Long tour at Ultra Birken mtb

The only and well waited mtb race of the summer was this weekend. On Thursday I got an sms of my fiancée Antti, that he was in an ambulance on the way to hospital to Honefoss, 180 km from Geilo. There was something wrong in his lungns, but they didn’t know what. I told him that I would follow by car.

I backed my things fastly at home and drove super long 180km to Honefoss. Once I got to the hospital Antti had been just operated of having pneumothorax and he had to stay several days at the hospital. The next day my brother who had travelled from Finland to participate the Ultra Birken mtb with me and Antti met us at the hospital. Me and Mikko decided to spend Saturday at the trails, once Antti had to stay at the hospital. At least at this point there was no pressure how we would do on the race itself. We all felt pretty relieved, that doctors had figured out what was wrong with Antti and he was getting better.

The clock rang at 5.30 am on Saturday morning. Me and Mikko have taken part in the biggest mountain biking event in Finland, Tahko mtb, since 2006 (most of the times at 60km distance) and this year it was time to check out how it is to take part at 105 km Ultra Birken mtb.

We got to the buss at Lillehammer that took us to the start. All participants loaded their bikes into trucks and both busses and trucks drove a long uphill to Havfjell skicenter at Pellestova. We were at the last start group and waited 1h30 minutes before it was time to go. Even in the last group all the other cyclists seemed to be faster than us and with fancier bikes. We were last right from the start.

After the first uphill, there was a fun technical downhill at bike park and climb back to the top. After the first hour, we past again the start point. The trail was more technical than what we had expected, but really fun cycling. Weather was perfect for the race as well by about +15 degrees and sunshine and almost no wind at all. In rainy weather, I could not have made the whole way of 105 kilometers race. We knew that there’s going to be some time limits on the way, but decided to cycle on our own low tempo.

At second service point there was another cyclist who counted that we would have 90 minutes time for the time limit and 20km to go. We thought that if the track keeps being as technical as it had been so far we would not make it in time. Still the decision was to keep the same speed. In the first 3 hours it was just tracks all the time and no crewel road at all. As a mountain biker that’s fun, but in long distance also more tiring. And of course in Norway you are always cycling up or down. There was no flat parts at all. At some point a staff member said to us that we would have 10 minutes time for the timelimit and 3 kilometers to go, but we should not stop at the service point if we wanted to make it. The timelimit spot would be right after the service. Mikko said that he would not try to cycle faster, but that I could give a try.

After passing the timelimit point and seeing a tiny little moment of Birken cycling event with much more people (about 70km, mainly on roads) I met again with Mikko at a big swamp. He had also passed the timelimit point in time and we would have long 65 km left to finish line. Our speed did not get faster. Up and downhills followed each other with great views. We didn’t meet any other competitors, but knew that we were the last once at the race. We got two followers of local mtb club. Young boys made sure that these slow Finns would make it to the finnish. Even in the last 20 km there were some muddy technical trails and parts of bike part left combined with long road downhills. One depressive point was to walk down a steep hill with rocks bigger than bowling balls.

After 11h39 minutes we finally got to the stadium area of Olympic Park to Lillehammer. As the last once of the whole day to finnish. We were slow, but in ok shape and the old Trek bikes had worked well again. After the finnish line the organizers offered warm soap and chips, but asked us kindly to leave the building so that they could start cleaning up. All the staff members were super friendly. All the Norwegian competitors just seemed to gone home many hours earlier.

Compared to Tahko mtb Ultra Birken mtb seemed to be much more race oriented than getting together whole country’s mountain bikers. But if you are looking for technical trails to ride in a race Ultra Birken is absolutely a good choice and well organized race.