Silk Road Mountain Race (SRMR)

Talking to a couple of finishers, they felt like a lot of people underestimated the terrain and resupply opportunities. Generally making a lot of stupid decisions when, in their opinion, these people should have known better (based on experience) or sucked it up (sponsor blah blah).

Sounds like the main bunch points (towns) became a somewhat toxic whinge-fest with people nudging each other to scratch to relieve the guilt of scratching themselves.

Nelson has something else up his sleeve, not sure if it's 2019 or 2020 but it sounds hard, high, long and gravelly.

Not really midfoot, but some Shimano's like ME7 seem to have lots of range, they call it EXPANDED CLEAT-ADJUSTMENT RANGE and you could be able to stretch the holes even a bit more, if it's just a plastic plate.

Sounds like the main bunch points (towns) became a somewhat toxic whinge-fest with people nudging each other to scratch to relieve the guilt of scratching themselves.

Good insight! One thing that Nelson did that was interesting was to get the people who were out of time at CP1 to take a short cut to (?) Naryn. That meant they were ahead of most of the riders still racing. That made sense from the pov of not having people strung out in remote country but, at the time, I thought it seemed a bit unfair on the guys who were racing, if the scratchers get to town first, book the hotels and eat the food. Sounds like it had other effects too!

As soon as I did some research and stopped underestimating it, I decided it was way too hard for me and and dropped out!

Andy seems to be doing the same with Morocco bike adventure , you'll have to be in time at the first cp to get to continue for the full route.

my mountain bike cost less than that too.

What is this? MTB for peasants?

No, eBay!

Nice, I'll check them out along with those long pedals @frank9755 suggested.

I don't know about Frank but I got no skillz to pay the billz!

Shit, not another one!

Yeah, and he's got a couple of others coming too, Iberica traversa and Andes divide, more or less offroad/gravel. So much races everywhere, I can easily entertain myself all year with these when I win the Eurojackpot.

I saw those other races on the homepage and closed it before looking at them! :S

I need to find a replicant to sit here breaking fixing stuff, while I ride everything...

There's already a list of names on the world by bike challenge site...

Familiar set of peeps on there. Bit too long for me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dhjmSp30jc&feature=youtu.be&t=17

That's a lot of interest from some big names. Don't they have jobs? :)

https://vimeo.com/317470522

Crazy scenery. Was a good watch.

Thrasher just mentioned that some skinny bloke is doing it this year.

Still a bit of time until it starts (August 17th to August 31st) but never too early to start chatting.

Looks like a great field with skinny, Jay p plus lael wilcox and Sarah Hammond amongst the starters.
Others I know include
Chris Phillips, who I was chatting to the other week and week had to dnf last time. He said he was going back with a different bike, a full on mountain bike, and with mountaineering gear, better tent, etc.
Andi buchs, who did indypac and who organises nord kapp tarifa
Stu Edwards, a brit living in Tasmania did indypac and who has done lots of mountain biking
Karl speed, who has done tcr a couple of times (mandatory route should suit him as he got dqd last time for not riding solo as he apparently hadnt done a route so was just following others!)
Stephane, who usually goes off road a bit during the tcr!

Yes, but will skinny have METAL BRAKE PADS? :)

Lots of them, I'd expect.

I'll be keeping an eye on Stefan Amato and Dave Sears (riding as a pair). They're the folk who run Pannier.cc, and Stef's a nice chap (I've not met Dave).

road ultra racing is ded

and just as I started getting even worse at it...

It's true, the cool kids do the new events, ideally in the first year they run.
The Tour Divide still has massive ultra-cred but SRMR is quickly rivalling it. The new European road events didn't create such a big splash.

The splash comes from something more than just mtb vs. road. Andi is also now organizing a race in Morocco, somewhat exotic but easily reachable location seems good, I think the route is fahionably gravel/allroad for a big part. But still no one talks about it. It hasn't been marketed much though, which kind of makes it look like a nice mysterious unorganized true grassroots event. Maybe too much so.

I'm expecting to see more adveturous ultraraces that include gravel/allroad/whatever. Or hoping. Though that has been the direction for the big events, TCR, NCT, the new Bike non-stop across the states. Looking at a map, it would seem simple to make a gravelroad alternative for the Indypac, there's one gravelroad going through half of the country along a railway etc.

TAT? That doesn't seem to get any attention.

Was chatting with @skinny about that Morocco race. I've never been to Morocco...