GiroProtagonist

My buddy told me about this site, first post here. I been trying to reach out to folks about this race, this seems like the right forum. It's a self supported road race in the style of Tour Divide. Check out these pages below if you have questions! Hope to see you in Astoria.

https://www.transambikerace.com
https://www.facebook.com/TransAmBikeRace

unterhausen

I vaguely remember Lon Halderman riding solo across country by himself in the late '70s. Sort of a precursor to RAAM. A little crazy

Barrettscv 

The route includes some long climbs, is this intended?

unterhausen

is there a way across the country without long climbs?

Barrettscv 

The southern route from San Diego to Jacksonville avoids the kind of climbs seen on other routes.

hamster

The southern route is far from flat either, there's somewhere around 8k of climbing before you even get out of California. But yes, the Trans Am route does seem to go out of the way to find climbs, long and short. I tried to sketch the route in RWGPS and I get 120k of climbing just in the first half. RWGPS tends to err high but that's still A LOT of climbing. Route profile looks like a saw blade. You get up to 11500' in Colorado (for no apparent other reason but to sightsee?). Before that, there are several passes in Oregon, a climb from 1300' to 6900' in Montana, a climb to 9500' in Yellowstone. On a touring bike while hauling all your gear. How much elevation gain is there in RAAM?

Bacciagalupe

Yeah, I dunno. The poor man's RAAM?

Seems like it could be OK, though I'd think the lack of prerequisites will result in a ton of DNF's.

Bacciagalupe

They're basing the route off the famous Bikecentennial, which was a big cross-country tour in 1976. IIRC Adventure Cycling developed out of that event.

StephenH

Not having ridden RAAM- a friend of mine reports that the newer routing also goes out of it's way to do climbing.

That's pretty much a moot point. I can't imagine there's that many people saying "Dang it, I'd go ride 4,000 miles if only they hadn't put those hills in there!"

Just glancing through the rules, it looks like you could go ride a couple of weeks each summer and finish it off in 20 years. I'm not sure how they'll know when people are actually done.

pdlamb

Humph, grumble. The TransAm is a touring route, IMHO, designed to stretch ordinary cyclists a bit while giveing them a cross-sectional view of the U.S. Trying to turn this into a race is like challenging a few thousand motorcyclists to see how fast they can ride the length of the Ice Fields or Blue Ridge Parkway. I hope nobody does something stupid like dies in a car accident, or cause someone else to die while avoiding a sleeping cyclist, as seems to happen periodically in the RAAM. RAAM changes its route a bit every year, and it's designed as an endurance race. TransAm is basically unchanged for the last 27 years. and I'd hate to see it having to shift to avoid the negativity that could be associated with such an incident.

hamster

They are asking participants to carry Spot satellite trackers and to update their status online. There will be a centralized web site that tracks everyone's progress. I don't think it's within the rules to stop after a couple of weeks and go home, then return later. You're only supposed to do that if you have a major mechanical that leaves your bike non-rideable.

Bacciagalupe

Naah, it'll be fine. It's just a tarmac version of the Tour Divide.

If you have a chance, watch Ride the Divide and you'll get a good idea of the spirit of it.


I'm sorry, I don't understand that reasoning. Accidents and crashes happen all the time, for all sorts of reasons. Nothing about this event indicates that they are encouraging unsafe behavior. Certainly no one proclaims that the Bikecentennial route is crash-proof.

I also find it slightly incredible that they would make a major change to the route because of an accident -- or that nothing could have changed over that period of time. I'm sure they've done minor updates here and there, as roads and resources change.

I.e. nothing about this will affect you. If it doesn't interest you, there's no need for you to pay it any mind.

unterhausen

I didn't ride bikecentennial, but I worked in a bike shop that got a lot of drop in traffic because we were just up the mountain from the route and there were no bike shops near the route for a many miles before us. The people that rode it hated the stretch before they got into Virginia.

I don't follow RAAM closely enough to know that they change the route. I'm guessing that's partly to reduce the annoyance since they do it every year. I think that this race will be somewhat less stressful on local traffic than RAAM would be, at least as you get further east

GiroProtagonist

I suspects DNF's won't be too high. So far there is a mix of divide racers, transcon racers, ultra racers, and randonneurs signed up. Pretty hardy folk. Sure some will have to pull the plug but hopefully not too many.

Homeyba

This is just a fastest tourist race. The RAAM route is mostly dictated by who will host the start and finish. It hasn't changed significantly since prior to 2004ish. It's logistically very difficult to change the route significantly from year to year.
I was more concerned with cheating but maybe the requirement of the spot trackers will help. I can tell you from RAAM experience that they are not infallible. The spot tracker batteries last between 7 and 14+/- days meaning they will have to be replaced at least once so riders will have to carry extras or buy them along the route which means someone will go extended periods without it on...

Bacciagalupe

I'm sure someone will cheat, probably on the support side. It's human nature.

The Spot devices use lithium AA's, should be pretty easy to carry spares or procure en route. IIRC Tour Divide takes over a month and uses Spot. Resupply points / commercial purchases are allowed.

Homeyba

Wonder if it has a low battery warning? Something audible would be appropriate. The ones we used on RAAM (a different brand) only had a red led that came on when the battery got low. That would be the last thing you'd be looking for. We had a number of them go dead and we had crews to monitor them.

unterhausen

if you look on the spot tracking site for one of the trackers, you can see what the battery state is on each of the track messages. It has an led that flashes red when the battery is low. The Gen 3 Spot trackers can use batteries that are easier to find on the road.

Homeyba

I would guess that is going to be a problem. Crews had a hard time keeping them with from dieing I can't imagine it'd be high on a riders list of things to do. I'd either obsess with it or forget entirely about it.

percy kittens

I just signed up for this. I've been wanting to do a long ride but the options are overwhelming -- how to start planning? This seems like a good place to start. I've never done a group ride, the idea of being around a million others just bugs me. This one seems like there would be a lot of space in between riders, especially where I will be, well towards the end.

I am really excited about this :-)

Onto the training forum....

Creakyknees

ok so first off, this seems like a very cool event!
second: thousands and thousands of people have successfully pedaled the route ... it's "safe enough"
third: anybody know what the course record is?

https://www.adventurecycling.org/rout...america-trail/

skiffrun

A few years ago, Lon started to blog about that first trip. It is a good read even though he was unable -- due to LIFE -- to complete the story. https://pactour.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html

Lon was not the first to go x-continent solo, or even double x-continent, but ... well, go to the UMCA site and scout around a bit.

skiffrun

The initial Tour Divide (didn't include Canada, btw) took almost a month, maybe more. Last time I looked, people now do it in 2 weeks. The fastest ones carry nothing.

I have ridden a bit with Matt Lee -- he slowed down, a LOT; then, after having helped me across the worst headwind part of the course, he took off on his 1981 World Touring Bike with fenders, racks, flat pedals, 1980-era analogue speed & distance meter. We were each late starting the "local" MS-150. It was a BIG event for me at the time; he was doing it for grins. (I didn't know who Matt was until a few weeks later when the bike shop owner saw me and said, "hey, I heard you rode with Matt Lee." I replied, "who is he, anyway?")

WalksOn2Wheels

I just saw this on FB yesterday. To those who scoff at the logistics of it all, it's really no big deal. They've been doing the Tour Divide for a long while now. The rules are laid out and are very simple. The SPOT trackers have evolved greatly since the beginning. I'm one of those "blue dot junkies" when the TD starts up every summer. I even had a friend, Kevin Campagna, finish it this year in 22 days. The "winner" (there were fire reroutes, so it's not an official record) finished in something like 14 days. It's sick. I'll see if I can dig up the Strava page where he logged the whole friggin' ride.

Anyhow, this is exciting. I am excited. Maybe I'll do this one year. More likely that I'll try for the TD, though.

WalksOn2Wheels

Strava log from 2013 TD winner Mike Hall:

https://app.strava.com/activities/64279296