Aidan Harding

Category: biking

  • There’s little glory in bucket-washing

    [singlepic id=170 w=480 h=640 float=]

    The ice lid from my clothes washing bucket

    It’s very much “that time of year”.

    The time when every part of my bike decides to break within the space of a few weeks.

    The time when many trails are so muddy that there’s a severe shortage of Type 1 fun, but plenty of Type 2 slogging.

    The time when clothes get so muddy, they need washing in a bucket (sometimes twice) before they’re clean enough to go in the washing machine without breaking it.

    But also the time when you’re banking the mental and physical strength that will carry you through the summer. Failing to finish the Dyfi Winter Warm Up due to brake failure was annoying, but it kicked me into getting all of those suspect parts changed out. Breaking through ice puddles and being pitched over the bars is not that hard to shrug off. Being on a seemingly endless treadmill of work, ride, clean is still a privileged position.

    With a couple of key components still likely to fail soon, I’m taking 2 bikes to Wales this weekend. (Not carrying a spare on my back, though). By the time the trails are looking up, I should be ready to go!

  • Where To Sleep on The Tour Divide

    Someone asked me this by email. Here’s what I said:

    If you’re thinking of trying to pick which towns to sleep in, that is probably a bad idea. You’ll be off-plan pretty soon, so you might as well wing it the whole way.

    In general, it’s much quicker to sleep out than to get a motel. If you get a motel, then you have a shower and breakfast and coffee and chill out. If you sleep in the dirt, you get up and ride! You can easily go a week without washing unless you get heavily soaked and need to wash/dry your gear. Even then, places like The Outdoorsman in Butte will dry kit out for you.

    When you’re picking places to sleep, having a roof is good even if the sides are open so picnic areas are nice.

    Make sure you look at the maps of bear activity in Canada, Montana, and Wyoming (Matthew sent these out last year) so that you can judge the risk. Read up on camping in bear country.

    Camp low when you can. Most of the downhills are fast, so if you get through a mountain pass around bed-time put in an extra 1/2 hour or so to lose some elevation. As afternoon comes on, make sure you have enough water for the night. I’ve had dry bivvys before where I’ve had to make 300ml or so last all night and a few hours into the next day – best avoided if you can.

    The ACA maps have some suggestions on places that might make good camp sites, those spots are good ones.

    Sleeping in (non-stinky) campground toilets is handy in bear country or snow.

    If you’re serious about racing it hard, you will ride right past places that would be nice to sleep/resupply just because the timing hasn’t worked out e.g. I did Pinedale to Rawlins without resupply or a bed in-between. South Pass City and Atlantic City were closed when I went through, but I knew that was going to happen and had planned for it in Pinedale. Every time you get a restaurant meal, you can get your maps out and make those sorts of decisions.

    Be careful who you share a motel room with. There’s no point in paying for a room and then being stuck with a bunch of stinky snoring riders just to split the bill. Fine if it works, aggravating if they keep you up all night.

    If you’re going hard, you should get past Sparwood and camp out on the first night. Lots of people will get a room in Sparwood, but if you want to get the jump on them, you’ll have to go through.

    Lastly, get a loud alarm. I slept through me watch alarm repeatedly last year.

  • A Tale Of Two Forks

    [singlepic id=168 w=320 h=240 float=left]

    [singlepic id=169 w=320 h=240 float=right]

    I never thought that I’d be regularly riding a rigid-forked mountain bike. In 2010, my Rockshox Revelations were approaching useless as I was approaching the Tour Divide. I’d already decided that rigid made sense for the race: less weight, less to go wrong.

    So, I picked up a cheap carbon fork.

    Soon after, my Ti Voodoo frame cracked and, in the search for a replacement, I ended up meeting Singular Sam. Which turned out to very lucky for me as I got to ride The Divide on one of his frames.

    The Divide went well. The rigid fork choice was vindicated and I hoped to be able to get a suspension fork afterwards. Unfortunately, suspension prices went berzerk. Fortunately, 29er wheels made rigid riding more fun than I had expected. I had to keep the bike reined in slightly now and again, as I didn’t have the squish that had saved me on a number of occasions before, but at least I didn’t have to worry about maintenance.

    Coming up to two years later, I haven’t ridden with a suspension fork much at all in the intervening time. Cost is still the issue, but the more time you spend with a rigid fork, the more you realise what you can get away with.

    What I couldn’t get away with, though, was the unsettling feeling of toe overlap where there had been no toe overlap before. In the past few weeks, hard cornering with my carbon fork was making it bend so much that I was touching my toe on the front tyre… time for a change before teeth get broken.

    Going over to a steel Singular fork was a revelation (oh, the pun). I had remembered the fork being smooth on a test ride, but making the change full-time has been great. My bike has gained weight, but it has also gained precision through roots and rocks. It has gained smoothness. I even enjoyed Coed Y Brenin at the weekend – last time I rode there I thought they’d shipped in extra-annoying rocks to justify people spending lots of money on full-suspension. With the front end of my bike being rock solid, I could really let fly and skim over the rocks. Fun!

    It was also interesting that the carbon fork gave in gracefully. Internet forums would have you believe that carbon fails by exploding in your face, taking any nearby kittens with it. Certainly not in this case.

    I still wouldn’t say no to suspension or carbon given the chance to try it, but it’s nice to know there’s more to a fork than just what it’s made of.

  • Swinley Trail Pixies

    I had a really nice ride at Swinley this morning. Conditions are still pretty good despite some recent rain – especially on the man-made trails. And while I was there, I ran into some of the trail pixies working on The Stickler. It was great to be able to thank them for their work and get news on what’s happening.

    First up, we talked about permits. Everyone who rides in Swinley ought to buy a permit. Last year, it cost £20 which is nothing really for a whole year of riding. Interestingly, it sounds like the permits might well be funding even more development on the trails next year. Fantastic. To be honest, I’d happily take a 25% increase and pay £25 a year. If you ride there and don’t pay up: shame on you!

    One trail in the sights for work is The Crowthorne Highway. A former singletrack that has been widened by riders trying to avoid puddles, we could see a harder surface put down on it soon. If that happens, the forest could grow back in and make the name as ironic as it used to be.

    It was also good to see some chainsaw work has been going on clearing trees on some of the well known trails. Corkscrew is now clear and has a lovely pine aroma.

     

  • 2012

    2012 was going to be a quiet year. No spending lots of money on flying to races in far-flung places. No spending months on a bike instead of working.

    It hasn’t quite worked out like that. I’ve managed to keep the aeroplane time down, but there were too many interesting challenges around to resist them all. So here’s what’s on the menu:

    February

    • Dyfi Winter Warmer – A relatively short race, but Wales in February will involve water and probably ice. With fast and technical downhills, it should be an excellent first outing for me on the Singular Buzzard.

    April

    May

    • The Cairngorms Loop – A new event. 180 miles round the Cairngorms. I don’t know what to expect: the weather could be anything; the distance could be possible without sleep. It would be mad to go without emergency bivi gear, though. The line-up of riders means it’ll be a nice gathering, too.

    June

    July

    • TwentyFour 12 – The 24 hour race that’s fun 🙂 Entering as a team.
    • England-Wales-England – My shiny, new race. Around 1000 miles of bikepacking right here in the UK.

    September

    • Scottish Coast to Coast -Emily and I have a vague plan of taking a straight-line across Scotland with packrafts and bikes. Ride/paddle/carry as required. We’ll also be trying to use as much bushcraft as possible instead of carrying so much dried food. Much to figure out other than just the month we’re aiming for!

    Floating Goals

    I’m not sure when these will happen, but they’re intentions to get done some time:

    • West Highland Way Double – I know it has been done, but I still want it. And without really stopping, the time can be vastly improved. The only real difference in my approach (compared to last time’s aborted attempt) will be to take decent wheels and tyres instead of the worn-out temporary stuff that I took last time. Nice tubeless Ikons. Some wheels that I’m used to instead of something thrown on the week before: sorted.
    • Half marathon (running) in < 1 hour 30 minutes. My running is coming along again, but I want to sustain it enough to do this comfortably. Not organised, probably (more-or-less) a loop along the Thames from Hampton Court Bridge to Walton Bridge.

     

    With all that on the cards, it’s a good job I have the help of Singular, Velosolo, Maxxis, and Gore. Sam’s working on getting us more team deals, too, but more on those when they pony up 🙂

  • Celebrity Adventure

    So, Helen Skelton is going to “become the first person to use a bicycle to help her reach the South Pole”.

    A few exaggerated claims in this BBC article are causing some annoyance on the internet. It claims that in the 500 miles trip she will “hope to set a new world record for the longest bicycle journey on snow”. Bad news for her: I and numerous others have already completed the 1000 miles Iditarod Trail Invitational race in Alaska. It doesn’t invalidate her trip, but it does show a lack of respect and understanding for the existing state of adventures on bikes.

    It is often observed you can test your motivation for a trip very simply. Would you do it if no-one is looking? If not, then maybe you shouldn’t be there. When the road gets hard, how will you respond if the reason to keep going is not inside you?

    That test gets muddied by the issues of sponsorship and charity, though.

    Regarding sponsorship, I just wouldn’t be able to go on some of my adventures if I didn’t have the support of some great companies sponsoring me (cough! bottom of the page! cough!). It is only fair to them that I return their help by trying to get them some exposure in the media. Many people find themselves in the same position.

    Regarding charity, the best way to raise money for the charity is to really sell the adventure.

    Both of these are legitimate reasons for getting your story out there. They are reasons to seek nice soundbites; claims of records that you will break; whatever else.

    That’s fine as long as you can stay factually accurate and use no sleight hand to present your trip as harder than it is.

    Celebrity adventures do nothing to diminish those of people that don’t get to appear on BBC Breakfast. The experience of riding my bike to Nome was so overwhelmingly intense that I would never be able to fully explain it anyway. The likelihood of people mentioning Helen Skelton when they hear about it in the future doesn’t harm my fundamental experience of it. The ride burns brightly in my memory.

    I would love to have the kind of financial support that celebrities get to achieve their goals, and I’m a little jealous of it. That’s probably why people get so excited about the subject. But I do get by and I do get to keep going on adventures, so I can’t complain.

    Good luck to her in her trip. (But I rather suspect that a bike with a 80kg sled will be about much use to her as the ponies were to Scott)

  • SSUK and the elephants

    This is the first blog post for a while. Primarily because I was organising SSUK in what would have been any free time that I had.

    And this is going to be a bit of a rant. An indulgence of having a blog, and something to do since I can’t get to sleep.

    I’d say most things at SSUK went pretty well. People at the event were happy and that was the main thing. But, I’m left with a bitter taste in my mouth. In the interests of being fair, I thought we should just refund anyone who wanted to cancel. I always thought it was unfair that events kept your money even when you didn’t turn up and use any services.

    So, in the final briefing email, I offered full refunds for cancellations. And when I opened that door an inch, a herd of elephants came through. I spent almost an entire day refunding people. All of my contingency in the budget was gone and still the cancellations kept coming. Eventually, I stopped answering them. I made the decision that the many people who were still coming deserved my time more than the few who backed out at the last minute. There was plenty still to do, so I got on with that and I would deal with cancellations afterwards.

    Post-event, lots of people were kind enough to say thank you for our efforts in organising and running the event. But the cancellation emails kept coming:

    I’ve noy yet recieved the refund that was promised, yet a few mates who also had to cancel have recieved theirs. I’m sure its just an admin glitch, but could I kindly ask you to look into it.

    I hate to break this to you, my friend, but SSUK is run at no profit to the organisers. I took a week off work in the run-up to deal with the event, and now I need to work to pay the mortgage. Having just finished 3 days of working 14 hours for £65/day, you’re not top of my list of priorities. Just because you expect next-day service when you order your shiny parts from Wiggle, doesn’t mean you’ll get it from a race being run on the cheap.

    Should I put my hand in my pocket, deepening the losses on the race? It pains me to be “unfair” to people. But the alternative is to pay for the privilege of hosting the race by racking up bank charges on an overdraft. The costs were largely unaffected by late cancellations: I’d already paid for services to deal with the full complement of racers. But, I set an expectation of full refunds.

    Two lessons learned, then:

    1. Don’t offer refunds
    2. If you give people your time, a certain percentage of them will take the piss with it

  • An Experiment in Bike Commuting

    [singlepic id=129 w=320 h=240 float=]

    With various sites and smartphone apps offering to provide friendly bike routes, I thought I’d give one a try. The results were interesting rather than straightforwardly successful…

    One of my jobs is teaching Bikeability courses at schools in Harrow. That means my commute ranges from 15 to 18 miles, depending on the part of the Borough I have to get to. Normally, I just ride the same route to Harrow and then split off to the specific school. That way, I don’t have to think about directions until the last couple of miles. My route uses a lot of main roads – they allow you to ride pretty fast and some have bike/bus lanes to speed past the traffic. The middle third of the journey is on bumpy, tight, segregated bike lanes that avoid dual carriageways with slips roads, tunnels, and large roundabouts. It seems like a fair compromise, but is a bit of a puncture minefield when I use road tyres instead of Schwalbe Marathons.

    Cycle Streets claims to offer bike-suitable routing that can make use of bike lanes. It has nice looking options of “Quiet”, “Fast”, and “Balanced” routes. I rode to work today on the Fast route, and then home on the Quiet one. I was on my road bike, so I wanted smooth roads, no broken glass, and minimal junctions.

    The route in was pretty good – 2 miles shorter than the way I had planned myself and it did save me time. There were a couple of annoying bits of residential road where I had to keep slowing down for T junctions, but it did save me 5-10 minutes over my usual route. There was one junction where the required turn was impossible, though. I had to go past, make a U turn, and rejoin the route. It is also the school holidays right now and I suspect that some of these roads would be choked with school traffic in term-time.

    [singlepic id=126 w=320 h=240 float=]

    Steps

    [singlepic id=127 w=320 h=240 float=]

    Glass on the ground

    The route home was a whole other matter. It had me riding down alleyways which seemed to be essentially pavement (i.e. illegal). It had me carrying over railway bridges. It had carpets of broken glass. It crossed main roads on offset crossroads (i.e. right turn, short hop, left turn). And after 11 miles of riding from Harrow, I saw a sign saying 5 miles back to Harrow! It was pretty quiet on some of the roads, but the ride home took 40 minutes longer than usual. Trying to navigate all the complicated over/under passess, weird spirals from bike-only underground roundabouts back up to street level, park edges etc. was difficult. And then to really top things off, the route sent me down an off-road bridleway near to my house. In the winter, it would be far too muddy to ride on a road bike.

    [singlepic id=128 w=320 h=240 float=]

    Singletrack on a road route?!

    It’s nice to see these services trying to encourage cycling, but using them is baffling. They can provide some general ideas of where to go but without a good GPS (including detailed street mapping), the routes would be impossible to follow. Even when you are on-track, it defies belief that the track is supposed to be a cycle route. I think my standard tactic of using Google Maps to get directions and then Streetview to check for cycle lanes is much more effective. More often than not, the direct A road route has bike lanes, priority over minor roads, and fewer wrong turns.

  • West Highland Way and more frustration

    It’s hard to know how to look back on the year so far. I’ve managed to get pretty fit, met some great people, and been to some incredible places. But… and it’s a big “but”, I’ve ended up being the plucky loser. Which is certainly better than being a diffident loser, but it’s still inescapably disappointing.

    My second effort on the West Highland Way Double continued the tradition. Last time I attempted this trail, it was winter and I was ill-prepared. Scotland kicked my ass and that was pretty much what I needed it to do. This time, I had residual fitness from the Tour Divide and a free weekend so I thought I would just give it a punt.

    To keep it low key, I only told one person (for safety). I packed a cut down version of my Divide kit: sleeping bag and bivvy, tools, arm/leg warmers + waterproof, food. My normal rear wheel had a cracked rim, so I was on a Mavic Crossmax that I had borrowed from Sam Singular with (for reasons unknown) a Bontrager mud tyre. In my rush, I just left it there and that turned out to be a mistake. Most everything else was normal, except that I was going to try taking caffeine pills to burn through the night.

    I headed off to Bristol to go see some new Chris King road wheels on behalf of Singletrack Magazine. In the back of the car I had my Singular Pegasus, the old prototype Singular road frame, a pile of food, and my synthetic sleeping bag for the night before the WHW.

    The King stuff was shiny and nice – not going to sway me from Hope but I’m sure fans will love it. We got the chance for a test ride with some pretty decent roadies who admitted that, upon seeing my lugged steel frame with mudguards, they expected me to end up in the broom wagon. Needless to say, that didn’t happen but we did average 20mph for a couple of hours and I tried hard to keep a lid on things. You can read the article on Singletrack’s website here, but I was back in the car at 4pm to reach Glasgow before sleeping.

    When I got to Milngavie, I had already eaten so all I had to do was find somewhere quiet to park. I pulled up in a secluded lane and put my bivvy down between my car and the verge. Perfectly dirtbag! In the morning I made espresso with my camping stove, repacked the boot of the car, and was excited to hit the trail around 7am.

    The first few miles are easy. Their flat, easy-going nature could easily be mistaken for gentle English countryside rides. Things changed a little as Conich Hill took me over to Loch Lomond. It was a lot easier this time than when it had been coated in ice, and I could chuck the lighter bike over boulders on the way up.

    I had built up the shore of Lomond in my mind to be one gigantic swearing hike-a-bike. That’s what I remembered of it, so I was pleasantly surprised to see how much of it was rideable. Again, less weight meant that I could hike the bike more easily and was less often required to. Short rises and pokey roots were not a problem. Except that the stupid Crossmax wheel had come unseated from the tyre. I put a tube in and carried on past Rowardennan. Now I was frequently putting my bike onto my back and walking briskly between clambering efforts.

    By the end of the Loch, I felt a whole world better than I had in the winter. I had collected water as I went, so I had eaten enough and was ready to go all day. The weather was so bright that I was beginning to wish I had suncream.

    Steep ups and downs took me to Tyndrum and, despite the volume of walkers, they were fun and pretty rideable. I was absolutely flying! Before I knew it, I was at Glencoe ski area. This is where I had bailed before and it felt great to ride through. But things soon started to come unstuck.

    On the way to the Devils Staircase, I took a drink on a flat trail. With my bottle still in my hand, I spotted a drainage channel. Its square edges were going to require a hop and I had no time to put the bottle away. I stuck the bottle in my mouth and totally failed the hop. My rear wheel smashed into the square edge, pitching me over the bars and face first (bottle still there) into the ground. It was no great surprise to find that I had pinched the tube. I had no more spare tubes, so I put a couple of patches onto it and got ready to continue.

    I was taking it easy now. Couldn’t afford more mistakes, and my lips hurt from the landing. The trail heads up and over to Kinlochleven via some mighty rockiness that is pushy on the way up and picky on the way down (if you have 4 patches to last > 100 miles). Still, I messed up another drainage and hit full frontal onto a square edge. My Stans/Maxxis Ikon front wheel was still tubeless and shrugged it off. Phew! But damn, why couldn’t I have two good wheels?

    I took a couple of the caffeine pills (about equivalent to a decent cup of coffee) and rode on. The run-in to Fort William was long, but joyful. Sweet trails snaked towards the dropping sun. Another pinch flat irritated me and took another couple of patches, but couldn’t stop me for long. I weaved between abandoned farm buildings, whizzed past walkers’ campsites, rumbled over rocks, and eventually shot down into Fort William itself.

    The petrol station I had hoped to shop at was closed but I replenished my water and ate some of the food I had. Light was fading, but I was feeling good. On a bad out-and-back, the turn-around point can often be a real source of self doubt. Can I do all that again? Not so this time, I was itching to get back on the trail. I figured that I would spend a lot of the darkness pushing over the Devil’s Staircase. Perfect: By dawn I would be riding faster trails just as I needed my vision back.

    It took a while for the light to fade completely from the sky but, as soon as it did, I hitched up the arm-warmers. I was working hard in places but, without the warmth of the sun, I wanted to keep what I was generating. My mind divided the remainder of the ride into manageable chunks. Pushing back over towards Kings House was perfectly fine and I could see some light returning as I reached Glencoe.

    Riding through the night does make the sun seem mythical. On the whole, I was warm, but small chills now and again made me long to feel that radiance against my skin. The slow sunset was balanced by a slow sunrise and pedalled harder as if I could hasten the day. Climbing hard, though, the rear of the bike became squishy. Another puncture. Not a pinch this time, so I only used up the 1 patch in the pre-dawn cold. One of the existing patches had come loose as it was trying to repair a cut on the seam of the tube.

    This delay was eating into my quota of wakefulness and making me cold when I could have just pedalled into the light. I was frustrated and worried. With one patch left and the existing repairs looking suspect, I was beginning to face the possibility of failure. Failure for stupid equipment reasons. Surely not.

    Sure enough, mere minutes later and still on the Drove Road between Glencoe and Inveroran, the tyre was down again. One patch left and certain that I wouldn’t be able to ride the whole way back, I pulled out my bivvy kit. It was a bad area to bivvy – no tree cover and damp ground but I didn’t care. As I unrolled my bag, the midges started to come in. Not so bad, but I was glad to get my body zipped up and away from them.

    I grabbed a couple of hours sleep, but the midges were coming in through my air-hole in the bivvy. I blocked it up with my silk liner, but with the warmth of the day beginning to come on, it was time to get up anyway. Poking my head out, everything was covered in midges. A thick layer of them on my bag, my shoes, and my helmet. A cloud of them above my bivvy.

    Moving as fast as I could, I packed up. I paced as I stuffed dry-bags, trying not to inhale too many insects. Flicking them from my head. Swearing and sighing. I used my last patch on the the rear tube and, shoved remaining kit away and tried to ride from the little blighters.

    Again, it was only minutes before my tyre was down again. I wasn’t surprised, angry, or anything really. I was just trying to figure out options to get home. The journey back to the car was long (about 8 hours – longer than riding without incident would have been) and pretty much sucked.

    Trying to drive home after this, I napped frequently in service stops and tried to eat away my tiredness. That reached stupid proportions when I vomited a load of sugary junk onto the M42, but the naps got me home in the end.

    The WHW double is completely do-able and actually quite enjoyable in the summer. It’s pretty rough on a fully rigid bike, but not impossibly so. I’d like to go back, but the reality is that I almost certainly won’t have the time or money to do it this year. I was certainly encouraged by my overnight performance (felt fine when I bivvyed after 21 hours of riding) so maybe one day I’ll be able to challenge the likes of Kurt and Jefe 🙂

  • Tour Divide Kit List

    [singlepic id=124 w=320 h=240 float=]

    I don’t normally do kit lists. But, my Divide kit worked out pretty well this year and there isn’t much I would change. So here’s what I took:

    The Bike

    • Singular Pegasus singlespeed frame
    • On One carbon fork
    • Hope Pro 2 / Stans 355 29er wheels
    • Maxxis Crossmark LUST rear tyre, Maxxis Ikon EXO front tyre
    • Hope headset
    • Hope 90mm stem
    • Easton EA70 bars
    • Shimano XT brakes with 160mm Ashima Air rotors and Goodridge hoses
    • Thomson seatpost
    • Selle Italia Flite saddle
    • Hope ceramic bottom bracket
    • Shimano Deore cranks
    • Velosolo 34t chainring with Velosolo 19t cog
    • SRAM 8spd chain
    • Shimano M520 Deore pedals
    • Race Face grips with Cane Creek Ergo bar ends

    Bike Accessories

    • SPOT tracker (original)
    • Garmin Dakota GPS (tied to the SPOT and around the bars to avoid losing either in rocky sections)
    • Cycle computer – the 2nd cheapest in Mountain Equipment Co-Op
    • 2x Specialized Z bottle cages (side entry to give more space around the frame bag)
    • 2x 800ml bottles
    • Spare inner tube cable tied to the bottom corner of the main triangle
    • Flashing rear light

    Front bag

    • 5L Lomo drybag held on with a Wildcat Gear harness
    • Rab Neutrino 200 down sleeping bag
    • Silk sleeping bag liner
    • Terra Nova Discovery Light bivi bag
    • Balloon Bed sleeping mat
    • Mosquito net
    • Spare inner tube
    • Toilet paper (with bag to pack out used paper!)

    Frame bag

    • One-off bag made by my friend David Kleinjan
    • Topeak Mountain Morph pump (duck tape wrapped around it)
    • Allen keys and torx keys
    • Leatherman Juice
    • Park pre-glued patches
    • Park tyre levers
    • Toothpaste tube (for use as tyre boot)
    • Cable ties
    • 2x brake pads
    • 2x power links and spare chain section
    • Bolts: chainring, disc rotor
    • Spare socks
    • Plastic bags to use on feet
    • Warm hat
    • Sock for chain cleaning, White Lightning Epic chain lube

    Rear bag

    • Bag made by Revelate Designs, borrowed from Chipps (of Singletrack magazine fame)
    • Drybag full of Torq recovery drink
    • ACA maps of the route in plastic map cover
    • Gore softshell arm warmers and leg warmers
    • Gore Alp X jacket
    • Spare shorts
    • Fox antifreeze gloves
    • Hope Vision 1 Adventure head torch
    • Singular long sleeve jersey
    • Camera strapped to outside
    • Bits bag:
      • Toothbrush + toothpaste
      • 2x 9 Bars as emergency food
      • Suncream
      • Nappy rash cream
      • Iodine tablets
      • Ibuprofen
      • Bandages
      • Steri-strips
      • Spare AA batteries

    Clothing

    • Specialized BG Sport shoes
    • Singular socks
    • Sugoi bib shorts
    • Singular jersey
    • No summer gloves!
    • Giro Athlon helmet
    • Endura Mullet glasses
    • Bear spray in jersey pocket until Jackson, WY

    NB I also carried a lightweight backpack to keep food in. For the dry sections, I carried 2.5 L of extra water in Gatorade bottles (2L in the front of the saddle bag, 0.5L in the backpack).