Goodbye Trans Iowa, Hello Trans North Georgia...I've found my A-Race for the year.

Earlier this year I was planning on attempting Trans Iowa as my first ultra-endurance event. Trans Iowa is a 320 to 350 mile gravel road race on some of the crappiest roads in Iowa, in April. Sounds awful...which is why it was perfect. If I plan on doing the Tour Divide mountain bike race, I'd like to build up to it with some truly challenging, but shorter ultra-endurance riding events. So far, all my ultra distance riding has been solo and purely for fun. Last year this culminated in a week in October where I rode over 500 miles in 5 days, with a decent amount of elevation. This was no race, and while I was riding with a lot of other people for a decent portion of it, there was a lack of urgency to the whole thing. I'm looking forward to doing this kind of riding with a group of like minded people, point to point, with the intention of doing as fast as I can. Trans Iowa was to be my opportunity to ride with a bunch of like minded nut jobs over a really long distance in a really short amount of time.

Unfortunately, even though I got my registration in on the first day of registration, before noon, the event had already filled up. Due to the way the event is run, there is no wait list. I fear that Trans Iowa may have jumped the shark and that it's popularity may have out grown the grassroots nature of promotion that gives the race some of it's charm. So it was on to find another ultra-endurance event to cut my teeth on.

Somehow, through one of the many facebook groups I subscribe to, Trans North Georgia was brought to my attention.  The route is 350 miles long across the top of Georgia from South Carolina to Alabama. Along the route a rider gains over 56,000 ft of elevation. This is no gravel race. This off road, single track, awesome, mountain bike ultra-endurance racing. A local rider, tour divide finisher, and friend of mine, Brett told me he thought it would be a great preparation race of the tour divide.  I put in my registration for the race and ended up 3rd on wait list which pretty much assures that I will get a spot in the event. Now I just need to train up to it and get my rig in order.

As far as training goes. My plan is to do what I do when it comes to training to ride far which is ride a lot. I'm lucky to have some time on my hands so this should be no problem. I'm hoping to work my way up to about 70 hours a month of riding by July. The main things I want to do is work some longer mountain bike races into my schedule this year. I definitely plan on doing the Wilderness 101 again in Coburn, PA but I'd like to work in at least one more 100 miler and a 24 hour race. Fitness should not be a problem.

The other side is the field craft of multi-day ultra-endurance racing. I plan to start getting out on over night rides on the weekends as often as possible as soon as possible in the spring. this is the area I feel I'm going to most deficient in. I don't have a ton of experience at bike packing so a priority is going to be getting some experience. Hopefully Brett and I can get our schedules lined up to try to tackle the Pennsylvania North-South bikepacking route. I feel like bikepacking with a tour divide finisher will be a good way to learn some new things about living out of a bike.

As far as gear goes, the major thing I thing I need to look into is a bivvy. I lived in South Carolina for a while I know it's going to be hot in August in Georgia...like really hot, with a humidity of 200%. I'm going to look at past weather during the time period of the event to see what kind of temps to expect and develop a plan for a sleep system. It will have to be light and easy to set up and tear down. I've heard some folks use hotels, I don't plan on it for such a short (in comparision to tour divide) event I can live outside for a week if I have to and I plan on camping at Mulberry Gap which is pretty much at the mid point of the route so I can stop there if I need to. My sleep plan is to not do it as much as possible. In other words, ride until I absolutely have to stop, crash out off the side of the trail for a few hours and wake up and keep trucking.

Bike is sorted, I plan on riding my El Mariachi Ti in geared hardtail mode. I considered a rigid fork, but this is still east coast mountain biking and that means rocky, rooty, and rough. I have my Revelate Designs bags and all my emergency kit dialed.

I'm super excited to start riding in preparation for this, but until this snow lets up, it's going to be mostly fatbiking and turbo trainer until spring. It's going to be an interesting journey, and I'll be posting about my training for this event here, so check back from time to time!