A ride in Kyrgyzstan

I first heard of the Silk Road Mountain Bike Race (SRMBR) from Shona and Rich, who own Keep Pedalling, my local bikepacking specialist bike shop in Manchester. Shona and Rich were planning to race in the inaugural edition of the SRMBR in 2019, and it sounded like it would be an amazing adventure.  Because all riders have to carry a tracking device, it was possible to watch the clearly identifiable “dots” of individual riders live online, and like many observers I became hooked on dot-watching Shona and Rich and other riders, as well as enjoying the SRMBR podcast where interviews with various riders gave a glimpse of how incredibly tough the race was. With huge and remote mountain passes reaching altitudes of 4000 meters, snowstorms and heatwaves, a total elevation gain of over 30,000 meters and a distance of 1800km to be covered in less than 2 weeks, the SRMBR race quickly garnered a reputation of being one of the toughest bikepacking ultras in the calendar.

The 2020 race was postponed due to Covid, but I decided that if the 2021 race could go ahead, I would definitely apply

The first question on the application form for the SRMBR asked the applicant: “Why do you want to race this route rather than do it as a tour, that is do it at a leisurely pace taking time to enjoy everything Kyrgyzstan has to offer?”

It was as difficult to give an answer back 2020 as it is now 2 years later.

Did I sign up for the glory? to test myself to see what I was made of? For the thrill of the racing? Maybe it was just something to focus on and distract myself during lockdown. At the time of signing up my desire to compete in the race was based on a gut feeling rather than rational consideration.

The bike I would be riding was my trusty Surly ECR, a steel frame I’d fitted out over the year with a variety of carbon and titanium parts. With all my camping gear food and water, the total weight was a little over 38kg, not the lightest rig but a sturdy one.   

Day 1

I was abruptly awoken at 3:30am after 2 hours of sleep, and in something of a daze I struggled out of the blanket-laden bed in the local hotel I and other riders had been staying at prior to the start of the race. “The trucks have arrived!” shouted someone. The race had been due to start a few hours earlier at 10pm, but had been delayed as the lorries carrying all of the race bikes had got stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the start line. As a result most of us had tried to catch a couple of extra hours sleep while we waited for the bikes to arrive. As I approached the trucks the adrenaline finally kicked in, especially as everyone else seemed to be there already sorting out stuff, and I had an anxious time trying to find my bike and carry out the necessary last-minute checks. I had a quick slurp of the caffeinated drink I’d brought the day prior in an attempt to get a much needed boost of energy, not really necessary given the frazzled state of my nerves.

^Photo by Chris McClean (chris@chrismcclean.co.uk) @chrismcclean

As the sun rose, we had our first experience of riding into the beautiful dawn light in the valley, and the mood of everyone around me was very positive as I got to chat to a few of the other riders.

The positive mood shifted into a state of slightly nervous determination, when at around 2800 meters the track steepened significantly and the altitude really started to affect me: because of work commitments, I hadn’t had the opportunity to spend much time at elevation before the race, and I was paying for it now. Just pushing my bike required a disturbing amount of effort, and the top of the mountain didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Nonetheless step after step you do make progress, and I made it to the top sometime around mid-day

Due to a combination of over excitement and possibly altitude-induced poor decision-making, I quickly began the downhill at a fast pace. I am an experienced mountain biker, but it turned out that my speed was too great for the unpredictable nature of the route down the pass. 

Coming around a sharp bend I immediately found myself in a highly technical rock garden due to a previous landslide. With no lines visible, and still going too fast, I slammed on my front brake just before a large boulder: I just avoided going over the handlebars as my rear wheel flew high up in the air before crashing back down, and my backside smacked onto the rear of the saddle with considerable force. There was a horrible snapping sound, and when I dismounted, I saw that the seatpost bolt holding my saddle on had completely sheared off, and the saddle was no longer attached to the bike.  I stared at this horrible mess for some time, before trying to bodge some sort of fix. It quickly became clear that nothing could re-attach the saddle, and I started to think that my race was over on day one due to a ridiculous and wholly preventable mistake. All that training, preparation, travel and money wasted.

As the gradient plateaued, I stopped to top up on water from a small stream and checked on the race tracker. The race had split in half with the majority of the riders in large group well ahead of me and the rest in a group behind still making their way down the pass, and I was in the gap between the two groups. Unable to sit on my seat I was forced to stand on the pedals, and as the road was now punctuated with short sharp climbs, doing these standing up was getting very tiring, and my morale started to drop: the thought of having to quit on the first day was crushing after the months of preparation.

Further up the road I met a group of friendly young kids, so using Google Translate and hand gestures, I asked if there was a bike shop in the next town, Toktogul.  They indicated the affirmative with such enthusiasm I was given the impression that not only was there a bike shop there, but that this bike shop in a remote village in Kyrgyzstan would have every bike component one could desire. The naive hope and optimism provided by these local kids lasted an hour until I realised Toktogul was still about 60 km away and that it was a Saturday, and if I didn’t make it in time today I had no idea if bike shop be open on a Sunday. If not I might then have to wait till Monday, and I would be well behind everyone else by then. And of course there was no guarantee that the shop would even have the parts I needed even if it were open……….

These questions started to go around my head, amplifying my weariness. There was good downhill at least!

Standing on the pedals and having to push hard up the rolling hills was talking its toll on my legs, but at least I was on tarmac now. On the few downhills I tried to perch on my broken seat post until the discomfort on my bum was greater than the pain in my legs. I eventually arrived at Toktogul at around 8pm. I’d been cycling for 16 hours covering 140km and climbing 3000 meters, and I was utterly spent. I found a guest house, where Sergey, the owner, was very helpful and said the bike shop would be open from 10am Sunday and that he’d take me there. I ate and went straight in bed, and tried to get into an optimistic frame of mind about the chances of fixing the saddle the following morning before falling into a deep sleep

Day 2

I was up early, so took the time to clean my bike while waiting for the local market to open at 9:30am. Sergey and his young son showed me to the bike shop which turned out to be a small stall selling helmets, a few children’s bikes and an limited array of bike parts of varying ages. After much discussion and searching it was clear that they had no suitable replacement, and dejected at once again having to consider scratching from the race, we went back to the guest house. Sergey told me to wait a moment and came back wheeling a very old broken bike, which fortunately still had a reasonably intact, if ancient seatpost and saddle.This turned out to be the right diameter for my Surly, so I was more than happy to pay for it.

I caught up with some other riders who had had or were having struggles, the most common issues being punctures and food related illness. After a few hours of hard riding, I met two riders racing as a pair, one of whom happened to be the UKs ambassador to the Kyrgyzstan. Co-incidentally he had also bought his new bike from Keep Pedalling in Manchester, so we had a good chat and he told me a little about Kyrgyzstan. I leaned that 30% of the GDP is attributable to one gold mine and another 40% to Kyrgyzstan workers in Russia sending money home.

There are 2 support vehicles on the race, one with a doctor on board and the other with some photographers. On one of the climbs we saw a breakdown truck go past carrying one of the badly damaged support vehicles, which looked like it had rolled over. Not exactly a reassuring sight…   

Feeling guilty for having set off so late I had ambitions of cycling until midnight, but as night began to fall so did the rain. By 10 pm I was wet, cold and tired, so when two lights just to the side of the road appeared it wasn`t a difficult decision to stop. The lights turned out to belong to two other racers, Phil from Manchester and Tim from Germany. They had entered the race as a pair and were in the process of setting up their tents for the night. By the time I had my tent up as well the rain intensified dramatically, I jumped in and tried to get some sleep.

 Day 3:

The descent down to Kyzyl-Oi was an awesome bit of mountain biking, fast and technical. The two of us descended at high speed, my mishap with the saddle on day one temporarily forgotten.

We reached the town, and, stopping at a small shop to stock up, we discussed our next moves: Cat decided to stay in Kyzyl, but as it was 7:30pm and the Sun was still up, I cracked on in the hope of finding somewhere to stay further along. I still felt pressure to make up for all of the time I had lost.

Alone again, following a gravel road, my bike lights shedded enough light in the pitch darkness to allow me to avoid the numerous and deep pot holes. The lights of a car coming around a bend up ahead suddenly dazzled me, the car was on my side road coming right at me. I swerved out of the way just in time as the car barrelled past. Feeling much shaken by this near miss, I cycled on into the now rather threatening darkness.

I arrived at a small village called Kojomkul around 9:30pm. Seeing an elderly lady on the road, I stopped her and asked if there was a guest house in town, and she beckoned me to follow her to a small house. Inviting me inside she took me through to the back room, passing a room with a very large man sprawled out on a big cushion looking more unconscious than asleep thanks to the bottles surrounding him. After putting out my tent to dry I went straight to sleep: just as I was drifting off the lights turned on and I opened my eyes to see the guy looming over me. He spoke to me in drunk Russian. Initially fearing for my life, I realised he was asking if I wanted to drink with him, but being in a state of exhaustion and desperate for rest, I politely declined

Day 4

My alarm went off at 4am, and I cursed the earlier version of me that had seen fit to set that time.

I had big ambitions of reaching checkpoint one (CP1) 177km (110 miles) away in the city of Kochkor where I could get a hot meal and hopefully a bed. It was a bitterly cold morning and what I`d started calling my Soviet saddle had moved from being uncomfortable to painful, each small bump in the road sending the edge of the metal spring into my left butt cheek. It was hard to think of anything else despite the beautiful scenery. As the sun rose, I climbed gradually through theKarakol valley, but if my increasingly vivid dreams of a warm meal were to be realised I had 2000 meters (6500 feet) of climbing still ahead of me

Day 5 

I started chatting with one of the locals women helping out in the hostel named Lilya, who happily spoke excellent English. The hostel was in fact run by a women’s co-operative.We had a good chat about the difficulties of learning French, as coincidentally like me her partner was French. I explained my current problems with the saddle. “My brother knows some guys locally who are importing Korean bikes, I’ll give him a call!”

30 minutes later he arrived, and I jumped in the car and we drove 10 minutes to small compound, and I was shown down some stairs to a basement with seven Korean imports lined up. My heart sank it looked like they all had the same seat clamp style of my existing Soviet saddle, but thankfully the bike gods had taken pity on me as the last bike in line had the type I was looking for. Massively relieved I pointed to the bike and used Google translate to ask if I could buy just the seat post. The answer was no, I would have to buy the whole bike. At the price of £40 pounds, I thought that was an acceptable deal. We took the bike back to the hostel and I set to work putting the new seat post and my lovely Brooks saddle together: success!

Setting off I quickly discovered my new seat post was a fraction too narrow and it kept slowly slipping down. After stopping a few times to tighten it, I ended up wrapping the seat post with electrical tape which did the trick. I caught up with Cat who had been suffering with knee issues: I wished her the best of luck before cracking on to a recommended café where there were a few riders having lunch. However, after my slow start to the day I decided not stop to try the smoked fish the café was known for.

 Day 6:

The French have a saying for when you have particularly low spirits: “le moral est dans les chaussettes” (The morale is in the socks). At this moment 500 meters from the top of the pass, my morale was certainly in my socks, especially as my socks were full of cold water after the fifth river crossing of the day. I made it to the top of the Arable pass at 3800 meters just as night was descending. The landscape was cold and barren.

I joined the Kumtor mining road which would take me down to the town of Tamga a small town near Lake Issyk Kul, the tenth largest lake in the world. I had 2200 meters of elevation to lose, and so far I had been making up for my slow ascent with a rapid descent times. I’d neglected to bring a spare set of brake pads, and during a few anxiety-provoking kit-conversations with other riders prior to the start, it was made clear to me that this was a major omission. Consequently, I was pretty nervous about wearing out the pads, so I was trying my best to keep braking to a minimum. This was quite fun but meant the chances of crashing (again!) were significantly increased.

I made a wrong turn near the bottom, losing 20 minutes. By now it was around 10 pm, and I was worried about being able to find anywhere to stay for the night in Tagma. It took a few attempts calling around to find somewhere open but I eventually found a BnB run by a lovely old lady who insisted on making me some soup before I went to bed, which was very gratefully accepted.

 Day 7

I met another racer staying in the B&B in morning: he was trying to fix his damaged bottom bracket, but had not had any success, so was having to scratch from the race. I stuffed my face with pancakes, bread, cheese, ham and porridge before heading out to the shops to stock back up on supplies. I brought a lemonade as a special treat to enjoy later.

There was only time for a relatively brief look at the beautiful lake, before heading back up into mountains: this time the lengthy and intimidating Tosor Pass lay ahead: at 3893 meters it was a massive climb. Half way up the pass I stopped to drink my lemonade, something I’d been greatly looking forward to. Only then did I realise I had in fact purchased what was called “hard” lemonade, which has an alcohol content of 10%: not an ideal drink at this point, and I poured it away in disappointment. Slightly dejected I continued up the pass into some light rain, I started listening to an audiobook, and grimly pushed on.

I passed Tim and Phil again, then Hendra, who hailed from Indonesia, and lastly Brian, from Germany. The five of us would spend the next few days passing and being passed by each other. Hendra and Phil were slower both up and downhill but would spend a few more hours than me on the bike each day. Brian was slightly slower than me on the bike, but was faster than me when it came to the lengthy periods of pushing, which required a very different technique which I realised I was deficient in.

 Even though we didn’t ride with each other it was very comforting to meet and greet familiar faces each day.

The weather worsened at the top of the pass, and with low cloud obscuring what would have no doubt been a spectacular view, there was no point in hanging around, so I started descending in the hope of escaping the rain. By 8pm, after taking my shoes off to cross a river, I didn’t have the will or energy to put them on again so pulled off the road to a nice flat spot overlooking a river. After I’d crawled into my tent, I heard the sound of bikes approaching, and peeked out of my tent to see Phil and Tim arriving for the night. They were a bit short of water for their meal so I offered some of mine to save them climbing down to the river in the dark. Having only covered 65 km (40miles) I felt unhappy with my progress and vowed to push hard to the town of Naryn the following day, a ride of 146 km.

Click on SRMR week 2 below for the next chapter.

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