2025 Mishigami Challenge Course Breakdown

What sections will be defining? What's new in this year's course? Let's take things step by step.

The 2025 Mishigami Challenge is only a week away! And hopefully many of you (those of you who aren’t riding, anyways) will be dotwatching as both the Mishigami and the Mini-Gami get rolling.

So let’s get you prepped!

Although the course hasn’t changed much since last year, there are still key sections all the way around the lake that merit a bit of discussion. Let’s get into it.

Setting the Stage

Unlike some other ultra races, the Mishigami Challenge doesn’t have some crux section. There isn’t a mountain pass that will take some riders three hours to clear and others twelve. There isn’t an extended hike-a-bike best tackled in daytime. There isn’t a 200 mile stretch without resupply.

Instead, the Mishigami Challenge is about consistency. It’s about continuously turning over miles. You must just. Keep. Pedaling.

All the same, there are a few sections to watch out for individually. Alone, none of them will be decisive on the outcome of the race. But every rider will have to navigate each and every one, and they will all play their incremental role in the outcome.

Green Bay

UP

Hills

Final stretch

The Dash to Milwaukee

The first section of the Mishigami Challenge goes quickly. It’s not that racers will be sprinting those first 100 miles to Milwaukee (though certainly there will be some who get caught up in the adrenaline of the race start), but rather that it’s a nearly unbroken run of urban and semi-urban space terminating in downtown Milwaukee.

The Chicago lakefront trail marks the start of the Mishigami, and that gives way to roads as the route progresses out of Chicago and through the northern suburbs. A mix of roads and bike paths carry riders up through Waukeegan and to the Wisconsin state line, followed by Kenosha and Racine.

After a brief run on slightly more rural roads, more bike paths lead the route to the lakefront and all the way to the south side of Milwaukee.

This section won’t provide much evidence on which to evaluate riders. The urban setting means lots of starting and stopping, but the fact that it’s the stating section means that most people will be going a little quicker than they probably will for the entirety of the race. Plus, the field will be closely clumped together. Expect plenty of riders to be travelling together.

The Path(way) Northward

Heading northward out of Milwaukee means getting to spend the next several dozen mile predominantly on a long distance bike path. Though the quality of this path varies, it’s nice to be away from traffic for so long.

This section almost certainly won’t have a particular impact on the race, but it’s worth a mention just because other US cities could (should) adopt similar long distance bike trails. It’s very cool.

How To Navigate Green Bay?

And now we come to the first inflection point with a little more direct influence on race strategy: Green Bay, Wisconsin

Why is this important? Well, because I (and others who I’ve spoken to) believe that advancing at least 400km per day is what it’s going to take to be competitive this year.

Green Bay sits right at the 400km mark of the course. This means that riders will have a decision to make: Do they stop and camp before the city? Push on to 420km or further to get through Green Bay? Or pay for a (likely expensive) hotel in the city?

Since the Mishigami starts at 6am, many riders won’t be getting as early a start as they might on other days. This means that reaching or surpassing that 400km mark becomes even a bit more complicated unless riders are willing to ride into the night (or pacing very fast through the first day). It could be a very important decision, but we might not fully understand the consequences until later in the race when we see who didn’t push hard enough, or perhaps who pushed themselves too hard early on.

The Upper Peninsula: THREE Gravel Sectors and Limited Resupply

Michigan’s upper peninsula can be beautiful. It can also be long, lonely, and the most difficult part of the route to find resupply.

Let’s tackle that point first.

If passing through during the day, riders won’t have much to worry about. There aren’t many resupply points, but the space between them isn’t much different from some other sections of the course in northern Wisconsin or northern Michigan.

The problem for some may come in the night. Many of the gas stations and grocery stores in the little towns that dot the UP close early and open late. Anyone who’s pushing late into the night may struggle to find a place to fill up water bottles or grab more snacks. This means riders will have to plan ahead on food, and may need to ration water to ensure they make it all the way to the next open water source. We may see some riders choosing an early end to their day (and correspondingly early start the next morning) to account for these challenges.

Ok, so what about the gravel?

The upper peninsula is also host to the route’s only sections of true gravel riding, and this year that are THREE of them.

The first two gravel sections are returning from previous edition of the Mishigami.

Section one comes 570km into the race, less than 100km after passing from Wisconsin into the UP. It’s in the Escanaba River State Forest, which is one of the prettier sections of the whole route, and is only about 2km long.

The second gravel section comes as a either relief or a second punch, depending on your opinion of riding gravel on a packed bike with road tires, because it comes immediately after a long section rolling up the shoulder of Michigan Highway 2. It starts at about kilometer 782 of the route and runs almost all the way to Engadine, Michigan, just past the 789km mark.

That brings us to one of the only new sections of the 2025 Mishigami Challenge route, and certainly the largest change. There is apparently road work ongoing just south of Rudyard, Michigan, which will necessitate a small detour. In the UP, alternate routes are limited; thus, gravel roads.

This section is at kilometer 880-888, which makes it now the longest gravel sector of the entire route.

None of these sections are technical, but everyone will be more vulnerable to flat tires as they navigate the gravel. It’s possible you could see some riders really closing the distance to others, even over these short bits. Who has the technical skill - or risk tolerance - to keep pushing on terrain their bike might not be set up for?

Tunnel of Trees

This might be the prettiest section of the whole course, and it’s an invigorating treat after (what can be) the monotony of the upper peninsula. The road is small, low traffic, and rolling. It encourages riders to push up every rise and down the back of every little descent. I can’t wait to hit this section again.

There’s a lot of the Mishigami Challenge that is all about endurance. This sector is purely about the joy of being on your bike.

The Climb-y Bit

If there was one decisive section for the Mishigami Challenge (though we’ve already established there isn’t one), it would be this.

The Tunnel of Trees might be the prettiest part of the course, but that first big climb and descent just after leaving Traverse City is unequivocally my personal favorite part.

This bit, between Traverse City and Ludington, is a place where lots of time could be gained or lost. In a little over 100km, riders will face a number of actual, real climbs, including a few that top out at over a 10% grade.

Last year, I rode this section through rain, which was a little cold, a little harrowing, and stopped me from pushing hard (if I was able to give more than I did, and that’s an open, unanswerable question). I’m hoping for better weather this year to really be able to attack these climbs and the very fun descents off the back of them.

A Very Long Path

If I’m going to highlight the trail network north of Milwaukee, I definitely need to also shout out this trail in central Michigan. From Hart to Muskegon and through several towns in between, this is a nearly 70km long, nearly continuous path. Depending on what time of day riders encounter this section, and how they’re feeling at the time, it might feel exhilarating or it might feel interminable.

I speak from experience.

I remember in 2022 hitting especially some of the twistier portions of this path in the mid- to late-afternoon and feeling completely locked in. I was pushing into every turn, pedaling hard out, and working to carry speed.

But then last year, I was on it at the very end of the day, trying to get to my hotel in Muskegon, and suffering through every bump that a path like this can sometimes throw at you.

The Final Push

From Muskegon onward, the end of the Mishigami Challenge is in (at least metaphorical) sight.

From Muskegon is a push through a residential section with no resupply until reaching Holland; from Holland is a long stretch of rural highways until Benton Harbor; then more of the same until you hit the lakefront communities just north of New Buffalo and Michigan City.

Those lakefront neighborhoods can be especially tough mentally. It’s not so much that there are people around having fun in the water while you’re more than 1600km into a bike ride; rather, it’s that the tiny residential roads and constant movement of people mean you have to be extra alert, while probably not able to push the speed like you’d like. The lakefront communities aren’t all that long, but it can feel interminable going through them.

But after Michigan City, the push for the finish line really gets going.

Just outside of Chesterton, Indiana, riders pick up another long-distance bike path. This leads southwest, then west before transferring to a northwesterly path - the Erie-Lackawana Trail - to Hobart, Indiana. Just north of Hobart is Wolf Lake, a somewhat popular turnaround point for day rides from Chicago. Just north of Wolf Lake, riders re-enter Illinois. Then before you know it, you’re on the Chicago lakefront trail, and it’s just 15km to the finish.

The one-thing-after-another nature of this final stretch of the course really does help pass the time and distance, but if you’re hurting it can also feel like an endless stretch of telling yourself, “I’m almost there,” then having the reality check of, “But not really, not quite yet.”

In both 2022 and 2024, the race, though close, had been all but decided by the time riders crossed into Indiana. This year, though? With over 30 riders in the field, I’m not convinced things will be so final, even by this point so late in the race. I think it’s possible we’ll see riders being forced to push hard through these final obstacles. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if steps on the podium were separated by less than an hour.

So get ready for that dot-watching. It’s going to be an exciting race!