How to research and prepare for an Ultra Cycling / Bikepacking race using RideWithGPS.com

In this video I run through how I reasearch and prepare for an Ultra cycling or bikepacking event using Ridewithgps.com. I’ll cover the use of custom cues and Points Of Interest as well as some tips on what to look out for when researching a route.

The route I used as an example is from the Accursed Race:
https://www.lostdot.cc/race-brand/the-accursed-race

You can see the route in Ridewithgps.com here:
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/45933668?privacy_code=JUhkM0gUT4d7vnxRMGiHzj7l4qWBTsDI

Thanks to HONE FOODS for supporting my Accursed Race content:
https://honefoods.co.uk

Use the code JOSHIBBETT for a 20% discount on the HONE FOODS website

A big thank you to the brands that support me:
Mason Cycles – https://masoncycles.cc
Hunt Bike wheels – https://www.huntbikewheels.com
Albion Cycling – https://www.albioncycling.com
Tailfin Bikepacking equipment – https://www.tailfin.cc/?v=79cba1185463
Enduro bearings – https://cycling.endurobearings.com

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https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jibbett887

hello welcome back to another video now today I’m going to do a bit of a how-to video on preparing your route on rby GPS so I’m about to take on the accursed race which is a 1,000 mile race in the Balkans starting and finishing in Albania um it’s a th000 miles uh fixed race route off-road um and I I’ll put some info and the link to the website below um but what I’m going to do is I’m just going to show you how I will prep prepare the the GPX file obviously uh I’ve not ridden there before it’s the first edition of a race and there’s not much knowledge in out there um so I’m just going to dig into it put some way points in points of interest uh things that will help me during the race now this this video is really um is relevant to kind of any Ultra race some races um for example the silkroad mountain race Atlas mountain race um they provide a bit more information but this one there is not really any information apart from the GPX track um so yeah relevant for everything um before I go any further though I would just like to thank and um my sponsor for my Atlas for my cursed uh coverage home coffees um they’re a local business to me in Cambridge here in the UK and and they’re they’re supporting me um bring these videos to you so yeah go check their website out I’ll put the the link below uh and I’ve got a 20% discount code if you fancy some coffee or maybe even some Gin um because they make Jin there as well so yeah all uh brewed in Cambridge here um so yeah thanks to those guys for supporting what I’m doing right on to the business end of things so this video is a tutorial on on basically riber GPS um these guys support me and my race coverage and everything I do and I’ve been using riber GPS since 2013 when I first did the sorry 2014 when I first did the transcontinental race um so what I’ve done is the race organizers they provide the root in a number of uh GPX files um so I think it’s nine sections for this particular route just over a th000 miles this is sector one so I’m just going to give you a quick overview as to what I do to prepare and do a bit of research into the race route before I get there so I’m actually leaving in a few days so this time next week I will be on my way um so yeah as you can see the root set starts in scoda in Albania let me just zoom out a little bit just to give you some reference so Albania uh is basically across the Adriatic from Italy and the race goes north through Montenegro Bosnia a bit bit of Kosovo and back into Albania but this particular segment is the first section so what I’ve done is I’ve I’ve hit edit on the route I’ve uploaded it you can figure that out on Rob GPS it’s really simple and I’ve clicked edit route now what I’m going to do to start with it’s on the riber GPS uh cycle route to start with uh I’m going to just take that off I like Google Maps um there’s just a lot of information there uh and and that’ll be useful as you’ll see I’m also just going to take the heat map Maps off um so yeah click that off there uh interestingly you can see um I’ve been through a few times um with the various rides um so yeah kind of pretty cool um and now what I’m going to do I’m just going to dig into it so let’s zoom in and and see what we can see so you don’t want to be moving this line around because it could kind of make you go wrong in the race but what I’m going to do is I’m going to look to see where resupply might be maybe places I could stay any points of danger um any sketchy sections just see what I can find from the map and then I’m going to put some points of interest in you can see on the right hand side of the screen here there’s the the POI uh button um and then I’m going to put some custom cues in as well so every time I drop a point of interest I’m going to put a custom queue in so that means that when I’m riding along um my if I get to a custom point my GPS will flash up a little message as it does on depends on on on your unit I use I use woo um for example it’ll tell you to turn left or right or straight on you can put a custom message to say resupply here or lodging here or anything like that so uh you know that’s that’s the idea of this this um this video so starting off in skod I’m not going to I’m not going to do like we I’m not going to need to stop too much early on um water I think there’s going to be plenty of water up in the mountains so I’m I’m taking chlorine tablet so I’m not too stressed about water I think there’s going to be plenty of places to get water the main thing is food uh and potenti accommodation and just looking to see see what’s in there now the reason I I I switched on to Google Maps is you got the little Google man and quite often you can just drag him and drop in uh and see kind of what the train is you’re going to be riding on now obviously we’re not going to be riding up this River here but you can see the track on all the road on the side here and you just get an idea you’re going up into these mountains um gives you a bit of an idea of what to expect and you know might inform your pack list as well um so if you’ve not used RI GPS before the solid line here that is Road or tarmac well let’s say road because it’s not always Tac depending on where you are and the Checker section is off-road normally dirt roads um so you can see there’s not an awful lot of information up here um see if there’s anything we can drop the Google man onto just to see if we can get any kind of any kind of like insight into the road up here um so the the dots are normally the ones on Google where people have put in a um like a taking a photo and Tagg the location um let me get rid of that we don’t want to do that just yet um but I might be able to find um ah here we go I just clicked on that little information Point open up Google Maps and ah there we go perfect so this is this is the road um we can it opens up a new window um so this this road here to start with this is going to be the first road of or I say Road Track of the race um and that as you can see it’s pretty damn cool so already I’ve got an idea of what I’m going to be expecting on that first morning um it’s going to be pretty wild pretty marot pretty remote um don’t think I want to be driving that camper up there that close to the edge um but yeah so that’s already you’ve got the insight into surface it looks like it’s going to be relatively I mean technically it’s a a gravel track you can drive on it but it’s going to be fairly rough so already you kind of looking at that you know a mountain bike is going to be the better better bike for it um I mean it’s pretty amazing I’m looking forward to getting up there and uh hopefully the views there and it’s not tipping down with rain so that’s that’s one thing you can do um to to kind of help yourself and then I’m also going to start looking um for potential places to resupply so as I said starting kind of well you can tell from this track it’s going to be relatively slow going early on um so you’re not going to be really going that fast so 40 miles that’s going to be good three hours or so um but you can carry enough food from the start for that and I’ll probably resupply quite heavily but already see 40 mil here there’s a bar and a cafe so we might even be able to just click on that and see if there’s any information um let’s see what it says Bar Cafe um five star rating look at that um so yeah that’s that looks pretty good looks like I’ll be able to get some food maybe a snack if required maybe just like a a can of Coke or something like that um looks like there might be logins as well I’ve got a coffee machine so yeah this is this is a kind of thing you can check out so what I’m going to do is and I’m going to just I’ll start again on that bit so what I’m going to do is I’m going to add a POI so make sure you can see when you click on the the menu on the side here the the thing kind of pops up red um so drop POI I’m just going to zoom in and I’m going to I’m going to put it on the cafe here or pretty much on the cafe um and get rid of that because I’ve clicked that button already um and then I’m going to put food um and I’ll just put bar Cafe so if I’m referring to this map now you I’ll see there’s a like a food sign there um so I’ll probably have it on my phone on the mobile app if I’m want a bigger overview but as I said I want a custom queue as well because I want my GPS unit to beep at me and tell me that I’m basically passing a cafe there’s also a hospital there which might be useful um hopefully not but you never know so now I’m going to go on custom queue on the left hand side here I’m going to put it right there I mean it’s not super super super accurate but it’s it’s as good as you just you won’t be able to put them too close together um and you can see again it’s a similar kind of menu box I’m going to you can you can put turns in here all this kind of information like summits I sometimes put the Summits in there valleys water uh in this instance I’m going to put food and I’ll just put well I’ll probably put it in the description just bar um Cafe so when I get there you know that’s going to Ping up there um and you know this early in the race it’s probably not going to be super relevant but later on you never know um I did also notice there’s uh camping here as well uh so again maybe I can just there’s no images there but I could if this was later on in the race I could potentially just add a little uh way way marker there just so I knew what was going on so yeah that’s our first kind of point so that’s 40 miles in might not need it but it’s good to know um so yeah we just uh just sort of go go along and see see what else is there uh so 40 miles just out of reference if I hold the the the cursor on this um on the line here you can see on the bottom it pops you sort of up on the elevation so we’ve basically done the first climb and there’s another big climb coming up which looks like it’s going to be kind of on the road so we might actually have a bit more stuff to um to stop for here um so yeah guest house is there’s a camp site again not an awful lot obvious on in terms of resupply um there’s a little village over here I’m sure there’ll be something um like things not everything’s on Google um as much as they like you to to think there is um it looks like a little village um I’m not going to put a mark there basically I’d rather kind of prepare for there not to be anything um this is what the villages look like up here so that must be the campsite um look at those mountains incredible um so yeah so again Rolling Along what with 60 Mi here up and over this climb looks fairly straightforward to be honest there’s a little bunk house again I’m not going to stop there another bar here um so let me just click on that view on Google see if there’s anything oh it’s only a four and a half star this one um but yeah we can again see what it is um I mean oh look at that pasta 5 Roto chips kind of know what you’re getting um so again might be time for food by the time you get there the other thing you can look at um is is kind of opening hours as well and make a note of that there’s nothing on on this particular one um but I will just put a little POI on there just just so I know it’s there um so food just put bar that’s bar can’t even spell bar um save Uh custom queue it’s the same process I mean you’ve kind of seen it now so um you can just sort of reapply this over and over again on the root um but I’ll I’ll finish this leg anyway just so you can see exactly what I do uh so generic and food just put bar in there um and again that will pop up pop up now on the GPS um so yeah then it looks like we’ve got a bit of a another bit of a off-road climb here um plent there should be plenty of resupply down here um you can see there’s there’s kind of there’s there’s settlements I I’m pretty sure there’ll be something um around there uh there’s places to stay again I’m not going to be sleeping this early so I’m not going to bother putting anything in there um is there anything Viewpoint Rise um doesn’t look like it so I’ll just go on one of these little Maps here these little camera things on Google Google Maps oh nice look at that so again just gives you an idea of what to be expecting looks like a bit of a plateau wow look at that that’s uh that’s probably where we’re going to be riding most of the day over those ridges as you can see in the photo pretty spectacular um looks like it’s kind of autumn there so um yeah should be should be good um so yeah nothing here so you’re going to want to you can you can see that there’s there’s not much on this off-road section um so you’re probably going to then in your head realize that you’re going to want to stop at probably this bar 60 70 miles or that one just to top up and make sure you’ve got enough energy um and then we we’ve got our first Border Crossing into Montenegro and I’m basically just going to I’m just going to put a little POI on the border um just so I know that it’s there um again you can also get a countdown depending on your device if you click on the root button on on a wahoo it’ll it’ll give you kind of a you know like a a countdown to um you know the next point the next Waypoint so you can find out maybe you got 50 miles to the next resupply or something like that I’m just going to leave this as generic actually I think um so I’ll put Montenegro border and um and what I’m also going to do is I’m going to I’m going to save that for now I’m going to see if I can find any information on the actual border itself um so I’m going to see if there’s a Google page on that view on Google Maps because opening hours are quite important so border crossing Shiva grabble and it’s open 24 hours um so that’s really useful information to know just there so I can then put on on the um on the crossing here um that’s the old one um click on this one uh just in the description I’m going to put open 24 hours now you can do this for border crossings but you can also do it for um you know like supermarkets and things like that I mean so far I’ve not found a supermarket it’s quite a remote part of the route uh but you know the next big stop is going to be po pod goria um so there might be like 24-hour supermarkets or petrol stations and then you really don’t have to worry about like pushing hard um and trying to get to places before a certain point um I’ll just have a look down here see if there’s anything to be honest though it’s um if you look at the profile it’s pretty flat so it’s going to be 15 miles that’s going to be hour and a bit hour and a half tops uh and you you’ll be in pod podia um which is the end of the first file so what I’m going to do is I’m just going to put another p in there um I’m going to put it straight in the middle here um so yeah I’ll just put generic um I put full resupply just because I know there’s there’s hotels there’s going to be some kind of 24hour um things um there’s going to be shops and also it’s a it’s a key key town so um that’ll be very useful I’ll put a queue in there as well I’ll just put the name of the town pod Gia full resupply um so there we go um so yeah and then I’m just just going to just see if there’s anything particularly interesting um there’s a look oil I guess that’s going to be like a petrol station um again I’m just going to look at opening hours open 24 hours so I know 100% regardless of the day of the week I’m going to be able to get something in Pia so if I rock up at 2 a.m. I know I’m going to be all right um You can already see um I mean good stay in the Hilton um there’s plenty of hotels I might even look on booking.com or something like that beforehand just to see what there is um 160 miles it’s probably going to be too early to sleep for me I’ll probably try and push on a little bit further however some people um they might just want to stop on the first day um so yeah so that is kind of what I will do um or what I’ve done um obviously I’ve already done it for the whole route uh to prepare a GPS in addition to that I would also um I’m going to save this now um once I’ve done that I’ll then go through it and um I’ll make make a little kind of Q sheet just so I’ve got it in addition um so let me just go back to my main screen uh the other thing I’ll do um is make a little Q sheet on Excel this is actually the one from um Atlas mountain race most of this information was provided by the race organizers uh but I I’ve made my own for the accursed race so I’ve got names of towns distance between them total distance and what I can expect to find at each location so yeah so that is that’s how I prepare prepare um I hope this has kind of been useful it’s a bit more of a ramble than I thought it would be um but yeah it’s really useful for all kinds of races um bik packing Ultra races and yeah it’s always worth doing your research on these kind of events and uh that’s that’s kind of what I do and um yeah hopefully that’s useful and uh you can learn something something from it so keep an eye out for some more coverage most of it will be when I’m back from the race um so yeah keep an eye on it and I’ll see you then