My experience of the 2022 Silk Road Mountain Race
This trip to Kyrgyzstan has again reinforced the love, support and enduring friendship I’m so lucky to have surround me. I have my health, I have Googs and all of you, my wonderful friends. I know many of you watched my dot and followed my progress. I wanted to share a little more of the colour of the adventure, what was happening on the ground and why it has been such a rewarding experience.
Bicycle
noun
a vehicle consisting of two wheels held in a frame one behind the other, propelled by pedals and steered with handlebars attached to the front wheel.
verb
a means of displaying and communicating one’s core beliefs and value system
The Psychological Motivation
I’ve always enjoyed riding my bike and the freedom and sense of self-renewal that comes along with it. I’ve also always taken inspiration from others who use their bicycle to bring awareness to the plight of others, showcase far off lands or to perform extraordinary acts of courage and valour. I’m of the firm belief that every time you get off your bike you’ve grown a little and there is no such thing as a bad ride.
I have a deep inner need to challenge myself and to discover where my mental and physical limits lay. A significant part of my self identity is my ability to overcome adversity and pull myself out of difficult situations.
The Setting
If you mention the Silk Road Mountain Race, most people would have not heard of it and if you mention Kyrgyzstan most people would struggle to locate it on a world map. The Silk Road Mountain Race is a 1850km self-supported bikepacking race held in Tian Shan Mountains of eastern Kyrgyzstan in central Asia. The Tian Shan, also known as Tengir-Too, meaning the Mountains of Heaven or the Heavenly Mountain. The highest peak in the Tian Shan is Jengish Chokusu, at a whopping 7,439m. The Silk Road Mountain Race has been labeled the world’s hardest bicycle race.
Most would call a bicycle race through this part of the world an obscure frivolous matter, but I saw it as the perfect opportunity to voluntarily place myself in a situation where all aspects of my mental and physical self would be challenged. Along with the fact that it is a ridiculously beautiful place to ride your bike.
Preparation
I’ve always prepared for these types of undertakings in a similar fashion, by devoting mental space to them each and everyday, in this case for almost 3 years. I build up a mental storyline of what equipment is required, what my fitness will need to be, what it will feel like to be on the start line, how the hardships will affect me during the adventure, what it will feel like travelling through the country, how rewarding the exuberance of crossing the finish line will be. Yes, I’ve been picturing crossing the Silk Road Mountain Race finish line every day since 2020. It’s a extreme case of ‘ask the universe and you will receive’.
The Race
Day 1: Osh to Gulcha
Distance ridden: 293kms
Time on bike: 27hrs 30mins
Vertical gain/decent: +5,600m -4,900m
Maximum elevation: 4,170m
Weather experienced: -5 to 30+
Sleep: 20mins
Garmin Body Battery*: Charged +2 Drained -32
The race started at midnight with a neutral start and a large police escort out of the capital. We hit gravel after 45 minutes or so of riding and the lead pack were off. I rode in a second group ‘the pursuivants’ settling in, and soaking up the atmosphere. The first obstacle was the infamous Jiptik Pass at 4170m. My ascent started at about 6am, just as the sun was starting to light up the tops of the ridges of the valley we were through. I was at about 3,000m and feeling a little cool but thought the sun would soon be on me. I had a high heart rate and felt no reason to stop and put on an extra layer and warmer gloves. I don’t know for sure but in hindsight, I think katabatic drainage was occurring, where colder air from the tops of the ridges flows down into the valley floor below. Within 15 minutes of me thinking I should put another layer on, I was now shivering uncontrollably and unable to use my hands to open the zippers and buckles on my bike bags to get to more gear. My fingers had clawed up and my hands were numb. I was in a state of shock as to why it was happening and how it had happened so fast. Luckily the peloton was still reasonably bunched and within a few minutes, I was able to embarrassingly ask another rider to help me get dressed. As luck would also have it, there was also a Yurt Camp 500m up the track, where I spent the next 30 minutes in front of their wood fire drinking tea and re-warming.
With that behind me I went on to climb Jiptik Pass which was as tough as it had been made out to be. Before climbing Jiptik Pass, I thought there was only one place you should not take your bike; the beach, now I know there are two places.
Day 2: Gulcha to Jala-Abad
Distance ridden: 167kms
Time on bike: 14hrs 45mins
Vertical gain/decent: +2,700m -3,900m
Maximum elevation: 2,400m
Weather experienced: 33+
Sleep: 2hrs
Garmin Body Battery*: Charged +0 Drained -22
Having been woken by a donkey after only having my head down for 20 minutes in a bus shelter on the side of the road, I was wired and set off for my second day’s racing. The temperature increased as the day went on, the roads became dustier and rougher and water more scarce. Around mid afternoon as I descended a ridge I noticed what I thought was a flat battery on my rear derailleur which stopped me from changing gears. I had charged it before the race and thought it was unusual dying so quickly but wasn’t alarmed by it. When the opportunity arose, I stopped in the shade to recharge it from my powerbank, it gave an error indicator light! I was in cell range and after some googling and discussion with my brain’s trust back in Australia it was determined to be an ‘outside of operating temperature range’ warning. This seemed to fit the current scenario, I still wasn’t alarmed but pretty bummed at the idea of having to ride the next 50 kilometres in 1 gear.
Later that evening I made it to Jala-Abad, a good sized town and checked into a hotel with plans to stick both myself and the battery in the minibar fridge and regather myself for the following day. I left the race route in 11th position on the leaderboard, which was right in line with my 3 year mental picture. During my hotel stay, things went from bad to worse and after a most-of-all-night session trying to solve my dilemma, by 10am the next morning I had only two viable but unequally palatable options; scratch on day 2 of the race or continue as a ‘single speed’. I chose the latter, put on sunscreen and headed back out. I rejoined the race in 42nd position on the leaderboard.
Day 3: Jala-Abad to Checkpoint 1
Distance ridden: 108kms
Time on bike: 16hrs
Vertical gain/decent: +2,400m -1,500m
Maximum elevation: 1,800m
Weather experienced: 30+
Sleep: 1hr
Garmin Body Battery*: Charged +0 Drained -27
After deciding to rejoin the race as a single speed I was presented with 30 odd kilometres of flat roads. This gave me a good 3-4 hours to contemplate my new existence in the race. I framed the view that it was doable and the only real difference would be; I’d be slow on the flats and need to walk for longer up the hills. What I discovered as the days went on, was something far more complex. The answer at this early stage in my new existence, I thought, was to just ride for more hours each day.
Day 4: Checkpoint 1 to Kazarman
Distance ridden: 210kms
Time on bike: 24hrs
Vertical gain/decent: +4,000m -4,300m
Maximum elevation: 3,000m
Weather experienced: +25
Sleep: 2hrs
Garmin Body Battery*: Charged +2 Drained -61
After dirt-napping for less than an hour in the world’s largest walnut forest I was on my way to Kazarman. I had a room in a guesthouse booked as a carrot to get there. Needless to say I spent the entire day frustrated by my lack of speed and ability to ‘get moving’. Fellow riders would come up from behind, say hello and ride off into the distance ahead of me, mentally draining to say the least.
I’ve always been a reasonably strong climber and as we came to longer ascents I found I was catching these riders. This gave me false hope and reinforced my belief that I had a workable strategy to ‘stay in the race’. Pulling into Kazarman I was back into 21st position on the leaderboard, which only added fuel to my false sense of security.
Day 5: Kazarman to Kok-Jar
Distance ridden: 110kms
Time on bike: 12hrs 30mins
Vertical/gain decent: +2,600m -2,100m
Maximum elevation: 2,700m
Weather experienced: 35+
Sleep: 1hr
Garmin Body Battery*: Charged +3 Drained -19
After arriving in Kazarman at 4.30am I was back on the road by 7am. Leaving town I was un-caffeinated and loaded up. This was an infamously dry remote stretch of the course.
Along the way I hooked up with fellow rider @velolegitimo from Connecticut, we leap frogged each other a few times throughout the day and ended up sharing a Bivvy spot on the side of the road on the outskirts of Kok-Jar. We laid our heads down around 11.30pm. At 1.00am two local families showed up to celebrate my birthday with me. I had just turned 51 and they weren’t going to let the milestone go past without some singing and dancing! Chris and I packed up our Bivvy and headed for Naryn.
Day 6: Kok-Jar to Naryn
Distance ridden: 110kms
Time on bike: 11hrs
Vertical gain/decent: +800m -500m
Maximum elevation: 2,000m
Weather experienced: 30+
Sleep: 2hrs
Garmin Body Battery*: Charged +5 Drained -18
Chris got into Naryn around 11am. I got in around 2pm.
I went and grabbed a nice meal, had a great uplifting call with Googs, got 2 hours sleep, resupplied and was back on the road at 10pm.
Day 7: Naryn to Arabel Pass
Distance ridden: 190kms
Time on bike: 23hrs 30mins
Vertical gain/decent: +3,300m -1,500m
Maximum elevation: 3,800m
Weather experienced: -5 to 30+
Sleep: 40mins
Garmin Body Battery*: Charged +10 Drained -56
Naryn in my mind marks the divide between the arid, rural west of the country and the more temperate and sparsely populated mountains of the east. For the past few days I had been hanging my hopes on getting to Naryn, I was now in familiar territory and I knew how uplifting the mountains would be to my pychy.
Although I didn’t realise it at the time, this is where my race really unraveled and from which I put my physical body through stresses it wasn’t able to recover from.
Having ridden for 24 hours, I reached the top of Arabel Pass at 3,839m at around 10pm. My thinking at the time was to get the pass behind me, have 4-5 hours of good sleep and tackle the next obstacle Juuku Pass at first light.
Through social channels, lead riders were building a picture of a treacherous hike-a-bike descent of Juuku Pass with loose scree and numerous boulder fields, it was Jiptik Pass all over again! But in reverse, when descending can prove more dangerous than climbing.
Unfortunately the race gods were having nothing to do with my plan. As soon as I lay down in my Bivvy I was cold, I managed to fall asleep but within 40 minutes woke up shivering. It is extremely unsettling to think that you are alone, you are remote and you have nothing more to keep you warm than what you are currently wrapped in.
Having been here in 2019 with Googs, I thought I knew the course and I made the decision to get back on my bike and get myself down to a lower altitude. What I didn’t know was that this year’s course took a 40 kilometre right hand turn across a flat plateau which turned out to be a 4 hour ride for me in what I’m guessing was a temperature range of -5 to -10. I figured I was just generating enough heat spinning my pedals at 10 kms per hour to stop from going hyperthermic.
When I finally arrived at the turnoff for the track to Juuku Pass, I was significantly sleep deprived, cold to the bone and pretty frazzled. Nothing made sense, the GPX route that you follow on your navigation computer seemed to be going around in circles and just wandering all over the place. There were no tracks on the ground to follow nor the signs of previous bicycles anywhere to be seen. I lost complete confidence in my ability to navigate and decided to hold up until sunrise. The ground was completely frozen at this stage so I sat huddled like a child on a rock, inside my sleeping bag, wrapped in my emergency blanket with a plastic rubbish bag over my head to add an extra layer. I pulled my Bivvy bag down over the top of me. I spent the next 3 hours shivering and reflecting on the position I had got myself into. About 30 minutes before dawn I sensed light and movement outside of my little cocoon and unraveled myself. Another rider was coming along and I called out like a vunrable child ‘Over here, over here’ Over came @miss.biking.viking hard-as-fucking nails Austrian Daniela Kirchner who went on to cross the line as the first female. In her German accent her question to me was ‘Vie r u sitting ona rock’ I replied ‘I’m just trying to stay warm. I, in turn asked her ‘ Why are you going down Juuku in the dark?’ to which she replied ‘Vie not?’
Day 8: Arabel Pass to Checkpoint 2
Distance ridden: 108kms
Time on bike: 13hrs 30mins
Vertical gain/decent: -3,300m
Maximum elevation: 3,300m
Weather experienced: -5 to 30
Sleep: 4hrs
Garmin Body Battery*: Charged +2 Drained -32
When the sun finally rose, I found myself sitting on a little rock island on the edge of the most beautiful alpine meadow. A crystal clear alpine lake and two snow covered peaks behind it framed the scene. No man made tracks in sight, just serenity. The route to be followed just gently rolled over the lush alpine grass in front of me.
One of the profound joys of being on the ‘road’ bikepacking is you see every sunset and every sunrise. This sunrise was particularly uplifting, but in hindsight I know now, only providing my emotional pychy with a false renewal of energy and vigour. While I felt ‘alive’ again, my body was greatly depleted.
I brewed up a coffee, dipped the last of my stale naan into it and pointed my bike towards Juuku Pass. The pass was gnarly but off-the-charts stunning, glacial lakes surrounded by towering jagged peaks. The decent lead into a utopian seemingly untouched forested valley. Picture postcard European pencil pines, lush green meadows split by a raging glacial fed river, wild horses roaming free and the occasional herdsmen, just there to ensure the order of the universe was maintained.
Day 9: Checkpoint 2 to a Bivvy in the Arabel Valley
Distance ridden: 84kms
Time on bike: 11hrs 30mins
Vertical gain/decent: +2,500m -1,200m
Maximum elevation: 3,900m
Weather experienced: -5 to 30+
Sleep: 5hrs
Garmin Body Battery*: Charged +46 Drained -19
After checking out of my supposedly sanitarium turned guesthouse, things seem to go by at a slower pace. I needed more rest breaks on uphills to catch my breath and I was increasingly finding reasons to stop riding and do ‘Housekeeping’. Housekeeping is a death curse in any endurance event, the more time spent changing clothes, putting on sunscreen, fiddling with your electronics, looking at your map, taking photos, filtering water, etc etc, the less time you are moving forward. I’d gone from roughly 2 hours housekeeping in every 12 hours on the bike at the start of the race to now spending close to half my time ‘adjusting my kit’.
I was also aware of my increasingly fragile state, I couldn’t speak to Googs on the phone without breaking down in tears. My mantra has always been ‘Mind over Body until your body can give you no more’, and for the first time I think my body was now saying ’Listen bud, we’re going to have to pick this back up some other time’.
I got up and over Tossor Pass at 3,901m at around 2pm and was immediately greeted with a brutal headwind making my progress down the valley with no gearing next to impossible. Once again, I was caught out at high altitude and decided to Bivvy at about 6pm. I would try to get a good sleep and set off pre-dawn for the next beacon on the horizon ‘The Fried Fish Cafe’ at Sary-Bakul.
Much to my dismay, my sleeping kit again wasn’t adequate for the temperature and I was forced to get up and ride through the early hours, sleep deprived, cold and hungry.
The complexity of the my ‘single-speed’ scenario had really hit home by this stage; I was continually running out of food, running out of water and ending up in bad Bivvy locations, due to my inability to make good progress.
Day: 10 Arabel Valley to Sary-Bakul
Distance ridden: 132kms
Time on bike: 14hrs 30mins
Vertical gain decent: +1,000m -1,700m
Maximum elevation: 3,300m
Weather experienced: -5 to 30
Sleep: 4hrs
Garmin Body Battery*: Charged +33 Drained -62
I ride with a pretty low cadence, I’ve never been a ‘pedal spinner’ and at some point during this day or the day before I had noticed my knees starting to swell. I attributed this to my body’s reaction to my new riding style. I just thought my legs weren’t agreeing with the higher than usual cadence.
The road out of the Arabel Valley and into Sary-Bakul was particularly horrendous; dry, dusty, hot and washboarded. Progress was excruciatingly slow and I stopped at least 4 times to nap in the sun on the side of the road.
Arriving at Sary-Bakul felt like arriving at a Wadi in the Omanian desert; I was out of water, out of food, out of painkillers and alarmingly out of SOM.
I’d now been on the course for 2 days longer than my mental picture as well as having to have spent far more money than planned fuelling my slow progress; more food & more guesthouses.
I sized up the car park and approached the most expensive looking vehicle, a black Lexus with tinted windows and Russian plates. The conversation was straight forward and felt almost pre-scripted. I presented the driver with my emergency US100 bill, I’d carried with me on the advice of @eleanor.moseman.
‘I need SOM’
‘How much do you need?’
‘How much do you have?’
‘60,000’
‘I need 60,000’
And with that I went back across the road and gorged on fried fish, fresh naan and chicken dumpling soup.
I checked into the guesthouse above the cafe and had a long phone conversation with Googs about my day, the challenges I was facing and my now greatly swollen knees, legs and ankles.
After we hung up, Googs reached out to our network of friends back home to discuss my swelling, needless to say, it was more serious than I had taken it to be. I spoke to our good friend Fi who gave me a straight up prognosis and a ‘this is what you need to be watching for’ in terms of other symptoms.
About an hour later at 3.30am local time, one of those symptoms presented itself and together could be classed a medical emergency. The inevitable had arrived; I was scratching from the race.
The Gift
Days 11-14: Hospitalisation in Bishkek
Before leaving Australia, on the advice of our good friend Andrew, I’d taken out a Global Rescue Membership. They have a very simple product offering; ‘We’ll extract you out of any hole on the planet and deliver you to the medical facility of your choice’
I have nothing but praise and can highly highly recommend Global Rescue. When I hit the red SOS button in their App they had 3 questions; What’s your emergency? Where are you? Where do you want to go?
Later that morning after a 4 hour ambulance ride, I presented at a world’s-best recovery clinic in Bishkek. On presentation, my diagnosis was dire and very serious. After 4 days of amazing care by a highly professional team and no end of tests, it was determined that; my condition was a result of a cocktail of extreme exertion, exposure to extremes in temperature, exposure to significant differences in altitude, dehydration, gastrointestinal issues and poor nutrition; I’d been diagnosed with a good bout of The Silk Road Mountain Race!
But jokes aside, I dodged a bullet with no serious illness.
It’s not the outcome I was obviously planning or expecting but it’s the outcome I needed. Had all been well and I’d gone on to finish the race, I would have received a pat on the back from all of you and just marked it down as a successful achievement.
The experience I’ve been through and what I’ve learnt is far, far more valuable. Sometimes you need to spectacularly fail to move forward to greater success.
I go looking for endurance challenges but I’ve never before reached my physical limit. Now I have and can far better prepare for the next adventure.
I’ve learnt that everyone has two gas tanks; your psychological tank and your physical tank, all the love, encouragement and support you receive as well as the uplift you gain from your spectacular surroundings are topping up your psychological tank. At Checkpoint 2 over a meal, fellow Australian rider Jono Elliot (the only 1 of 5 Australians to finish) called it how it was and said ‘you look fucked mate’ to which I think I replied ‘I’ve just ridden over 1000kms, in 1 gear on 12hrs sleep, how am I meant to look?’ Psychologically I felt great, I thought I was crushing it, but my physical body was imploding.
Also, when it comes to endurance, I’ve learnt it’s not what you’re capable of, it’s what you’re capable of recovering from. I’m capable of riding my bike for 35 hours, having a 20 minute nap and riding again for another 15 hours. I may do this again at some point in the future but now know to follow the instructions and feedback from my Heart Rate Monitor when it tells me I need 7 days recovery before my next activity!
I’ll be forever grateful to Nelson Trees and the @silkroadmountainrace, it’s an amazing event. He has created something truely special. A coming together of inspiring human beings that all leave far richer for the experience. I’ve had the most profound 3 weeks and will go through the rest of my life stronger and smarter for it.
*https://www.garmin.com/en-US/garmin-technology/health-science/body-battery/
Created on my iPhone, please excuse any typos.