Seven hundred and fourteen miles across the state of South Dakota on a bicycle. Riding on single track trails in the Black Hills, a paved descent past Mount Rushmore, the Mickelson Trail, hundreds of miles of gravel, a bit more paved and numerous b-roads. Piece of cake, right? Oh, the trek is self-supported. You are responsible for hauling your own water, clothing, sleeping gear of choice, repair kit and food.
Joe and Tina Stiller are the race organizers for the Trans South Dakota Bike Race. They are available to answer phone calls day or night if you hit a rough spot or can’t find a turn. They have scouted available water spigots along the route and help clue participants in on friendly places to camp for the night. I’ve read rider accounts that indicate that the Trans South Dakota Bike Race is the best supported unsupported bike event to participate in.
Beautiful and sweeping vistas are present along every mile of the route. The rocky mountain bike trails, rolling gravel, and flat river bottom offer something for everyone. In Pierre, a five-mile river crossing offers an up-close-and-personal view of the Missouri. Riders break down their bike, lash it to a raft and paddle from Oahe Dam to the town center.
Trans South Dakota is a bike race. Technically. Some riders set forth from the Wyoming border competing to cross the state first. Others just hope to finish. But race rules still must be followed. For example, each rider has checkpoints to visit at Mount Rushmore, Badlands National Park, and the Corn Palace in Mitchell. They must also post a photo to the Facebook group to document their arrival.
The race is tightened with deadlines to reach each point along the way. Each rider has 11 days to North Sioux City, South Dakota. A satellite spot tracker on each bike reports locations to race coordinators and interested fans. If a rider exits the course, they must return to where they left off and start over from that point.
James Meyer, an avid Spearfish biker, is intimately familiar with the trails in the Black Hills. Meyer thought he knew the Trans SD course, but misinterpreted a portion of the route. “In the first hundred and some miles I knew every inch of it. I had ridden it many times before, so I knew exactly what to expect. I looked at the course, I thought I knew exactly where it was going. But I didn't look real carefully. I actually went off-course for a total of 10 miles before I realized what I had done wrong and then had to turn around to backtrack climbing up Iron Mountain Road. I lost about an hour of time there and did some bonus miles.”
Meyer started biking and racing as a young child. So did Sarah Marcikonis. “I've been cycling since I was about 10 years old and big miles since I was a little kid,” says Marcikonis. “I started racing when I was a teenager and I just never let go of the bicycle.” Marcikonis logs many miles around her home of Longmont, Colorado.
Marcikonis is a return rider to the Trans South Dakota Bike Race. It is difficult to find a matched peddling companion, so many riders spend a lot of miles pedaling alone. Marcikonis said that it’s still better than a day in the office and one must take the soloing in stride. “It’s an amazing journey to take with a range of emotions, especially when you’re doing it alone. You have your low points and you have to work out of your low points. Then you have these high points where you’re like, ‘Wow! I’m only five miles from Menno! I can cool off in air conditioning!’“
David Aguillard is a first-time rider. Aguillard resides in Louisiana but spent a summer after college on a ranch near Hermosa. The race winds through the area and Aguillard was drawn back to visit the beauty of the grasslands again. Aguillard regularly participates in outdoor adventuring, including mountaineering and backpacking. Bikepacking is a bit different. Trans SD is Aguillard’s first event, so he chose to do the Lakota Sprint Race, which allows riders to finish in Pierre.
Nerves are common as participants review training and gear lists. “I've never been dependent upon a piece of machinery like this,” says Aguillard. “I'm unsure of my equipment, unsure of the bicycle and how it's going to treat me. Then we’re running over a long unsupported course like this by yourself, it's going to be a challenge.”
Knowing one’s gear can make a difference between success and a trudge-fest. Bob Simpson is a Trans SD race veteran. Bringing enough supplies for 700+ miles of self-sufficiency and carrying too much can be a fine line. For Simpson, the mental stamina is just as important as physical endurance. “You do have to get physically trained, but the mental part is the hardest, especially after two or three days, you don't have a lot of sleep. Your legs are tired. The weather may or may not cooperate with you and you just have to really be mentally strong to be able to get through it.”
Weather can be a faithful or a fickle bicycling companion. If pacing is just right (or wrong), a rider can bike for hours in the rain. Or fortune may put a rider on the backside of a storm with nary a drop of water. Sometimes riders must seek out shelter for rest and to check forecasts. Marcikonis happened upon a cowboy on a four-wheeler, “I stopped. ‘I’m just gathering up cows!’ he said. I was like, ‘Do you mind if I sit in this old barn?’ So, I went in and sat, ate a little bit of food. Checked the weather. He had the radar on his phone. It was right on the edge of a storm. It was just kind of moving west to east.”
Some riders are able to make connections with folks along the route. Assistance from community residents is permissible as it would essentially be available to everyone. Tye Bragg travelled from Smithfield, Missouri for this race. He spent time in a former career travelling through South Dakota for a communications company. Bragg looked forward to taking the scenery in at a pace of 15 mph instead of 70.
Bragg had a rough start to the race, tweaking his knee hiking his bike up and down the trail in the Black Hills. On the way into Phillip his fuel tank was on E. “It's probably the first day ever cycling where I wanted to be anywhere other than on a bike. I found myself about every 30 minutes on the side of the road, not able to move my leg. I crashed coming up into Phillip on a hill, which made it worse. I was at the steak restaurant, having a ribeye. It was so good. This angel named Nancy, came up to me, asked me if I was okay. She had taken care of a hurt rider three years ago. Immediately you could just see the kindness in her eyes and that she's wanting to help.”
In typical hospitable South Dakotan fashion, Nancy felt bad because her home was already occupied with guests. “She worked some magic with some of her friends and got me set up to stay in the EMT house where all the volunteers can bunk,” says Bragg. “And that was a game changer for me. Going from being hurt and sleeping on the side of the road in a ditch to air conditioning and a shower, all because someone looked up and saw that you were hurting.”
Sleep is a necessity and riders sometimes have to get creative. Some go as far as they can until they just can’t anymore, and snooze where they are. Others take advantage of hotels in pass-through towns. All riders have some sort of minimal shelter along to keep the mosquitos off.
James Meyer mixed up his sleeping schedule. “I was adding it up, I think that I slept about 10 and a half hours. Three hours the first night, six hours the second night in Pierre. I actually slept in a hotel that night. And then I went from Pierre to here and just took two naps.”
Riding into Menno, Meyer knew that he’d be swarmed by mosquitos if he stopped. He used a bit of creativity to find lodging for a catnap. “I rolled through Menno at 2:15 in the morning. Everything was completely quiet and deserted. I was rolling down main street, I looked over and saw the post office and the lights were on. I was crossing my fingers that the door would be open. So, I just rolled me and my bike in and laid down right on the ground and slept for about 25 minutes with the lights on around me.”
Regardless of the challenging sleeping arrangements, observing nature at one’s own pace is a luxurious existence. Meyer’s favorite section of the route was through the Badlands. “The gravel was good and fast. And it was in the morning. I started about 3:00 AM on the second day. It's always nice to just ride as the sun's coming up with the buffalo and also covering ground well.”
Betsy Schauer and Travis Stevens of Dayton, Ohio also offered the Badlands as their favorite stretch of the race. “I realy enjoyed the Badlands just because I've always wanted to visit there and it was just really beautiful, and tough, It was hard. I felt like it lived up to its name. It was really windy at the time and you could see storms rolling in and buffalo and some mountain sheep,” says Schauer.
For Stevens, it was a chance to revisit an area that he worked early in his career, “I do like the rolling hills of the western prairie. I worked on the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands when I was straight out of college. It was great to get back in that area and take it in at five to 10 miles an hour, that was just lovely.”
Transitioning from west to east river offers tremendous opportunity to enjoy stunning scenery from a unique perspective. Racers disassemble their bikes, load them on a raft and paddle from just below Oahe Dam five miles down the Missouri River to Pierre.
Tye Bragg’s paddle was certainly memorable. “That section of the Missouri River is beautiful. It's a lot prettier than the Missouri River where I live in Kansas City. As the sun was setting, about half of it was already down, a bald eagle took off from the bluff to my left, flew immediately over our heads. And, like in a movie, flew into the setting sun. You couldn't have orchestrated any prettier.”
Training for an event like the Trans SD Bike Race takes time. Many miles must be logged to prepare the mind and body. Bikepacking enthusiasts are constantly tweaking gear setups, working to be lighter and more efficient. But don’t feel discouraged from trying. The Trans South Dakota Bike Race may be a bucket list goal. Start out with a smaller effort.
Meyer offers advice on making bike camping a manageable activity. “My daughter and I went on a little bike packing trip about a month ago. We rode two hours, mostly downhill. We camped overnight. Then we got up in the morning and we rode the other two hours out. It was really fun. You don’t have to do a big trip like this. Bikes are good. And so riding bikes, camping, it's fun stuff.”
