Anyone thinking of doing this? Sounds like a blast to me!
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Might give it a go. Like to check out the course first and see what bike I should be using.
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Yeah I was thinking the same, the course file on the site doesn’t work. But I assume it’s a mixture of rail trail, some dirt road and minimal single track.
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I grabbed the course file a while ago, when it worked. The route is all rail trail and woods roads. Rail trail out to the 103, then Hiking Trail Road to Tote Road to newish Ingramport Connector Road, back out Hiking Trail Road and the rail trail.
I haven’t been through in a few years, but the end of Tote Road towards Hiking Trail Road has been blocked to vehicles for many years so it’s more like ATV trail and there used to be a massive, unavoidable water hole before it got more drivable. Tote Road is fairly grown in now and has some significant puddle and loose rock sections.
I’d guess a gravel bike would be the best choice. Maybe not ideal for parts of Tote Road, but definitely best for the rest.
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Working now. Or at least it is for me. Looks like it uses part of the old Sportwheels mtb race course. Last time I was by I was on a gravel bike but a mtb might make more sense. Have to ride it and see.
Cool. I’ll check it out, probably try it on the mountain bike to see how slow it’ll be, then judge accordingly
Yeah I’m entered, looks like a lot of fun. I’m probably going to bring my gravel bike with my aliexpress 40mm gravel suspension fork. But I’m going to do a run through the course before I decide.
I’m going to ride the course tomorrow after work if anyone wants to join me
I’m planning to take my 27.5 rigid, there’s a couple steep hills but from what I’ve done of the course before it shoudn’t be too bad
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Yeah as much as I’d love to ride my gravel bike I think with anything halfway technical that I’d be better off on my hardtail 29er. I mean, it could wind up being a long day/night
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The Tote Rd water hole is long and deep.
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Yeah, no. I’m out.
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Alright, I rode the course today on my giant trance x, the down hill tires didn’t do me any favours. The 2nd 5km section was pretty brutal. The surface was so soft, I was sinking in a bunch of places and a lot of it had the consistency of sand I would not want to take a drop bar gravel bike back there. There were probably 5 big water holes similar to the one in the picture above. There were 3 or 4 pretty big climbs on course. The first 10k had almost no downhill sections. It didn’t help that I had terrible visibility for most of the time, with my glasses full of mist .I think with the ground firmed up a bit and being able to see where I am going, it would definitely be doable in under an hour, but not by a whole lot. Usually the point of a backyard ultra is a race of attrition, the courses aren’t usually overly hard and most people have no trouble completing in 45-50 minutes. It makes me wonder if someone just pulled out the maps and created a route without testing. That being said I think the best bike for this course would be a hardtail with a locking front fork (I locked mine out frequently today) and skinnier tires, maybe 2” or less.
I’m going to do the route one more time, this time on a giant roam, strip down all the weight off and with the 700c x 38 tires, I should be able average much higher on the other 10km.
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The course for this kind of event should be fun to ride, but that’s just me.
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Absolutely it should. I’ve done many backyard ultra trail runs, and they were all a very fun atmosphere and a good course. I longest I’ve gone is 13 hours. On this bike course I think 3 would be pushing it
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Those roads are hit and miss right now moisture wise. There is still snow in parts of Big Ingram. It will dry, but there will be sections that will always have large standing water.
Kudos to people trying something new, but as an organizer I think Bowater/Mersey would be a absolute nightmare for any kind of safety patrol.
That area is “very” busy as of late with ATV/UTVs and dirt-bikes. Most are respectful from my experience but all it takes is one incident.
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I haven’t actually ridden it, but from the TF description it sounds like that trail may be worse than the current one
Oh really? I didn’t go down it but figured out would slip all the water holes. The intersection is right before the first big one
