Day 1 - 2024 Mishigami Challenge

Things feel a lot different when you're trying to win.

The Mishigami Challenge is an 1100+ mile (nearly 1800km) race on a set route around Lake Michigan. I competed in the first edition of the race in 2022, coming in second, and won the 2024 race while setting a course FKT.

Over the next several days, I’ll be publishing my day-by-day account of the 2024 race. I’ve also linked my GPS file at the bottom of each recap. 

You can find more about the Mishigami Challenge on their website, Instagram, and Facebook pages. You - yes you! - should think about signing up for the 2025 edition of the challenge. It really is a special event!

Day 1

Setting off on the 2024 Mishigami Challenge was such a different experience than starting in 2022. I felt like I knew what to expect, but I also had big ambitions for how fast I wanted to go. In 2022, I just set out to finish. In 2024, I set out to race. Consistent across both years was the knowledge that I’d pretty much have to just ride my race, try to hit my goals, and let the placement work itself out. But in 2024 I expected that the time goals I had for myself would place me at or near the front of the race.

I’ve also gotten a lot better at training since 2022. That year, I trained by doing almost nothing but long, relatively slow rides. I did half a dozen weekend bikepacking trips, and as a result I knew I could hold 23-25kph consistently, but not more. Since then I learned more about interval training and how some intensity can compliment endurance training. My “go long” pace rose to 25-28kph.

Still, I did not anticipate how fast the start of this year’s Mishigami was going to be. An extremely beneficial tailwind had myself, Sarah Rice, Jason Kulma, and David Sowden skipping back and forth past one another (and frequently riding together) all day at a truly cracking pace. I didn’t know any of these riders prior to the race aside from remembering that David showed up on a wildly light bike setup in 2022, and they all had me feeling more competitive than might be wise on the first leg of an 1100+ mile race.

Day 1 also saw the incidence of a mechanical that would color a lot of my race. On the north side of Kenosha, after a morning during which Jason and I had been within about 300m of one another since the start, I had a large screw go through the tread of my rear tire and poke out the sidewall. It stands as probably the worst, most unfortunate flat I’ve ever had. I managed to pull out the screw using my pocket knife and plug both holes. One of the two CO2s that I started the race with reinflated the tire and it seemed to be holding fine. Still, riding on a tire that had been so severely punctured was a nervy thing. I kept feeling like I needed to check to make sure it wasn’t soft. 

Later in the day I determined that it could use a bit more air and hit it with my mini-pump, but somehow managed to unscrew the valve core while taking the pump off and completely deflated the tire. CO2 number two of two got it back up to full, but this was certainly an annoyance that wasted a bit of time mid-day. The tire held fine after that, so given that I had my pump and two spare tubes, I elected not to detour to a bike shop for more CO2s. This was probably the wrong choice, but more on that later.

I stopped for a last real meal of the day in Manitowoc, and bless the waitress that got me my food so quickly, along with about six glasses of water in the span of maybe 15 minutes (which, to be clear, mostly went into my empty bottles). Jason and Sarah, riding together, caught up to me when I was nearly done eating, and so we all said hi before I continued on another 70k before camping just outside of Greenleaf, Wisconsin. This had been my plan for the day, as going further would have necessitated either a hotel in Green Bay or several more hours of riding to get past the city and to another spot where I could find a stealthy camp. Stopping made sure I could get plenty of sleep - or at least, as it turned out, shut my eyes for several hours even if I didn’t really get to sleep - before the more trying days ahead.