Silk Road Mountain Race - Days 1 and 2

As my last post from several years ago notes, an event excited me for the first time in ages: The Silk Road Mountain Race - a tough 1200 mile self-supported bike packing race with over 100,000 feet of climbing that goes all over Kyrgyzstan.  (Bike packing is where you ride with all your gear).  Photos of Kyrgyzstan captured my imagination the second i started Googling.  It immediately struck me as a significant “reach” to complete it, but having never done anything like this I had no clue whether it was reasonable to try.  Originally registered to race in 2020, I finally went this past month after ramping up my training best I could.  (I hired an amazing coach: Danny Suter, who got me in as good of cycling shape as was going to happen given my life and time constraints).

To summarize: it was next level, stupid hard, and also an adventure of a lifetime, though the experience ended up leaving a different mark on me than I would have expected.  The adventure wasn’t the one I thought I was seeking, but it was maybe the one I needed.  I experienced growth and clarity in unexpected ways that aren’t really about “racing” or being a certain kind of person who does sporty or badass shit.

Day 0/1 - Friday, Osh

Check-in was fairly smooth though my sense of panic was only heightened by meeting other racers and feeling generally as though I had no business being there.  I gave a guy from Abu Dhabi a puncture kit since I had an extra, and a guy from the Scottish Highlands, whose name sounded very foreign and difficult to understand when he said it, gave me his extra container of tire sealant.  Unlike in other races I’ve done there’s no shop to pick up missing items.  We were sharing as we could at this point.  However, during the race you’re prohibited from helping each other unless you’re part of a “pair.”  Or unless it’s a “dangerous situation.”

The pre-race meeting only caused me more panic as the RD mentioned there was some stretch, maybe 50k, somewhere vague, without water.  I only thought of my questions about this later when there was no one to answer them.

Brad, Emily, and I had a pizza delivered to our hotel and went to bed to sleep a few hours before the midnight start.  Despite arriving days earlier, my jetlag was still horrible and I was very sleep deprived.  Naturally I set my alarm for 10:45 rather than 22:45 and awoke to Emily knocking that it was time to leave.  In a state of half asleep frenzy, I got my stuff and got out the door.

The start was beneath a giant statute of Lenin, and we were supposed to do a mellow group ride until outside the city.  Naturally it was, for me, a too-fast pavement pedal with a cop car on my ass as I frantically tried to stay with the pack.  Emily and Brad were quickly out of sight, and I pedaled as hard as I could until the cops peeled off. 

There was a reroute for the first segment of the ride, but my GPS rejected the changes and a giant error message blazed across the screen and I couldn’t get rid of it.  So, I was just following people but had no clue whether it was the right way.

Soon we were on dirt road climbing what seemed to be a canyon.  It was very dark.  I chatted a bit with the Scottish guy whose name I learned by reading the roster was actually Barry, and a Canadian woman named Mel.  Next thing I knew I was in some dead end canyon in the dark with Mel and clueless as to what happened and how we got there.  I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so generally discombobulated in a race.  My panic had mellowed into a more even sense of general resignation.  

We figured out that the road was above us and managed to get ourselves and our bikes on the right path.  I have no clue if I followed the route but there was much pushing up varied surfaces.  It was all so dark and surreal.  I’m not sure I ever woke up fully.  

Eventually we were spit out onto what seemed to be a legitimate gravel road.  Somehow this allowed me to stop, take a deep breath, and settle into what would be a long but now enjoyable day that actually involved some bike riding.

I enjoyed pedaling some miles with Mel and we bitched about the sprint out of the city.  Eventually the sun came out and at some point Barry was there again.  He mentioned having stopped to make coffee and I decided that’s what I needed to calm myself and start the day.

After my coffee, I was a new woman.  I looked around and saw that it was pretty cool.  We were in mountains and passed through little villages.  I chatted quite a bit with Mel and Barry and we made our way up towards the first pass, Jiptik Pass.  We passed a yurt camp where we could have a cup of tea (coffee?  Tea?  I forget) and there was a large group of riders stopped.  Barry and I stopped and chatted with some great people inside.  There I met Jenny (Scotland), whose race story is insane and involves all sorts of sickness and injury, Jenny’s husband Matt, Eleanor (USA), whose race would be the inspiring one, Sammy (Australia), this mountaineering woman who has climbed Everest and is considering K-2 (!!!) and does Enduro racing which I previously knew nothing about, and Rueben, an exceedingly calm Belgian.

We drank our tea and continued on.  It had been suggested that if we weren’t going to clear the pass in daylight we should stay at a yurt camp below the beginning of the climb to the pass.  It was a beautiful ride up to the camp and I arrived around 3:30.  I had energy to ride longer but didn’t expect I’d be up the pass and down any sketchy parts on the other side by dark.  So, I had to stop there after only about 100k of riding (and pushing).  This was the first clue that my best laid plans for daily mileage would be foiled due to practicalities such as this…. To finish I needed to average 80-85 miles per day.  A dubious beginning for sure.

Perhaps the more disturbing thing was seeing Brad and Emily already camped at the yurt camp.  Brad wasn’t well.  That was disheartening.  I ate one of the meals I brought with me and passed out early, ready to make up miles the next day.

Day 2 - Jiptik Pass (close to 14,000 feet) - the hardest thing I’ve ever done

Day 2 started well enough.  We were already pretty high up and I wasn’t acclimatized so I started by pushing towards the pass trying to keep things easy.  The scenery was stunning and it promised to be a great day.  The trail petered into a single track of sorts that was washed out in spots.  One spot in particular seemed a bit dodgy, dropping off into a deep and steep ravine, but Barry had just gone across and helped me get me and my bike across safely.  Brad and Emily caught up from behind and we all continued up.  

Pretty much it all fell to shit in short order.  There had been at least one if not multiple rock slides so the task at hand was essentially mountaineering with fully loaded bikes.  This involved heaving my heavy bike over steep and sometimes loose rock fields.  My friend Corinne recommended taking things 5 miles at a time, but I began having to take things 6 inches at a time.  We later joked that it was like climbing Mt Siyeh in Glacier National Park with a fully loaded bike.  It’s not really far from an apt comparison.

I felt so weak, inadequate, and hopeless.  I had to hold the brakes for dear life, quickly release and push with all my might in one grunting heave, hope to advance the bike a few inches, grip the brakes, move my body up a few inches, and repeat.  The geometry of me and my bike made it almost like an awkward bench press.  We were barely making progress and it was just so so so hard.  I had trained to ride my bike, not to do whatever feat of strength I was attempting.  I turned to Brad at one point and said weakly, trying really hard not to cry: “this is just so discouraging.”  Emily helped me push a couple times - I tried to help her back but I was basically useless.  I was a puddle of lame. 

“Danni, just hold the brakes.  Ok let go.”  Brad had laid his bike down and appeared next to me, taking the brakes of my bike.  “Go walk up to where Emily is.”  I let Brad push my bike up an especially difficult talus field and walked up to where Emily was maybe 20 feet above and burst into tears of desperation.  “It’s like the hole” she said, remembering another time that was terrible, that time ski touring.  (It’s kind of funny the things we do for “fun.”).

After a bit of progress, we took a break and I collected myself a little.  Slowly, we finally inched our way up to the pass.  I was so happy when Barry yelled from above: “20 more minutes!”  I think it took us 8 hours to go a few miles and about 4,000 vertical feet.

“I am just so weak” I announced, feeling I needed to explain myself, having left my dignity somewhere below the pass.

“No, this was really hard Danni” assured Brad.  He seemed to mean it.

It turns out this pass was objectively hard, it wasn’t just that I’m uniquely weak and pathetic.  Sammy described it as harder than climbing Everest.  I was quick to believe myself inadequate rather than consider that it was just hard.  There seems to be consensus that Jiptik was absurd - some people found it “harrowing.”  At least I have some mountaineering experience and wasn’t freaked out on top of everything else.

So a word about receiving help.  Clearly this was against the ethic and express rules of the race.  But what it was at its core was my close friends who won’t just watch me flounder in obvious distress and me being so hopeless and discouraged as to want only to get off the f’ing mountain.  I felt so deep over my head that I knew with certainty that I didn’t belong on that mountain (with a bike at least) or anywhere near the SRMR.  I know that Brad and Emily will always protect and help me and I would do the same for them both.  This was my first moment of clarity - friendship and humanity were the only considerations that mattered in that moment and I’m ok with it.  I know not everyone feels the same way, but we are sometimes thrust into shifting priorities by instincts and forces that do not involve a lot of intellectualizing.  I don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses, but I really also just didn’t give a shit if I was DQed.  I felt deeply that the whole concept that I was in a race was farcical already on day 2.

The top of the pass was spectacular, and we stopped to enjoy it with Rueben.  He brought a nice camera so I hope to see some of his photos.  Then, exhausted, we started down the mountain.  At one point I fell.  Again, I didn’t want to cry, and whispered that I just needed a minute.  Brad just sat next to me and hugged me.

We camped at a lovely yurt camp with Korean tourists riding horses and feasted on Plov, a traditional rice dish that had roasted garlic, veggies, and an egg.  I fell asleep to a performance of traditional music happening in a nearby yurt and didn’t let myself contemplate my situation.  That situation being 11-12 miles completed on day 2.