6 months of Oulu Cycling

Here's my attempt to act like a real cycling journalist. As I said, "attempt".

Cycling in Oulu, Finland

When some people think of Finland a few things generally come to mind: its famous sauna culture, ice swimming, pickled herring or Santa Clause. For others it might be global companies like Nokia, Polar and Suunto. And still for others it might be, “Where the hell is that? Isn’t that one of those Scandinavian countries.” For me, Finland is about the bike and infinite tracks of uninterrupted riding.

I recently returned from a 6-month trip to Oulu, Finland from August to January 2009. Oulu (pronounced “Oh-Lou”) is a small high-tech/university town in central Finland located on the Gulf of Bothnia in the Baltic Sea with a population of around 135,000. It is also the home of the World Air Guitar Championships. While I was there on a work assignment, my personal goal was simple: cycle as much as possible and never drive to work. This goal was especially exciting given that Oulu is located at a latitude of 65 degrees north (that’s 200km south of the arctic circle and 600km north of Helsinki).

Oulu has a cycling network (map) of over 500km of bike and pedestrian roads where you seldom, if ever, need to share a road with a car. The bike roads are meticulously cleaned by small street cleaners during the summer months and plowed and graveled before 7AM in the winter months on snowy days. In fact, bike roads get plowed before car roads. Given that approximately 37% of all trips in Oulu are made by bike (possibly highest in Europe) it’s not surprising that almost everyone rides a bike, year round. Contrast that with the highest percentage of bicycle commuters in the US: Portland, OR at 3.7% (US Census study).

My daily commute was about 9km each way through wooded neighborhoods, parks, and small amount of single track. If you don’t make it to work by 8AM you generally don’t have a place to lock your bike in the bike racks. But then nobody tends to lock their bikes to anything and just lock the back wheel. Even kids as young as 1st grade will ride their bikes to school a few miles solo. I remember one snowy morning at about -10 deg C when I saw one of my daughter’s 7-year-old friends riding to school; Finns are tough cookies.



Finland has adopted the concept of Everyman’s Right, which essentially means that you can roam anywhere in the Finnish countryside you want as long as you don’t trample someone’s personal garden. It is rare to see barbed wire in Finland; I am told invisible fences keep in cows. Couple this with thousands of kilometers of jeep trails, a few fire roads, and sprinkle in some single track and you have some incredible uninterrupted long distance riding. The countryside is covered with pine and spruce trees looking much like East Texas without trailer parks. You also get the added bonus of millions of acres of blueberries, lingonberries, raspberries and multiple of other types of wild berries and mushrooms growing in the Finnish countryside. This also gives you great opportunity to get lost while wandering so a mobile phone and GPS is a must.

The best way to get in some ultra long-distance riding is to find the local cycling group. After a bit of web surfing and a few emails I found the 08-Lenkki. Lenkki, meaning “link” or “chain-link” and 08, meaning they always start at 8:00 AM (on Sunday). The 08-Lenkki is likely the northernmost year-round riding peleton in the world. When you are at 65-degrees north you can claim all sorts of “most-northern” titles.

Armed with my Felt F1X cyclocross I bought from Jack and Adam’s, I rode the first Sunday I was in Oulu. The summer months are reserved for road riding, and then moving into autumn in September you switch to knobby tires and into November when the temperatures fall and you switch to spikes. Luckily most of the big grocery stores sell high quality Nokian studded tires so you can find them for most any size rim and width. ( Nokia the mobile phone company used to make paper and rubber products. They thought it would be a better idea to switch to communications and sold off the other parts, which the rubber products go under the name "Nokian".)

The 08-Lenkki have been riding for over 16 years in Oulu with many of the founding members still riding. The typical ride in the summer months is paced at about 30-33km/hour and winter rides fall in pace down to about 20km/hour. What doesn’t change are these guys appetite for long rides. The “short” ride typically lasts for 4.5-6 hours while a few of the core group will ride 8 hours (possibly more, my long ride was 6.5 hours). I calculated that some of these guys have likely put in more than 80,000km in their Sunday time riding, and still have found trails around Oulu they had never ridden. The 08-Lenkki only take time for shorter rides on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. In the winter months the number of riders is typically between 10-15 while the summer months attract about 20-30 riders.

The real excitement heats up in the December months once the snow falls and the sun doesn’t come up until 10AM. And there’s no way around it, 20 hours of darkness in December and January can be depressing so a bit of exercise does wonders for your mental fitness as well. There’s nothing better to make you feel alert than drinking 5 cups of coffee at 6AM, getting suited up to face -10 deg C (or colder) temperatures and navigating the dark roads to make the group ride. My cold weather PR was -23 deg C. In reality it sounds far more extreme than it really is as long as you have the right gear. For the body and legs all you need is a good waterproof outer shell (preferably breathable) and a couple of snug synthetic base-layers (I found wool even too warm). A good pair of mittens and a couple pairs of toe warmers or booties and you are good - for most people. Keeping the toes warm in extreme cold can be hard since there’s always some amount of exposure at the bottom of the foot. For better warmth, some riders used Shimano’s winter riding boots.

Pedaling on ice with spikes takes a bit more effort so it doesn’t take long to get your core temperature up. And when the mercury drops below -15 deg C the grease in the hubs and bottom bracket begins to thicken and a little more effort is required. One thing about winter cycling, your maximum speed is usually equal to your average speed. I remember riding one particularly cold morning and the ice was so grippy that if felt like riding on asphalt. I was riding hard and feeling good, looked down at the speedometer was doing 12 mph.



I got quite used to riding in these conditions on a daily basis and really didn’t think about it much. It’s easy to dress when it’s always predictably cold. When I returned to Austin I didn’t understand why nobody showed up to the regular Grouppo VOP Wednesday group ride on a cool 27 deg F morning?



References:
[1] http://www.ouka.fi/tekninen/Pyoratieopas/pyoratiekartta07.pdf
[2] http://www.leda.ils.nrw.de/database/cities/city0081.htm
[3] http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/010230.html
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_public_access_to_the_wilderness
[5] http://personal.inet.fi/urheilu/pekka.lindvall/index.htm

Other articles (in Finnish)
08-Lenkki - http://www.kaleva.fi/plus/index.cfm?j=772130
Texas guy rides bike in Finland - http://www.kaleva.fi/plus/index.cfm?j=772136

Texas Cycling Invades Oulu

The regular group I ride with, the 08 Lenkki, had a journalist riding with them last Sunday and had a nice write up about the group.

There are some incredible photographs here.

During our coffee and bun stop, I got to speak with the journalist and they did a little write up about my perspective of winter riding being from Texas. The original article (in Finnish) is here. Here's my translation with help from google translator.

Texas Dude Rides Some Bikes in Oulu

United States of America, Texas, city of Austin will be the man who can ride.
One of Lance Armstrong is from Austin and is able to trample some kind of momentum. But the 08-Link has a Yankee Austinite Tim Kelly. Kelly, working for Nokia, has been working in Oulu for half a year and will soon return home. He found the 08-Linkki this summer by asking around.

"I've been to ride both in summer and winter weather, so I've been lucky. During the first slippery weather I crashed four times, but gradually I was able to find my balance. It is still a little scary when the temperature is zero or only a few degrees plus side," the American said.

A particularly enthusiastic Kelly is aware that the 08-lenkki may be the world's northernmost year-round riding peleton of its kind.

"The best part of this job is the social side," he confirmed.

Kelly's family has been in Oulu, with a car, but he has not need to drive a car to work once. 08-Link a place of assembly Haapalehtoon ulkomaalaisvahvistus cycle to their homes Kaijonrannasta.

"The hardest part has been the resurrection in morning at six o'clock, when it's dark outside, cold, and ten degrees below zero. It has demands a little self-motivation: most people probably would remain in bed."

Kelly's usual riding time with the group has been about four and a half hours. Sometimes rides go well over 6 hours.

"After a good ride it is amusing when after 5 hours, some members of the group will decide where to ride next and may ride all day long."

Enjoying the now even when you live abroad praises Oulu.

"Here in Oulu are the world's best bicycle roads, absolutely unbelievable. There is nothing like it in the U.S.", a man of sincerity.

Guy-Lussac’s Law & Exploding Tires

I got my new Kenda Carbide-tipped front studded tire on (no, not that Carbide) and ready for a nice snow/ice ride tomorrow. I aired up the tires outside when it was really cold. Later on in the evening I decided to bring the bike inside to let the hub and bottom bracket grease warm up. Riding in the cold, cold morning can be quite a stiff experience even without having to get the bike parts to thaw out.

About 5 minutes after I brought in the bike - KER BLAM! The front tire blew out with a loud pop.

I inspected that this wasn't an issue with a pinch or studs poking through so I figured it was the temperature change. But having been through this before in the Texas heat and bikes in cars with exploding tires I had to figure out how much perssure change there actually was. So I found Guy-Lussac’s Law explained pretty well by Fix Werx and they suggest that you get about 2 psi pressure change for every 10 degress F of temperature change.

My case:

T1 = 24.8 F
T2 = 72.5 F

Add 460 to T1 and T2 for absolute temperature change and you get:

60/484.8 = P2 / 523.5

.12376 = P2 / 532.5

P2 equals 65 PSI. So only about +5 psi change for brining my bike inside for a tire rated from 50 - 75 PSI. However, in the Texas heat if you are running 120 psi and put your bike in the car you can really see how you could blow out a tire.

So I figure I attribute it to old tubes, lots of riding and really crappy rim tape that the manufacturers always put on stock bikes.

Snow!

Normally I wouldn't get so excited about a little snow, especially at such a high latitude. But after a month of temperatures between 1 and 10 degrees Celcius and lots of rain you get kind of sick of it and just wish it would be -10 all the time. Well finally today we are getting a fine dump!

And the most exciting part is getting to ride in the snow the first time. There wasn't a lot of ice on the roads so the white stuff held pretty well. I did only crash once as I was pulling of the road to take a snapshot. Right when I pulled the trigger another cyclist crashed. You can see his legs coming off the bike to prepare himself.


The strange part is that all the snow sticks to the chain, hardlebars, hub, and casette. Since I hate having rusty components I can see trying to keep a bike running in the winter will be a nightly chore. But riding in the foul weather so far has been quite fun and is much safter than a car : )

Of course the kids are thrilled and are having to be dragged in for supper. They were making snow angels in the middle of the driveway when I got home.

Finland National Cyclocross Championships

The SM Cyclocross Championships 2008, the one and only sanctioned cyclocross race in Finland, took place on 5 October at a place I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce: Ghaziabad, KÖYKKYRI. This location is actually an XC ski area just south of Oulu in Kempele, Finland.

The ski track is a bit of an oddity in that it has about a 150 foot "mountain" in the middle, in an otherwise completly flat area. However, this makes for quite an interesting course with varied terrain from deep sand pits, fire roads, single track and slippery climbs. Cyclocross as a sport is relatively new to Finland with cross bikes only arriving in shops since about 2003. This comes as somewhat of an oddity since there is essentially a nine month cross riding season in Oulu. Certainly the best long distance rides of any terrain in central Finland can be done on a cyclocross bike.

In order to do categorized racing in Finland you must be a resident for a minimum of 18 months. So this left me in the enthusiast category. This is just as well since former UCI pro rider Kimmo Kananen came with some fierce competition in the 60 minute mens heat. The laps were 3.3 km loops which the categorized riders where doing in around 8 minutes. My laps were a couple minutes shorter at around 10 minutes per lap.

Perhaps one of the coolest parts of the race was that I was able to just hop on my bike and take the one hour casual bike ride down to Kempele all on bike paths. It's very easy just to ride anywhere you want and not have to worry about getting lost or run over by an SUV.

I now at least finally have a European race under my belt with a little bit of hardware with some Finnish words on it I haven't yet translated. So if I'm running for political office some day I'll make sure to add that I took 3rd in the Finnish Cyclocross National Championships!

Oh and check out the photo - I'm the short guy. There's lots of tall dorky looking guys in Finland, so I blend right in.


More photos, news article and results:

- Kavela News Article on the Race (google translated)
- Results
- Flickr photostream
- and more pics.

A good time was had by all!

Soratieajo 2008 - Cyclrocross in Oulu

Now that the leaves are falling, the wind is picking up and the weather is getting generally nastier, the weekly group ride I've been participating in (08-Lenkki) has moved to the forest floor where is warmer and less windy. The threat of rain all day and high winds (40 mph gusts) didn't keep any one away and 37 rides show up for the annual meeting of road, cyclocross, and mountain biker for Soratieajo 2008.

I had no idea what this was at the start but it wound up a 5.5 hour ride through about every imaginable terrain you could find in the forest. So my new cross bike is now officially baptised.

Here's some pics of the ride.

And sportstracker data.

The weather here isn't a factor for riding, it's just another way to dress, and maybe a little extra anti-freeze in your hubs. As one of my colleagues told me, "Finn's aren't made of sugar!"

Adios Summer

-2.7 C this AM. Winter is comming.


But is sure does make for a beautiful commute on the bike!

The Daily Oulu Rush Hour (with some spilt blood and a lost tooth)

I got some pics today of the daily commute. When the weather is nice we can all ride our bikes to school and work together. It's 4 miles to the schools, which are right on the edge of downtown and is quite a nice pedal - but really pedaling anywhere in Oulu is a joy. Riding a bike never gets old and there's some sense of accomplishment felt just arriving somewhere you don't get being in a car. So Isabelle has been riding her new bike to school quite a bit, much to our amazement. She had never ridden more than a mile or two at one time and is now riding 8 miles a day.

She has been getting much more confident in her bike handling and is learning to keep the bike straight and not to stop in the middle of the bike lane - it's easy to forget the bike way is a highway (albeit a slower moving one) and there's usually someone passing you in both directions. But most important to remember is that the bike lanes allow mopeds and small motorcycles as well and some can zip by quite fast (usually those Finnish high school hoodlums listening to their death metal).

So any ways I've been playing around with sports tracker on my N78 and it has the nifty little feature that it can upload your pictures tagged with your GPS location to show where you took the pic. So there's no need to let the gov't monitor you, as you can do it yourself now. The full pics are here.

Oh, and the blood and tooth. Isabelle ran off the road on the way home from school and crashed in an attempt to get herself out of the gravel and back on the road. Amidst here attempt she hit a hole and flew over the handlebars and fell on her face. I wasn't there, but the story goes that the street was covered in blood but when she noticed her tooth was missing she got a little excited. Luckily the tooth was recovered and is waiting to be exchanged for euros. So despite the trauma and bruises and some new loose teeth, there was some small reward in dusting herself off, riding home, and putter her tooth below her pillow for the nigh. Now I have to come up with 5 euros to pay off the T-Fairy - that exchange rate is killing me.

Interesting Cycling Stat

- In Oulu, Finland 37% of all trips made are on bike [LEDA Case Study].

- The city in the US with the largest % of bicycle communters is Portland, at 3.5% [US Census Report, Commuter Blog]

Oulu Cycling on Ovi

Some quick shots of the cycling roads in Oulu. Check out the street cleaner, they have little ones made specially for the bike roads. This is really just a test for my new Ovi account, Nokia's web/media sharing solution.

Oulu Bike Map

Oulu Bike Map. Apparently there's 512km of bike roads and lanes in Oulu. There's even an Oulu Cycling blog (not much activity) with some pics of the roads.