Silk Road Mountain Race (SRMR)

You're still younger, and much faster, than I was when I started my first ultra - embrace all those years of gradual decline that you have ahead of you!

I like everything to be fast though. Thus my decline will also be rapid.

Did you all read @Samuli s write up on last year? If not, go read he. God he makes it sound easy. He's really tough mentally and very humble.

https://samulimaekinen.wordpress.com/2022/08/10/silk-road-mountain-race-2021/

Samulis write up is an antidote to all the influence bullshit hype.

Tranquilinfluencer

Are there any good write ups or accounts of what it’s like for the back markers?

I’m captivated by the superhuman efforts of heroes like skinny, hippy, samuli sofiane etc, but also interested to hear what it’s like for those racing to make the time cuts… especially what their daily mileage and schedules are like.

For srmr I don't know. But this springs to mind

https://dotwatcher.cc/feature/20000km-on-the-transcontinental-race

You seem to have included a fat, slow, drunk in your superhuman list.

Specifically about Silk Road I've not seen much, but I'm guessing that's because you won't get many slow pokes entering something like SRMR.

I posted a list of TABR blogs in that thread a while back. There's quite a few slower riders doing ride reports.

I literally reweeted that this afternoon. He's just got done with the "fun" parcours.

Also I think the conversations you want are had over a beer. Most of the people like that don't have or use Instagram much. They're not in it for the likes but just the adventure. I know quite a lot of them personally and most are tough fucks.

A good mate John white springs to mind. Got sick when he did srmr in 2018 but finished. Looked emaciated. Hard as fuck John.

Yeah, I guess what I’m most interested to understand is what the “minimum viable standard” is for a race like this?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to be flippant, but I’m just wondering how plausible SRMR would be for a “normal” human being… specifically me 😀 even if it is an exceedingly remote aspiration.

I would never be near the pointy end but there was a time, long ago, when I was a reasonable enough endurance athlete (in a pretty limited amateurish sense… I.e. multiple IM finishes with best times around 9:50-10:10, multiple running ultras up to 100mi etc). However, as with frank, my current life offers me relatively few opportunities for adventure and SRMR is an event that really ignites my inspiration.

Fitness wise, it's not that high but that is if you are one mentally tough fuck

Dip your toes with AMR or a like. Shorter and way easier. If you get on ok, learn what's needed and step up. Don't waste your time coming to kygyzstan without some experience. You'll possibly just be another statistic.

I'd second that. I got a place in the first SRMR. I ended up having to have a heart operation so couldn't do it, but it was a lucky escape. I'd have been way out of my depth. There is a certain level of technical skill needed which I just don't have. I could acquire it, but not in a few weeks or months. If I was to have a go at SRMR again, I'd work up to it, starting with day rides on local trails and including at least one shorter MTB race. I'd like to be confident I could get round the HT 500 without massive amounts of walking before going to Kyrgyzstan.

Lots of people entered that first one who didn't make the cut and were picked up from the early checkpoints, or re-routed onto the road to get back to Bishkek.

Regarding your main point though, what is it like for people at the back? On something like TCR I'd say it's not that much different, just the distances are lower and it goes on for a lot longer. It's still the same challenges - what to eat, where to sleep, routing, fixing things that break, dealing with discomfort and pain, missing your family and home, etc. On SRMR those at the back may be lacking technical skills and walking a lot more.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Doug makes of the parcours. I did think of him while I was up there.

On his 650s he will be okay.

I haven't heard from him yet, maybe he's cooling off! Ha

"Absolutely fucking hideous.
And I went off route so I got an extra two hours of it but backtracked
Doing that after almost 4000 K in a storm was so hard."

Hahaha bonus kms

He's being fairly restrained! Where did he post it?

I checked the tracker and messaged him when I saw he'd finished the parcours

"How was that parcours? Better than everyone else with your fatter tyres perhaps."

"Absolutely fucking hideous. And I went off route so I got an extra two hours of it but backtracked"

Cool - glad he made it out of there

From his tracker looks like he missed out the walk over the ridiculous / pointless grassy hill. Don't blame him, that was utterly soul-destroying. There was a perfectly good road round the hill, which it looks like he took.

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TCR thread >>>

Get out of here with your roadie chat

Nelson seems to be pretty strict on who will get a place, in terms of how capable they seem to be to cope with the environment, many don't get a place because of this, so that would be the first thing to think about. And still there''s lots of people who don't finish, often because you do have to push hard just to keep going and it still might take too long, but it's hard for me at least to say what the limit is for being fast enough to finish. It's more about the ability to keep going, all day, day after day, than FTP. So yeah, this doesn't help much.

Absolute worst part of that was the flies!