Silk Road Mountain Race (SRMR)

TCR didn't do that @skinny :)

Scratch rate has really fallen off - only a couple more in the last two days: 57 scratched, 36 finished / still riding. I guess a bunch got caught by the high pass before CP3 but they are all over that now.

One I am really impressed by is Katie L'Herpiniere. She is riding as a pair. She was paired with Jayne Wadsworth in TCR 2015 and was in the 'Angry Dogs' film, where it looked like ultra racing was just not her thing, and she had to scratch somewhere in the Balkans. I met her at the start of TCR the next year and she said she had had problems with eating - and she had to scratch that year too. But she is still going strong in this, closing in on the final climb.

At a guess, she's enjoying the hairpins?

check out this pic from Mikko's twitter feed. https://twitter.com/mkpaa

His caption is "Pushing my bike in a stream and suddenly either dotwatchers or children of corn. Who knows"

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Woohoo! Rich & Shona finished 🤘

Route for 2019 announced:

https://www.komoot.com/collection/891/silk-road-mountain-race-2019

It's pretty similar, with a few tweaks

The second edition of the Silk Road Mountain Race will follow a 1670 kilometre route with roughly 26,000 meters of climbing. It will again take riders through the remote mountain landscapes of the Tian Shan mountains in eastern Kyrgyzstan. The overall shape of the route is quite similar to last year, with the same checkpoints: Song Kul, Kol Suu and Issyk-Kul.
The start will be in Bishkek but unlike the previous year, we will be, opting for a grand départ further south of the city. We will implement some traffic calming measures as riders briefly cross the main road on their way out of town.
We have moved the finish to Cholpon Ata, a beach resort town on the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul. Finishers will be able to relax and enjoy all the amenities a larger city has to offer. It should make for a great finish location.
Riders who are familiar with the 2018 route, will recognise that there are a lot of similarities. Long stretches remain unchanged. There are however, a few major updates that add around 500 kilometres of new tracks. The biggest change is from Checkpoint Two to Checkpoint Three, which is entirely new. The other new section this year is the final pass before heading down to the finish line in Cholpon Ata

Was at LMNH for the film and Q&A last week. Looks great/mental in about a 30/70 split :)

Doit

I can barely sort out my road bike CARnage let alone kit out an MTB.

Good to see you Hippy - sorry I didn't get to hang around for a chat.

SRMR looks bonkerzzz. Film was good but necessarily (logistics) focussed on the 3 leaders. Can't imagine the chaos and suffering going on further back..

No drama dude. We ended up chatting shit with the usual suspects and leaving with Anisa and concluding there's too many races and we're still waiting on TCR checkpoints before going one way or the other next year.

What was the scratch rate in the end? You've clearly got a bunch of nutters on the startline already but even the front runners were commenting that it was harder than they expected.

I'll sort out the bike, you ride it*

no silly single sided suspension doobries, promise

* and, um, buy it

Was at LMNH for the film and Q&A last week. Looks great/mental in about a 30/70 split :)

I was there too - got there late and standing at the back only. Left before the end as feet tired and the talks weren't the best cycling accounts I've heard in the last couple of weeks!
Was standing in the same square metre as Ian Oliver and Neil Philips (TCR vets) and all agreed that we'd rather tour there than race.

Scroll up a few inches for scratch rate info!

There's easier ways to kill me.

Scroll up a few inches for scratch rate info!

What was the final scratch rate. I wonder what the main reasons were? Heard a bit about dodgy guts. No one really mentioned altitude that much. The storms and hundreds of k of hike-a-bike would probably put me off the most.

Sorry, thought I had put that in. 30 finishers, 63 scratched, so about 1 in 3 success rate.
Quite a few people were out of time at the first control, basically because it was so tough. And others got caught out in the weather, eg Chris Phillips got hit by a storm on top of the mountain and asked to be rescued by a passing race car.
One thought is that the some people who reported food poisoning could have had altitude sickness

There's easier ways to kill me.

Awww c'mon

https://www.silkroadmountainrace.cc/bike-recommendations-srmr-no1/

What they should have is a shoe recommendations page!

I can't really do off-road shit unless I use flats and wear sneakers. How can I ride midfoot without using Speedpray?

There was loads of discussion of shoes in the facebook group last year. If I'd done it I'd have used flat pedals with FiveTens.
Have you come across these - mid-foot flat pedals?
https://pedalinginnovations.com/

Funny enough I have some FiveTens. They're too nice ride with though :)
When I did that 3hr in some forest I used my 'they were going in the bin at TABR but I ended up keeping them' skate shoes that let water in through holes in the soles.

So these are just long pedals, designed to support more of your foot? Interesting. I used to use V8s then went to SPDs but then went to midfoot and never touched dirt until that mtb race.

Great - sounds like you've got proven equipment, get your entry in!

100km of hike-a-bike. I'm not sure even I can swear enough to deal with that much walking.

https://forums.mtbr.com/california-norcal/pedaling-innovations-catalyst-1058998.html

Deity TMacs also get mentioned.
https://www.deitycomponents.com/tmac-signature-pedals.html

They're more expensive than my whole bike though:
https://www.charliethebikemonger.com/pedaling-innovations-the-catalyst-pedal-12165-p.asp

They're more expensive than my whole bike though:

Yeah, my mountain bike cost less than that too. But sold it now, so academic for me.

Basically, yeah, they are just massive pedals designed to be ridden mid-foot. I've been using them for the last 4-5 months and I'm pretty hooked. I've ridden 100km on them a few times, but not further yet so can't definitively say they are the thing, but so far so good.
There's a new UK supplier which has them for £80 (if you don't mind lack of spanner flats) - they are linked off https://pedalinginnovations.com/

The Deitys look ok, but a bit small...