riding up over 2 days and a couple of hours on Sunday morning. My ride on the Friday would be one of my favourites, heading out to Widdop Reservoir and enjoying my own company as I often do.

Day 2 I rode with my friend and we headed over to some less ridden trails of Todmorden, the only difference being the cold, easterly wind all the way from Norway or Scandinavia to be precise which was a killer. With very little open around the area it was nice to drop into The Boardroom coffee shop for a hot drink and a pastry. After refuelling we climbed some more and even a bit of ‘hike a bike’ was involved all part of the fatViking challenge. My goal was to ride 150km over the 2 days by breaking the back of it on Saturday. Keen to get most of the mileage done, I rode into the nearest town to refuel and then headed home. My job was nearly done and the 150km was in sight with only another 10km to do in the morning. As we work on mileage here in the UK, I thought it would be a shame not to do 100 miles as 150km is 93 miles we might as well round it up so a further 12 miles on Sunday finished the event in style.

102 miles and nearly 8,000 feet of climbing on my Bearclaw ‘Frank’ Fatbike was just what I needed.

Tyre used 45nrth Dillingger 4.6 rear and 45nrth 4.0 front.

Gears: SRAM XX1 Eagle (Deployed the Eagle a couple of times)

BRAKES: SHIMANO XT

RIMS: Hugo – Tubeless