Epic Ride

Among bicyclists, it’s referred to as an “epic ride.”

A grueling, 748-mile trek from Sweden to Norway, passing through the Arctic Circle, and back, in just 90 hours.

For Joe Edwards, it’s what he did on his summer vacation.

Edwards, 56, spent June taking part in the Midnight Sun Randonee, a 1,200-kilometer cycling event that brought 80 rides together from 13 different countries to Umea, Sweden. The ride was not Edward’s first such. He first took part in his first long-distance, non-competitive unsupported endurance cycling event in 2013 in Alaska. He’s since completed courses in Australia and the Cascade mountains in Washington state.

“Every once in a while, you look for something we call ‘an epic ride’ and this came up on our radar at the end of last year and there was a group of us who looked at that and said, ‘We want to do that,’” Edwards said.

Edwards rides with the Audax K.C. club out of Kansas City. A handful of the group also took part in the Midnight Sun. To participate, riders must qualify annually through the Randonneurs USA, the cycling sport’s governing body, by completing a series of four rides stretching from 125 miles to 375 miles.

The logistics of pulling off the Midnight Sun was perhaps as daunting as the race itself. Almost.

To get his bike to Europe, Edwards had to dismantle it and pack the 60-pound frame and tires it into a large suitcase.

“It’s heavy and bulky and not fun to carry around,” Edwards said. “There’s also extra fees to check it but that’s part of the cost of the trip.”

Edwards wouldn’t go so far as to say the Midnight Sun was the toughest endurance event he’s taken part in. He’d called the Cascade mountains the most grueling.

“It was the hardest because there was more climbing involved,” he said of the Washington state trip. “The more mountainous area you have the slower you go and the harder it is to just keep things moving.”

But don’t get him wrong. The Sweden-Norway ride was tough. It had mountains too but bunched in the more in the middle of the ride, allowing him and other riders to work their way up to them and then work their way down.

The first day consisted of a 280-mile jaunt into Norway.

“We literally ride pretty much 24 hours straight,” he said. “The only time you’re off the bike is the places you have to check in and grab something to eat. You get maybe a half hour stop here and there. You’re on your bike 20 to 22 hours.”

And that wasn’t even the toughest day on the ride, Edwards said.

That would be day two, when the riders enter the Scandes Mountain Range in Norway and proceed north into the Artic Circle for 169 miles. The day two stretch was also June 21, the longest day of the year, meaning the Arctic Circle had 24 hours of daylight. Not that Edwards so much of it. He only glimpsed sun briefly, sometime after midnight.

“It felt like were riding in dusk for 24 hours.”

The light clearly affected Edward’s body clock.

“When nighttime comes, your brain wants to shut down and go to sleep but since we had daylight all the time your brain didn’t know what to do,” he said. At stops, he resorted to putting his jacket over his head to catch a nap when he could.

“You don’t sleep much in the four days,” he said.

The weather was also rainy and cold, about 40 degrees.

“It was just fantastic,” Edwards quipped about the frigid, pelting rain. “You have to have the hard things in life to appreciate the good things in life.”

Midnight Sun participants have 90 hours to finish the course. However, some riders do take off and go at the own pace. Edwards said, he and his American riders “stuck together.”

“We all know each other and ride together on other rides,” he said. “But the guys from Finland and Sweden tend to be really fast. They just took off and we never saw them again the rest of the ride.”

The Midnight Sun isn’t a race, but a Finnish rider completed the 748-mile course “first” in just over 56 hours.

“Some of those guys rode it like a race and it isn’t a race,” he said. “There’s no prize or anything. It’s just for the miles.”

The ride began at sea level and the cumulative elevation surpassed 34,000 feet. The longest stop was an “overnight” of just barely two hours at a small hotel.

“We checked in at 6:30 p.m., got something to eat, laid down and we we’re back on the road at 8:30 p.m. We were there for two hours. We told the clerk at the counter we’d be checking out in two hours, and I don’t think she believed us.”

The ride is also an unsupported, meaning riders are literally on their own for long stretches between checkpoints which were typically 65 miles apart. On the long stretch back from Finland into Sweden, Edwards said he didn’t see a single car or gas station, nothing, for over 60 miles.

“If you didn’t have enough water or food, you were really in trouble,” he said.

The course is also predetermined, and GPS tracking is provided but Edwards preferred the old school method: a paper route sheet.

“It’s not really a map,” he said. “It’s literally, ‘Go two miles and take a left on X, Y, Z, Street.’ It’s just a list of instructions.”

And it’s in Swedish.

“There’s not as many roads over there so it wasn’t that difficult to navigate,” he said. “It was a challenge that it was in Swedish, but the good thing is, for the most part, they used the same alphabet as us so you could look at a sign and compare it to the sheet. It worked out pretty well.”

The language barrier was easier to navigate.

“Everywhere we went we asked if they spoke English and they all did,” he said. “We didn’t find anybody who didn’t speak English.”

There wasn’t much time to socialize on the ride. Most of Edwards’ and his group’s pub time was before and after the event.

“It’s not like RAGBRAI,” he said. “Where you’re at a leisurely pace. It’s more a ‘I have to get going pace.’”

After all those grueling miles, sore muscles and power naps, the ride brings its own feeling of accomplishment. Of the 80 who started, 59 finished.

“There’s always a certain point in a ride where you feel like maybe you made it past the hard part or the turnaround point and everything is just going back,” he said. “The closest you get back to the start, the more enthusiastic you get.

The last half of the last day was a nice sunny day as we rode back into town. It was a fantastic ending to a great ride.”

Edwards has been biking for decades. It all started simply as a less stressful exercise option.

“It magically fixes problems for me,” he said. “If my legs hurt or my knees hurt, I go for a bike ride and I’m good. I don’t know what it is about biking, it just makes me feel better.”

The Midnight Sun was Edwards’ fifth 1,200-kilomter randonneur. He doesn’t track miles but he and wife Luann ride four days a week year-round in the morning before work. Every month he also does a 125-mile ride. He’s done those 85 months in a row. He’s also ridden across 15 states. On top of those rides and the qualifiers and some other rides here and there, he estimates he’s riding 5,000 miles a year.

Edward loved to bike but he stops short of calling it addiction, even if he is hooked.

“If I’m off the bike a few days, I do have that yearning to get back on the bike and go somewhere,” he said. “There’s no doubt about it.”

After riding year-round in Iowa, the Artic Circle was practically a breeze.

“It’s lot harder riding here in the winter than up there in the summer for sure,” he said.

He doesn’t have any future randonneur plans but anything is possible.

“My first dream was Alaska. My second dream was Australia. And my third dream was Sweden. So, I’ve done all three.

“You never know what’s going to come before us so who knows what we’ll do next year or the year after.”