Silk Road Mountain Race (SRMR)

Since we'll probably end up discussing this, here's its thread.

https://www.silkroadmountainrace.cc
https://pedaled.com/landingpage/PEdALED-Silk-Road-Mountain-Race

Some SRMR blogs:
https://jamesmarkhayden.eu/stories/canyon-bike-spec
https://jamesmarkhayden.eu/stories/srmr-2021-race-preview
https://samulimaekinen.wordpress.com/2022/02/10/bike-and-preparation-for-the-srmr/
https://bikepacking.com/plog/jay-petervary-silk-road-mountain-race/

2022 tracker link: https://srmr2022.maprogress.com/

. ooof

Perfect course for me...

Wish I was doing this. Work meant I couldn't f*ing commit to it. My ideal place and race.
Anyone from the forum racing?

Is there a tea hut then?

kyrgyzstan is famous for its dark bread pudding

Bit sad to not be able to make it. Maybe next year! Route looks great

That climb on the first day looks savage

one checkpoint on top of mt everest ?

Really want to do this next year. Looking forward to seeing how it pans ooot.

Yep it's pretty brutal: https://www.lfgss.com/comments/13844548/

That looks amazing! Tough but amazing.

looks amazing , great pictures.

The descents might be a bit scary.
Looks amazing though.

he final pass towards Chong Kemin and the finish line follows a horse track that will definitely include a fairly difficult section of hike a bike. The track down the pass reaches 40% at one point…

yep

I put in an entry for this but withdrew after I did more research - and realised just how hard it would be! I would have needed a new bike + MTB skills which I don't possess.

Big challenges will be:

• getting over the first climb on the first day. I reckon a few people will either not make it and have to sleep at altitude or push too hard and damage themselves when not acclimatised.
  
• Resupply and carrying food. There are some long stretches with nothing so need to carry lots of food. Some people might run out, or find there is nothing at a little remote shop when they get there.
  
• Weather - could rain for a few days on end, with no shelter, no hotels, etc
  
• Crossing rivers - these are ok in the morning, might be ankle height, but by evening the flow builds up as the water melts. Could be waist, or maybe even neck height by sundown!
  
• Hike-a-bike - especially that last climb which will be walking up a goat track for a full day. Don't fancy doing that with plastic cleats.
  
• Bears and wolves and other wild stuff. They rarely attack humans. But it's also pretty rare that 80-odd tired humans put themselves on their own in the wild for night after night. I hope there isn't an incident, but if I was leading a hungry pack of wolves, I reckon a sleeping, isolated and exhausted rider in exposed territory might look like low-hanging fruit!
  
  

This will be a tough one and I expect there'll be a high dropout rate. The problem might be working out how to go about dropping out, given much of it is so remote.

@GoatandTricycle

Nah, the descents are fine.

You've already pinch-flatted through every spare tube and patch you have and your tyres are filled with straw so you're walking down every hill... :)

I wondered about the ability to carry enough water and food to get to the next re-supply point, and, what might be available there.

Another issue could be 50 ravenous bikepackers descending on a tiny remote shop and clearing them out leaving nothing for the locals , I wonder if Nelson has been calling ahead to get them to stock up.

other wild stuff

This happened during tabr...
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/06/07/bison-gores-california-woman-at-yellowstone-national-park-officials-say.html

Nelson has been calling ahead to get them to stock up

Outside support.

DQ the whole field!

Yep a very average off and you could be in quite some trouble.

That was one of the reasons I pulled out. I felt very uneasy about the idea that I might be taking food that meant a local child went hungry.

Nelson was doing some things to mitigate, like putting a supply of food into one of the remote checkpoints, but I didn't think it was enough. He may have done more since then.

I was all set to enter as the route looks amazing but it does seem like there is more chance of getting it badly wrong with the SRMR than other similar events.

Resurrecting this thread as it is all about to kick off on Saturday. It's going to be exciting.
Here is the tracking site:
https://www.silkroadmountainrace.cc/tracking/

Loads of TCR / TABR / IndyPac veterans riding. I'm particularly watching:
Mike Sheldrake (55)
Chris Phillips (7)
Kim Raeymaekers (56) - v powerful rider but a big guy for a hilly event
Bjorn Lenhard (93b) - fresh from TCR and riding as a pair