Ditto on the words of caution. 15mph speed limit is enforced and cyclists are bottom of the pecking order. It is a great place to ride and train and test out camping gear, but heavily patrolled especially around great falls and on weekends and holidays.

I like the sound of that dirt route from Georgetown to Blacksburg!  I would also like to get the gpx for the Virginia mountain bike trail, that looks sweet.

They recommend the 8x Lithium or higher - in fact they are very adamant that you don't use alkalines or lesser lithiums. 
http://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=102

Thanks Chris, and thanks for specifying the University Blvd Kroger/Starbucks.  There is another on S. Main street but I couldn't find the starbucks across the street....glad you cleared that up.

Macados is close, that's a great place for food and a drink.  Or at least it was 20 years ago....boy how time flies.  Maybe someone more local could tell us if we could get a couple tables on a thursday night or if something else would work better.  I'll be in around 8:00 or so myself, driving down from Warrenton and staying at the Inn at VT.

I think my room has two double beds and someone wanted to talk about sharing a room.....let me know.

I'm thinking the Starbucks is right across the street from Kroger and would be a great place to hand out the SPOT rentals... just a thought.

What does everyone think...

What time Chris?  I know at the stagecoach race SPOT handout took a while, particularly getting all of them on and tracking. They all had to have batteries and be up and tracking before they could get them on the trackleaders site - it required a few phone calls and some coordination. 

What about a rider meeting/beer the night before?  Is anyone else gathering the night before?

For those of you using the ACA maps, I have created a cue sheet based on their maps/cues.  http://almaxey.com/aml400/AML400_Cues.xls  there is a column for the mileage on that particular map (or cutoff) and for the entire route.

This was all copy paste so I do not warranty the cue sheets in any way, I could have made errors.  I recommend checking it first, or downloading it and making it your own with color coding and services, etc...

Good luck - I hope to see you all at the start. 

I was planning to ride the upper end of the route this weekend, Dunmore to Glady and back down the Ridge Alternate but I think the storm damage has closed some parts.  I have heard that the GRT is blocked/closed in areas...not sure it will be worth the 4 hour drive to find closed trail.  Anybody know anything about the condition of the trails/towns out there?  I guess they got hit as hard as we did here in VA.

How was the route for stealth camping?  Can you bivvy pretty easily or do you need to plan for finding lodging, campgrounds, or camping on the GRT?

This has been a great race to follow on facebook and by their spot trackers - they didn't post very often but when they did it gave us a great view into their mental state at the time (usually humorous) and what kinds of challenges they faced on this ride.  It seems like most challenges were in the airport and not on the road.

I'm all for seeing JayP smash this record next year. 

Maybe a collection of keywords would help everyone come up with a suitable acronym.  Here are a few, but I'm sure there are many more:

bicycle
race
trans
cross
ultra
ultralight
light
unsupported
solo
epic (or maybe effin' crazy)
America
continent
US
great
cross country
trans continental
time trial
grand depart


Anyway, that's a start.  Maybe with those and a few other words, some of the creative folks can come up with a cool name. 

I'd love to race this, too bad for that four letter word "W O R K" that gets in the way - I can't imagine getting the time off for this but I'll start dropping hints now.  If anyone has any suggestions on obtaining spousal approval for races like this, let me know.  We should start a thread on juggling work/family/racing.....

Yes on the Ridge Alternate, that is part of the course.  The deal with the Mountain Lake cutoff is that it's safer on the return trip, so everyone hits that on the way back, use the normal AML route on the way out. 

Here is the blurb from the AML Map:

Located on maps 1 and 2, it is recommended
to ride the 19.5-mile Mountain Lake Cutoff
only from north to south when returning
to Blacksburg. It is 5.5 miles shorter, and
includes a paved downhill in this direction.

Chris and Kelly are doing this route now, I looked at Trackleaders.com/allegheny and it looks like they both went off-course to Bartow, WV.  Was this a resupply/rest stop? What's there?  Google maps doesn't have much detail except for churches and cemeteries.

Nice little blurb in "Adventure Cyclist" about the AML 400!! 

I showed it to my wife, thinking if I could point to something in print she would believe me that this ultra racing stuff was a legitimate sport.  Up to now I have only been able to send her links to websites that she probably never visited and told her abstract things about races that I would like to do.  The whole grassroots, no support, ultra endurance thing doesn't really seem to appeal to her. 

She glanced at the article and her comments:  "Oh look, there's a picture of Jay Petervary on the other page."  Not sure what to make of that..... but apparently she knows more about it than I first thought.

Congrats on the coverage in Adventure Cyclist, looking forward to the "grand depart" from Blacksburg in October. 

LOL, I saw that red beanie!  I didn't think anyone was behind me though - I was still trying to catch up to the pack.

That was an amazing route, more hike a bike than I expected - which did me in, but an incredible string of trails to get from point a to point b and back. Coming from VA, the terrain and views were very different and truly amazing. I regret riding some portions in the dark because I know I missed some terrific sights. Next year I'll be a little more heads down racing mode, but this year I am glad I saw what I did, got pictures, and had a great time. I'll wear different shoes too, so I can push my bike without getting blisters.

Big thanks to Brendan and all of the folks who put together and scouted trails for the route. I really enjoyed meeting the folks I met out there, some good down to earth people who love to ride their bikes.  Can't wait to do it again!

If you look at the GPS track, I think you can see where they visited the spigot off to the right of the track.

You can follow these guys on facebook, it has been pretty interesting so far with the logistics of flying, getting bikes moved, etc... 
https://www.facebook.com/GlobalBicycleRace

On Feb 12th, they posted links to a bunch of the riders' pages so you can follow them individually.  If you go to the page above and scroll down to Feb 12th you can find it.