Here at Cyclry, we have a well-documented affinity for a bunch of mad bastards. Today, that honor goes to a former BBC Breakfast anchor and an ultra-endurance legend who have decided that the best way to spend their March is freezing on oversized tires. That’s right: Louise Minchin and Mimi Anderson are teaming up for the inaugural Inuvik Weekend Warrior Fat Bike Race.
Who? We mean. Uh. Who! Um. Whoa! Yeah, that one. It’s an endeavor, even if we don’t actually know who the fuck they are.
300 Miles of Minus Forty
The route is over 300 miles long. It takes place deep in Canada’s Northwest Territories. They will be riding across frozen rivers and completely desolate, snow-covered highways.
The temperature? A balmy -40°C. That is the exact point where the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales meet in mutual agreement that human beings should not be outside.
And they are doing this on fat bikes. If you’ve ever actually pedaled a fat bike, you need a slap. But also, you know that dragging those massive, low-pressure tires through deep snow feels less like cycling and more like trying to pedal a tractor through wet concrete. It prioritizes a slow, grueling, and visceral type of exhaustion over anything resembling speed.
The Roster and the Rig
Minchin might be best known to the general public for sitting on a comfortable TV sofa, but she’s a legitimate age-group triathlete who has spent years making the rest of us look lazy. Anderson, meanwhile, is a multiple Guinness World Record-holding ultra-athlete who practically eats extreme distances for breakfast. They are proving that age is absolutely no barrier to suffering on a bicycle.
Naturally, an expedition this bleak requires a small mountain of premium gear. We are usually the first to mock a bloated sponsor list, but when you are facing literal arctic conditions, you take all the free kit you can get. They’ll be riding Trek fat bikes loaded down with Restrap bikepacking bags, wrapped in RAB extreme weather gear, Darn Tough socks, and Findra merino wool. They’re also running THAW heated clothing, which will probably be the only thing standing between them and actual frostbite.
They are putting themselves through this highly curated suffering to raise money for The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and Marie Curie.
So, while the European peloton is currently busy worrying about their glucose metabolic rates down to the nearest second, Minchin and Anderson are gearing up to fight the Canadian wilderness. We respect the madness.