by Maghalie Rochette

Should I bring shoes or not? On one side, it might be nice to have shoes with me on the evenings when we are stopped and might want to explore the cities. On the other hand, I'm already carrying a lot of things, and shoes take up a lot of space and add weight. I mean, flip flops and socks could do the trick, right?

I'm quite new to bike packing. I've done a few trips, but never like this specific one, so I'm juggling with all these logistical questions right now.

What the hell am I talking about?
This year will be the first UCI "Super" World Championships. Why "Super"? Well, the world championships will be spread over two weeks, and almost all cycling disciplines (except for gravel and cyclocross) will happen at the same time. Those Super Worlds are happening in Glasgow, Scotland.

Initially, I was gonna go to represent Canada and Canyon in the E-MTB (Electric Mountain Bike) race. I've done that one before so I have a little bit of experience. Then, when looking at the schedule, I realized there was also the Marathon MTB World Championships that looked super cool: 100km of trail riding in Scotland! I applied to participate in both races and was selected by Cycling Canada to race both the E-MTB (August 9) and the Marathon race (August 6).

SO… what about them shoes? What does bike packing has to do with the World Championships? Well, my situation right now is that I am not at my fittest. Normally, when I go to World Championships, it's a huge goal of mine and I aim to compete for the rainbow jersey (for the win). But right now, I'm just starting to train again after over 6 weeks off the bike due to a recent injury. So we thought: "If I'm not going to be in good enough shape to compete for the win, we might as well make the most of this trip and make it memorable!"

And this is where the bike packing idea came from. We will be flying to Dublin in Ireland, and take 4 days to ride the 500km to the World Championships in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The Route
I've spent the last month basically glued to komoot exploring the different route options, and I've had so much fun with it. I looked at all the Highlights designed by other riders, used a ton of their tips and advice, and since my collection and route are public, I even had some local people from Ireland reach out to me to give advice on best roads to use. How cool is that? It's been such a fun experience preparing the route and it makes me even more excited to go out and ride it!

Since I'll be racing the marathon MTB race, we will be riding with our mountain bikes for the bike packing. That brought both opportunities and constraints: On the one hand, we'll be able to take some off road trails and explore mountain ranges and forests more thoroughly, but our overall speed will be slower so we needed to plan shorter distances.

I'm just so excited about this adventure. I'm looking forward to see these 3 countries by bike, to experience the culture, to learn all about haggis and whiskey, and bothies, and lochs. I've spent the last few weeks reading about the rich history and culture of Ireland, North Ireland, and Scotland. And I'm also excited to go out and race the Marathon and E-MTB World Championship races, and to be a part of this major cycling event.

In the end, I think this is what delights me most about this trip. It combines everything I love about cycling: The high performance and competition of racing with the exploration, adventure, and cultural learning of bike packing. Both sides of cycling that equally fuel my passion for the sport.

I know I've skipped a lot of details on the trip: What are our goals? Why are we doing this? What equipment are we bringing? How are we building the bikes? What's our plan for sleeping/eating?

We recorded a podcast/video episode to talk about all of that. And we will do our best to offer some coverage of our adventure, aiming to record one episode (audio and video) per day of riding!

So… should I bring shoes or not? In the end, I think it will end up being a fight between the drone and the shoes. We are doing a test packing this week, which we'll share with you, so my inner battle about shoes should be solved soon enough!

Thanks for following and wishing you all a great week!

Page mise en ligne par

Consultez notre ENCYCLOPÉDIE sportive

veloptimum.net

.

.

.