EPISODE 30
Diving into the Silk Road Mountain Race
Alden Roth shares his thrilling experience in the Silk Road Mountain Race, a grueling, mostly unsupported, two-week cycling event through the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. A self-proclaimed “diving in headfirst” kind of guy, Alden recounts past exploits, such as a cross-country road trip, repeated efforts to bicycle from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC, and his foray into ultra-running, kicked off by a spontaneous 50k race. His Silk Road Mountain Race was no less dramatic, featuring a mechanical breakdown fixed with super glue, camping on a mountainside during a blizzard, a close call with a demanding local, and ultimately, a crash. Alden persevered through it all, driven by the challenge of the stunning landscapes and supported by fellow racers and locals. This episode is full of inspiring tales of resilience, guaranteed to make you want to hop on your bike and dive headfirst into your next adventure.
Episode Transcript
Alden: I had experienced all the weather, I had the mechanical issue with my derailleur, I had the run-in with the locals, and then, yeah, the crash.
Gabriel: You just heard Alden Roth, describing some of the obstacles he faced to complete the Silk Road Mountain Race, a mostly unsupported two-week- long event through the vast grasslands and over the towering mountains of Kyrgyzstan. As you will hear in the episode, participating in such a demanding race with relatively little previous bikepacking experience, perfectly fits Alden’s philosophy, which he describes like this:
Alden: That’s my life story man. Diving in head-first.
Sandra: You’re listening to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast, you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike-touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello, cycletouring enthusiasts! Thank you for taking time to listen to another episode of the Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast. Those of you who listened to the previous episode know that Ayleen Crotty founded the Filmed by Bike Festival in Portland in 2003. After running Filmed by Bike for more than 20 years, Ayleen handed over the reins to Alden Roth and Erik Douds. Furthermore, Ayleen recommended that I have Alden and Erik on as guests on the show. So just like that, here’s Alden. Thank you so much for being a guest on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast.
Alden: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.
Gabriel: Taking over Filmed by Bike can only be described as diving head-first into a project. A lot of other people, maybe myself included, would have started off by selling popcorn at Filmed by Bike or getting an internship at a local festival. But you just purchased this festival right off the bat. So, I want to rewind now and ask you, when was the first time in your life that you can recall that same feeling of diving in? Because I have a feeling it wasn’t the first time with Filmed by Bike.
Alden: You are correct, yeah. It’s interesting, I seem to have a pattern where I dive in head-first into things that I have no business diving into. You know, I think it’s a lot of fun, because along the way I get to learn everything I don’t know and also learn my strengths and my weaknesses and bring other people in to help me out. It’s a fun way to learn. I don’t think it’s for everybody, but it’s really exciting for me. I sort of like when these big new opportunities overwhelm my life and I really have to give them everything that I have. Filmed by Bike is just the next version of that, and it’s been really exciting, stressful at times. I’ve learned a ton. Yeah, the first time it happened, I think it was probably in college. I went to school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I went to a little college called Point Park University, where I studied film. In the second semester, my friends and I were sort of trying to decide what we wanted to do for the summer. Did we want to do an internship or did we want to work at a camp for the summer or just not work at all and travel? That was my preferred option. Me and my two other friends, Dan and Mike, one night when we were talking, we learned that Mike had never been to the ocean, and so we thought, “Oh, we got to take you to the ocean this summer.” We were all three filmmakers… or budding filmmakers, in film school and we said, “The Atlantic Ocean is only like four hours away, but screw that. Let’s drive across the country all the way clear to the Pacific Ocean.” Sort of the plans just started snowballing from there. It was then like a week-long trip and then a month-long trip and let’s do this massive road trip. Let’s film the entire thing. We were like, “We’re not going to bring a ton of money for food. We’re just going to see how we can get by.” And then we ran a Kickstarter and got a little bit of funding from friends and family to film it along the way, and that was the first time I dove truly head-first.
Gabriel: Yeah, and how did it work out?
Alden: It was a wonderful trip, one of the best times, one of the fondest memories that I have. The film has since gotten lost in post-production. After we finished, once we got back to college, school took over and we slowly chipped away at it and then after college, life and work took over and we’ve continued to slowly chip away at it. I am excited that it’s been a little bit over ten years now, which is kind of embarrassing, but I have a really strong urge to fulfill the Kickstarter and give everybody their rewards and that’s hopefully going to happen this year.
Gabriel: Oh, that’s pretty funny. Yeah, I forgot about that aspect of the Kickstarter.
Alden: Right. Yeah, most of the people I think have forgotten.
Gabriel: I remember the taking the money part. I don’t remember the giving anything back part.
Alden: Yeah. No, we have one very dedicated stranger, oddly, that emails me about once a year and says, “Hey, what’s the update? I gave you like 50 bucks.” I’m like, “It’s coming in. I promise we’re working on it.” We only raised a little bit over 5- or 6,000 dollars and it was, like I said, mostly friends and family, so nobody’s beating down the door. But my aunts and uncles do love to at Christmas, they’re like, “Hey, how’s that movie coming along?”
Gabriel: Okay, so it’s a running joke now.
Alden: Yeah, it is. It is. And one day I’m going to soon, I’m going to have it done and I’ll be able to be like, “Here it is. No more jokes. The monkey is off my back.”
Gabriel: Well, that sounds good. People are waiting for it. The first hint that you would take over a film festival is that you were a student in film school. And so that’s one aspect of it. And then the other aspect of it is what’s relevant to us on the podcast, the bicycle. Can you describe a little bit about your relationship with the bicycle from maybe the earliest days?
Alden: Yeah, absolutely. My parents have long been bicycle riders. On their 10-year anniversary, they took a tandem bike to Ireland and bike toured around Ireland. And then a couple of years after that, they came back and they had me and put me in a trailer. So I would ride in the trailer on the back of their tandem. And then once I was old enough, I moved up to the tag-along bike where I actually got the pedal. And then my younger sister, she sat in the trailer. And so we had this long, four-person bike train that would go around town and on little overnight trips. That’s my earliest memory of riding a bike.
Gabriel: So it was actually touring.
Alden: Yeah… Well, you could call it touring. We hopped on the local rail-trail and rode, I think, 20 or 25 miles and stayed at a hotel. And then rode back the next day. It was not certainly a big long tour.
Gabriel: Hey, it’s an overnighter.
Alden: Yes, it was an overnighter for sure. You know, bikes were just sort of always a part of my life, mostly a way to commute when I was a kid and didn’t have access to a car. I would ride to my job, working at a friend’s farm. Or in college, I worked at the movie theater and I had to bike to the movie theater. It wasn’t really until after I graduated college that I started getting into cycling for fun. You know, I had fun when I was commuting, but for the purpose of just riding the bike to ride. So yeah, I started doing overnights here and there and eventually went on my first big tour, which, it wasn’t really big by any means, but there’s a really popular trail from Pittsburgh to DC. At first you’re on the Great Allegheny Passage, which is a rail trail. And then after about 150 miles, you hop on the C&O Canal, which is a canal that parallels the Potomac River and goes all the way to the capital of the United States. So that’s like a 330-mile ride. And I did that, I think that was in 2018 or 2019. And it’s just snowballed from there.
Gabriel: Were you doing other sports at the same time?
Alden: Yeah, running’s always been… well, no, I shouldn’t say always. Running over the last five or six years has been a huge passion of mine. Once again, as I like dive into things head-first, I dove head-first into ultra running.
Gabriel: Oh no. Okay.
Alden: Running races that are beyond your typical marathon. I had signed up for a half-marathon out in Arizona, and it was supposed to run through some slot canyons. And then a week before the race, I got the map and realized that you had to run the 50k if you wanted to run through slot canyons. And I said, “Well, I flew all the way out here. I want to run through slot canyons. So I guess I’m doing the 50k.” And so my very first truly competitive race, I ran a 50k in a completely abysmal time. And then instead of saying, “That was tough. Let me dial it back. Let me go for a half or full marathon.” I said, “That was a lot of fun. Let’s go for a 100-miler.”
Gabriel: Oh no, wait! Okay, hold on.
Alden: Yeah.
Gabriel: So, first of all, I spent the latter part of my childhood in Flagstaff, Arizona. So when you say slot canyons, are you talking about something like Antelope Canyon?
Alden: Yeah. So the race was actually called the Antelope Canyon Trail Race. You had to do the through the Antelope Canyon.
Gabriel: Oh.
Alden: But you got to run through some lesser-known slot canyons if you did the 50k.
Gabriel: Okay. And you had expected it to be a half-marathon, so 21 kilometers?
Alden: Correct.
Gabriel: That’s what you were expecting, and then you just like on the fly dialed it up to 50k? That’s incredible. I’ve run a half- marathon, but I didn’t feel like doing it one and a half times again after I was done.
Alden: Right. Right. Yeah. I don’t know if I would say incredible or stupid. It was really hard to walk for the next few days, and I was pretty out of it for a while. But it was a good Type-2 fun experience where a week or more later I was like, “Yeah, that was great. Let’s do it again.”
Gabriel: Not only that, you said you wanted to go up to 100 kilometers running?
Alden: I went up to 100 miles.
Gabriel: A hundred miles running? I can’t even fathom that.
Alden: Yeah, it’s a big undertaking.
Gabriel: Like a 100-miles bicycle ride, it’s a century ride. That’s an achievement, to do a century ride. But to run a century, help me out here.
Alden: I mean, to prepare for it, it’s similar to preparing for a century ride. You know, in a century ride, you need to spend a lot of time on the bike and get used to it. You know, sort of miles-in-the- saddle idea, similar for running 100 miles. You have to run a lot and get your body used to that effort that you’re going to put it through. You have to test out your nutrition. You have to know how your body’s just going to act after you’ve run for 12 hours or 24 hours, or in my case, 30 and a half, 31 hours. Your body does weird things when you don’t sleep.
Gabriel: 31 hours?
Alden: That’s how long it took for my first 100 miles. Yeah, 31 hours.
Gabriel: Again, I can’t even conceive of that.
Alden: Yeah, I don’t know that I would recommend it, but I always enjoy my ultra-marathons.
Gabriel: Okay.
Alden: I think I just should have gotten more training in before I tried to dive in. I definitely bit off more than I could chew that first time around.
Gabriel: Isn’t there some cutoff time, where they’d come around in the SAG wagon and say, “Alright, that’s enough now”?
Alden: Yeah, they do. It depends on the race. The one that I was doing, the final cutoff for finishing was 32 hours, so I was walking my little butt as fast as I could, trying to get to that finish line.
Gabriel: And where was this?
Alden: This was here in my home state, West Virginia, down in the New River Gorge.
Gabriel: And how long ago did you do the 100-miler?
Alden: That first one was in 2021, and then I’ve done two more since then.
Gabriel: Okay, not only have you gone deep with the film festival and with the running, your bicycle touring ambitions did not stop with the Pittsburgh to Washington, DC, ride. What’s the next step for you in touring?
Alden: When I did that original ride from Pittsburgh to DC, there were a couple of complications where we had to get a shuttle from a couple of places, and we didn’t actually ride the entire trail. And so a couple of years later, I went back with my friend Erik Dowds, who’s one of the co-owners of Filmed by Bike. We tried to do the trail again, in the winter, and that was a really dumb idea, because it was covered in snow and we didn’t have fat bikes. So we had to abandon our second attempt after four or five days. And then finally, another year or two after that, I said, I’m gonna do this. I gotta finally scratch this itch, get this trail done. So I did it in three days in sort of a time-trial fashion. But I was fully loaded with panniers and camping equipment and food and everything, so it was not fast in the way that time trials normally are. It was just long, long, long days in the saddle. And I really liked that aspect of riding all day and seeing how far I could move, purely under my own effort.
Gabriel: As far as your tours go, was that how it went? You did the attempt one, attempt two, and attempt three, or did you have other tours that were mixed in there as well?
Alden: I did other little tours, but they were never really anything big. It was usually just weekenders, overnights. Every now and then I would try to ride to a place, you know, if my family was going on vacation somewhere nearby, I would try to ride to them. Most of the time I would have mechanical failures, or carry too much weight and have to be saved. I’ve always just sort of loved the process of it, even if things don’t go according to plan.
Gabriel: Your family’s like, “Oh no, Alden’s trying to ride again, and we have to go bail him out.”
Alden: Yeah, luckily they’re very nice about it.
Gabriel: Once you accomplished that, Pittsburgh to DC, you set your eyes on some other goals.
Alden: After finally accomplishing that, I really started getting more into bikepacking, learning just more about that subtle difference between bike touring and bikepacking, you know, carrying everything, but not carrying so much, trying to carry things a little lighter, going more off the beaten path on dirt roads, or singletrack roads, or trails. And I had always wanted to compete in the Silk Road Mountain Race, which is a 2,000- kilometer race in Kyrgyzstan, and you have generally 15 days to do it.
Gabriel: The Silk Road was an intricate network of Asian trade routes that was active from the 2nd century BCE until the 15th century, eventually linking Cairo and Constantinople with the Pacific coast of China. The name Silk Road was coined in the 19th century, recognizing that silk textiles were one of the most valuable commodities transported along the routes. Three branches of the Silk Road crossed the rugged Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan. The famous route between Samarkand and Kashgar crossed the 3,000-year-old city of Osh, the starting point for the 2025 Silk Road mountain race.
Alden: The stars sort of aligned last year where I put in my application, they accepted me, I was able to take off work, and I again just dove head-first into a no business doing, but there we were.
Gabriel: Alright, so we got to break this down a little bit, because the Silk Road Race is known as one of the most grueling backcountry races in the whole world. I mean, it’s in Kyrgyzstan. I want to know more details. You went over it very quickly. How did you even hear about it, first of all? Most people in the United States do not know about it.
Alden: Either the first or second year that it was happening, I saw them, they do really good media coverage on Instagram and other platforms. And so I saw all the photos on there and I just sort of struggled to wrap my head around the enormity of it, but I thought, wow, that’s really cool. The landscape looks really beautiful. I’ve always loved traveling abroad, experiencing new cultures. Just the idea of doing that with a group of people, they’re all following the same course, but you’re not necessarily doing it together. You sort of get that community, but you also get that solo experience. It just all sort of checked all the boxes for me. And I was like, “Yeah, I got to try that one day.”
Gabriel: Alright, so then let’s talk about this application process. What do you need to do?
Alden: It’s almost like a job application, actually. The race is really, really incredibly tough. You do several mountain passes that – you’ll have to forgive me, I’m not great at converting feet to meters – but there were several mountain passes over over 3,000 meters.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’d be between 3- and 4,000 meters. That’s way up there.
Alden: Yeah, it is. And you spend sustained time above the time. So, even though the race is in August and you would think that would be the heat of summer, you can fully expect wind and hail and even snow. At one point, when I was there, we got down to probably below zero degrees Celsius. So the application is really vetting people and making sure that they are able to do what is required of them in the race. You have to sort of put your resume of endurance efforts that you’ve done before. So, you know, I listed all of my attempts of this stupid trail from Pittsburgh to DC. I included all of my ultra- running efforts, included backpacking efforts, and then you also have to answer sort of essay-style questions that say, “Okay, if you fall in a river and it’s cold outside, what do you do?” “If it’s 40 degrees Celsius and you’re dying a heat stroke, what do you do?” And so you have to answer all these questions and show that you have enough knowledge and enough experience to be able to survive in this race. Because the race, there’s zero support. Well, not zero, there’s very little support. The only support you get is at the checkpoints where there’s mutual aid. But beyond that, you are fully self-sufficient. You have to carry all your own food, do all of your own lodging. And you can stay at guesthouses when they are available, but those are few and far between in Kyrgyzstan. So most of the time you’re camping and you have to have your own food. You stop at these little shops and get groceries and whatnot. But it’s not like with ultra-marathons, they have aid stations where they’re cooking burritos and quesadillas and bacon. None of that is really happening in the Silk Road Mountain Race. You’re very remote for extended periods of time and you’ve got to be able to take care of yourself.
Gabriel: Okay, so you submitted the application and you just heard, “Congratulations, you’ve been selected. Please show up at this place at this time”?
Alden: Pretty much, yeah. You have to pay an entry fee and then you show up, yeah. Nelson Trees is the race director. He does a great job of giving everybody all the information they need. But yeah, you’re on your own in terms of getting to the start line. Last year it was in Bishkek, so we just flew straight into the capital of Kyrgyzstan, and then I hung out for a few days. I did a little touring near Bishkek. I did like a six-day tour just to sort of to get acclimatized, because here in West Virginia, I’m at about 100, 150 meters and the race started at 1,000 meters. And like I said, it went straight up from there. On the first day, about 100k in, the first pass was at 12,500 feet, so almost 4,000 meters. Yeah, you get there and he says, okay, counts down from 10 and the race is on.
Gabriel: Let’s talk a little bit about what your bicycle and gear were like. It’s not something that I usually emphasize too much, but for something as extreme as the Silk Road Mountain Race, I think it’d be nice to know what you were riding and maybe what gearing you had.
Alden: Sure, yeah. Nelson, the race director, he recommends that you ride on a hardtail with 29- inch wheels. I could only get my hands on a hardtail with 27.5- inch wheels, so that’s what I rode on. It was a Specialized Fuse. That was sort of a hand-me-down from a friend. It had a dropper post, which really came in handy for some of the gnarly descents. I had a 1×9 setup for my drive- train. I had a 30-tooth ring on the front, and the back, I had 11 to 50.
Gabriel: Oh, okay. Fifty is big.
Alden: Yeah, the 50 came in handy a lot. Lots of the climbing is very steep.
Gabriel: Well, I always say when in doubt, get more gears.
Alden: Yeah, absolutely. My drivetrain was a little bit jerry-rigged, but it worked out. Although on the third day, the beat screw that holds the tension and keeps your shifting proper, that broke. And I actually, I had to super glue it back together.
Gabriel: Oh, where did you have super glue?
Alden: I had super glue just because I had a little patch kit in case I got a cut in my tire. So I had super glue for that. And I said, well, I’ll just use it on my derailleur and hope that works and hope I don’t get any sidewall cuts and crossed my fingers and everything held.
Gabriel: Wow. Let’s just back up to Day One. So on Day One, the director says go, everybody sets off. First of all, how many people competed in the event that year?
Alden: I believe it was 175.
Gabriel: And did the pack thin out fairly soon? Or were you within sight of other people for most of the day? I imagine that, with such a large number, that somebody was probably riding close to your pace.
Alden: Yeah. The first day we were all pretty close. As we’re leaving the capital city, we immediately hopped on some singletrack. And so that really spread everybody out pretty quickly. But like you’re saying, with the 175 people, you know, I was in the mid to back of the pack on the first day. And because the majority of that first day is just this massive climb, people really aren’t getting super far ahead. You know, on that climb, I was yo-yoing with a bunch of people saying hi, getting to know everybody. After that, on the second days really, when it spreads out, and then I sort of hung with the same 10-person crew for the rest of the race.
Gabriel: Oh, cool. So you kind of made your own little gruppetto.
Alden: Yeah, I did. It’s really fun. I’m going back and doing the race again this year. And so are three of the people from that group. So it’s like, really exciting. It’ll sort of be a little reunion of our friends.
Gabriel: Oh, nice. So this August, you are going back.
Alden: Yep. So nice, I did it twice. Or, I will do it twice.
Gabriel: Yeah, you will do it twice. And for accommodations, did you have some ultra-light tent and sleeping bag?
Alden: Yeah, I had an ultra-light tent, a single person tent that was super easy to set up. The sleeping bag was a hand-me-down that could have been lighter and smaller, but that didn’t feel like dropping 300 or 400 dollars on a new sleeping bag. So, some lessons learned. We’ll see what happens with this second go-round. But yeah, I mean, the camping, that was some of the best parts of it for me. I’ve always loved camping. I love spending the night in the outdoors. And in Kyrgyzstan, it was really, really fun and exciting, because, you know, when you got too tired to keep biking, you sort of just, like, looked around found a flat spot and there was home. Here in the US, you have to be very specific and intentional about where you camp, unless you want to get, you know, a little knock at the middle of the night and asking you to move along. But in Kyrgyzstan, you’re so remote and out there that nobody’s going to bother you.
Gabriel: Although I must say, if the temperature gets down to freezing and you don’t have an adequate sleeping bag, that can get a little uncomfortable. Were you just wearing everything you had at that point?
Alden: No, I had a sleeping bag, and it was warm enough. It was just giant.
Gabriel: Oh, okay.
Alden: It didn’t pack down very small. You know, I didn’t have an appropriate stuff sack for it. And it was just thick and heavy. But I was warm. Don’t get me wrong, I was warm.
Gabriel: I see, I see. That’s good. Day Three, you had this mechanical, but thanks to the super glue, you were back on the road. How were you holding up physically at that point, with the kilometers, the high altitude? Were you just fine or was it a bit of a struggle?
Alden: No, the first three days, I was pretty good. I was in good shape. Before that race, I hadn’t really done anything over 500 miles, which, you know, I wasn’t going to get there until the fifth or sixth day. So, the first three days, I was in good shape. I felt good. But then I woke up on Day Four and I had really terrible food poisoning.
Gabriel: Oh no.
Alden: Yeah. Yeah. It was bad. I rode maybe 50 kilometers that day. I was dehydrated, like dizzy. Like, it was really bad. I found a little guesthouse. I stayed there and slept for about 18 hours and woke up and I said, “Okay, I think I can keep going.”
Gabriel: Wow.
Alden: Yeah. At that point, I was dead last. You know, we have trackers that you can see all the dots. There was one other person at that guesthouse with me, and he ended up dropping out that day, but the next closest person was like 30 or 40k in front of me. I was very far behind and had a lot of ground to cover.
Gabriel: You had a miraculous recovery the next day and made up some ground. This is Day Five. You had a very long day then?
Alden: I did, yes. I don’t remember exactly. It was probably almost 100 miles that I rode that day to the next town. And then I stayed at the guesthouse again that night, just to sort of recover a little bit more. And then it was really off to the races. I had to cover nearly 100 miles every day for the rest of the time in order to stay on track.
Gabriel: Right. So that’s 160 kilometers a day.
Alden: Yeah. Thank you for that math.
Gabriel: We’re going back and forth, I noticed, between the metric and the English units, but that’s okay. I think listeners are used to it.
Alden: Right. I know more people are used to the kilometers in the grand scheme of things. I try to get into it when I can, but I don’t always have it pop of mind.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s all right. The huge distances that you had to cover, this is all over, I am sure, gravel roads, single tracks, animal paths, with a lot of altitude climbed, I’m sure, up and down, up and down.
Alden: Yeah. Yeah. The total elevation gain over the entire race was 95-, I think, 95,000…
Gabriel: I’m worried about what’s next.
Alden: Feet.
Gabriel: Oh, feet, okay. Okay, not meters at least.
Alden: Feet, feet, feet. Yeah, it’s like, 30,000 meters, I think.
Gabriel: Oh my gosh, that’s still huge, Alden.
Alden: Yes. You know, the next week or so, that’s when the real fatigue set in. I would have to drink several energy drinks every day and eat as much food as I could, but the resupply was not great. These little stores in these remote towns don’t have a ton of fresh produce. They don’t have stuff that’s healthy for you. So a lot of my meals, I would eat maybe 12 to 15 Snickers bars every day and then have two packs of ramen for dinner.
Gabriel: Snickers powered, 15 a day. Wow.
Alden: When you’re in the middle of a bike race, you don’t care about how healthy it is, you just want to know if it’s got calories and carbohydrates and protein. And Snickers has all that. So it’s like the magic food.
Gabriel: Right.
Alden: The energy drinks were from Russia, so you couldn’t really tell what was in them if there was a list of drugs or how much caffeine.
Gabriel: Vodka.
Alden: Yeah, you had no telling. You were just hoping that you didn’t have a heart attack.
Gabriel: Yeah. If you had asked me, I would have thought that such an organized race would at least have some nutrition provided, but that was not the case.
Alden: There’s a little bit. So there are three checkpoints that we had to hit along the way. And at the checkpoint, it was generally at a yurt camp. The locals would cook meals for us. So there would be some rice and vegetables with some meat, if you wanted it. After my stomach bug, I said, no more meat. I’m staying away from that. They had noodle dishes. They had rice dishes. And then, if you got to a bigger city, they would have proper restaurants, where you could get good meals. I think we only really went through like three or four major cities. So, there was a lot of time where it was just like Snickers and potato chips and bread. And that’s it.
Gabriel: So you just have to go to some little convenience store and pick up whatever they had.
Alden: Yeah, correct. Sometimes they would have tinned fish, you know, like tuna or sardines. And that’s when you were like, “Oh, okay. Cool. Some real food.” Or, every now and then they would have yogurt. And that was a delicacy. Oh!
Gabriel: Right. What happened next? What day are we up to now?
Alden: I plodded along for the majority of the time, but the whole time when you look at the tracker, it has a snail. And so the snail is sort of the slowest time that you can maintain in order to meet the finish line. And so on Day 12 or 13, I’m still in good shape, but the snail is catching up. What I had waiting for me was Shamsi Pass, which on the Ride With GPS file, there’s a little exclamation point that gives you a warning about Shamsi Pass. And it says, “Be prepared for 20 kilometers of hike-a- bike.”
Gabriel: Oh my gosh.
Alden: Yeah. When I finally get there, and like you said earlier, you said animal paths, I was following a literal goat path on the side of the mountain. It was huge rocks. You really couldn’t ride. You had to carry your bike over all these big boulders. And then there were several stream crossings. I had sort of gotten into rhythm – Kyrgyzstan has so many of these little stream crossings – I at least, I didn’t take my shoes and socks off to keep myself dry. Because if you did that for every single crossing, you would never get anywhere. You’d move at like two miles an hour. So I was riding through these stream crossings, having to walk through some of the longer and deeper ones. And as I got really close to the pass, which I believe was like 11,000, couple hundred feet from it, and out of nowhere, a snowstorm hits. And it is like a blizzard. Like I can’t see more than 20 feet in front of me. My legs are cold from going through these creeks and these rivers. I can’t see anything. I’m having to carry my bike, not creating enough body heat. And the sun is setting. I’m on the side of the mountain. There’s sort of like a 30 degree pitch. There’s no chance that I’m going to make it over the pass in the daylight without being cold. And so I just sort of made an emergency decision. I was like, I have to bivvy here. I can’t feel my toes anymore. So I need to get them out of these cold socks. I need to get into my sleeping bag and just sort of hunker down and hope that this passes, and hope I have all my toes in the morning.
Gabriel: Oh, wow.
Alden: That was probably the scariest part of the whole thing. I’d been moving so slow that day. And the sudden change in weather was very scary. I’ve been in a lot of places where it’s very hard physically, but this was sort of the first thing where it was like, I have no control over the weather, and I have put myself in danger by having cold feet in the middle of a snowstorm. I had a satellite, a Garmin InReach that I was able to do satellite texting with. I’ve sent my parents and my friends a text and said, “I’m very cold, but I think I’m okay. I’ll text you in the morning.” 6 a.m. rolled around and I was cold, but I seemed to have all of my toes intact.
Gabriel: Mentally, you had to really be focused to not panic in that situation.
Alden: I would say I came very, very close to panicking. But the whole purpose of the application, going back to that was like, they literally explained this situation that I found myself in. And I had answered them how to remedy it. I followed my logic, my rules. I was okay, but it was definitely very, very scary.
Gabriel: In that case, those essay questions were much more useful than the ones on a college application. You actually got to apply your answer to a real-life situation.
Alden: I did, yeah.
Gabriel: Wow. Okay. Have you ever considered taking film equipment with you and making a film since you’re also a filmmaker yourself?
Alden: Yes. I mean, I have two films that, like I said, that feature film from college has been stuck in post-production. I also have two other short films about the various Pittsburgh to DC attempts, that have been stuck in post -production.
Gabriel: So everything is stuck?
Alden: It’s all stuck, man. Work is just too much and I get excited about one project and the other one sort of sits on a back burner and then, yeah. But I should talk to my therapist about that, really. I lugged it. I carried my camera with me. It used to be basically permanently attached to me. It’s less so these days, but I’m always working on some sort of film, whether it’s a short or a longer short film.
Gabriel: Were you a person that documented their everyday on film?
Alden: I was, yeah, for about two years. I made a little video and posted it on Instagram every single day.
Gabriel: That’s a lot of material.
Alden: It was. That’s my life story, man. Diving in head-first.
Gabriel: Since you’re diving in and you seem to be rewarded for diving in, then we have to take a very brief detour to Filmed by Bike. That’s in Portland. You’re in West Virginia, clear across the country. How did you even find out that Ayleen had it for sale?
Alden: Well, I had made a short film a few years back that was focused on a local brewery in Pittsburgh. They made a specific beer that was themed around bikes. They would take it from their brewery to a local bar by bike. So they loaded up trailers and other things with kegs, and then they would ride the beer over to the bar. I made a little film about that, and it was accepted and screened at Filmed by Bike. That’s how I became aware of the festival, like with the Silk Road and like with many other things, I think I just saw a post on Instagram that said Filmed by Bike is for sale. I must have been a really boring day or something when I thought, yeah, diving headfirst into one of these really overwhelming challenges sounds like a good idea. I told my good buddy Erik about it, and we took a meeting with Ayleen, learned more about the festival and how it worked and what it would be like to take it over. And we quickly realized that it would be completely all- consuming if just Erik and I did it. And so we managed to rope in a ragtag group of friends and family members that are also cyclists, and some of them are also filmmakers. So we have this really fun team of love and experience and burden of bringing this festival back to life. I’m definitely in it head-first and overwhelmed at times, but it’s nice to have this team working together, and it’s very exciting that we’re going to bring it back in May.
Gabriel: Your friend Erik is someone you mentioned you had toured with on one of your attempts from Pittsburgh to DC, and he’s also one of the co-owners of Filmed by Bike now, so I think it’d be worth sharing just a little bit about Erik and how you know him.
Alden: Yeah, absolutely. I can share a little bit about how we met each other. Erik has done far more touring than I have. I think he’s closing in on like 15,000 miles over his lifetime. He lives at Type 1 Diabetes, which is a really interesting combination to pair with touring. Touring and riding your bike is already hard enough. When you also have to worry about monitoring your glucose levels and making sure that you inject insulin at the right times and the right amounts, it’s a whole another level that I never thought of having to take into consideration.
Gabriel: I mean, your 15 Snickers a day would not work for Erik.
Alden: No, it would not. He wrote an article in Adventure Cyclist that I read. My mom gave me the magazine and said, “I think you would like this article about this guy with Type 1 Diabetes.” I read it and started following him on Instagram, and one day he put a post up and said, does anybody want to be a pen pal and send postcards to each other? I’ve always been a lover of snail- mail, so I replied and said, “Count me in.” We started trading postcards and got to know each other better. And then, when he was moving from New York to Denver a few years ago, he said, “Hey, I think my moving route is going to come directly through your neighborhood. Do you mind if we meet up and hang out and have a beer? Maybe go for a bike ride?” And I said, “Yeah, of course.” So we sort of met in person and it was really great. We clicked, and then a couple years later was when we did that ill-fated winter attempt of the Pittsburgh to DC ride. Erik’s also a filmmaker and so we bonded over that and just became closer and closer friends. And when I saw the post about Filmed by Bike being for sale, I knew Erik had been a juror for Filmed by Bike before, so he had a similar but different experience to mine. And I thought, well, if anybody’s going to be interested in this crazy idea of mine, it might be Erik.
Gabriel: And it worked out. Now let’s get back to the race.
Alden: Yep.
Gabriel: Let’s see… You faced health issues with the food poisoning.
Alden: Yeah.
Gabriel: You faced inclement weather.
Alden: Yeah.
Gabriel: You faced the turtle or sorry, the snail.
Alden: The snail.
Gabriel: You faced the snail, that was getting closer and that’s very unnerving, by the way, to have electronic snail catching up. Did you face any problems with the locals? I’m sure that by and large they were friendly, but did you have any encounters with locals that were unpleasant?
Alden: Yeah. I had one encounter that was unpleasant. I don’t love sharing it. I will share it with you, but I don’t want to give Kyrgyzstan and the local Kyrgyz people a bad rap, because by and large they were very friendly. They were excited to have us there and they were very welcoming. Invited us into their homes. They fed us. It was really a wonderful experience overall. But unfortunately I did have one experience where I rode into a town and I asked where the store was and a couple of kids showed me. And as I walked into the store, an older man walked in with me and he just sort of started demanding that I buy him a soda. I was just like, “No, I’m not going to buy you a soda.” He kept accosting me and I could sort of tell something was off. I couldn’t tell if he had a mental disability or if he had been drinking too much, because he was sort of slurring his speech and not making sense, so I wasn’t sure what the issue was, but I could tell that he was mad at me for not buying him a drink. In hindsight, maybe I should have just bought him a drink. I was just in a rush. I didn’t want to fool with it. And so I told him, no. And then he followed me outside. And as I was sort of taking all the food I had purchased and putting it in the various bags on my bike, he became very belligerent and started yelling at me saying, “Buy me a drink, give me money.” He’s saying all this in Russian and I spoke very little Russian. So there’s a little bit of a language barrier in that way. But I understand that he wants something from me and I’m trying to tell him, no, I won’t give it to you. As I finished packing everything and go to leave, he grabs my handlebars as if he’s going to take the bike from me. That was the final straw. I pushed him a little bit and just started yelling at him. I just kept saying, “Nyet, nyet, nyet,” which is “no” in Russian. Finally, one of the kids that had showed me where the store was came over. In Russian, he told the guy, “This is a tourist. Don’t mess with them. Leave it.” And he was sort of able to pull the old man away. And then I rode off. It was a very scary interaction because I wasn’t sure if the kid hadn’t come, was this guy going to fight me? Was he going to whip out a knife or something? I had no idea.
Gabriel: Definitely an isolated event. The man was, yeah, more than likely intoxicated, I would guess.
Alden: Yeah, I think so as well. That could happen here in the US.
Gabriel: Oh, definitely.
Alden: Again, I don’t think it’s representative of the Kyrgyz people generally.
Gabriel: No.
Alden: It was very much an isolated, probably like you’re saying, alcohol-induced issue.
Gabriel: Unfortunately, yes, you also checked that box of having one scary encounter with a person during the race. All that’s left for you to do is crash.
Alden: Yes. I couldn’t remember if I’d told you about the crash and I was like, well, there’s still the crash. Yeah.
Gabriel: There you go. That’s the full complement now.
Alden: Yep. I had experienced all the weather. I had the mechanical issue with my derailleur. I had the run- in with the locals. And then, yeah, the crash.
Gabriel: When did the crash happen?
Alden: That happened on the second-to-last day of the race. I was about 160k from the finish. There was only one little town for resupply left, called the Oasis, at the bottom of this massive descent, probably a 10-kilometer descent. I was really excited. I’d heard that there was a restaurant there that had really good food and they would let you charge your electronics and they might even let us sleep there. And I said, “Oh, okay, I’m so excited.” I got a little too ahead of myself and was just bombing down this hill. And out of nowhere, a drainage ditch sort of came along and I couldn’t stop in time to take it easily. And my front wheel just slammed into the ditch and immediately just sort of bent in half. And then I got flown over the handlebars. I landed on my head.
Gabriel: Oh wow.
Alden: And my shoulder. I had all these cut on my hand. I had this huge, like my left leg, pretty much the entire upper half of my left leg, was one massive bruise. But very luckily, you know, I didn’t have a concussion. I didn’t break anything other than my bike.
Gabriel: And your helmet.
Alden: My helmet too. I didn’t know about my helmet being broken at the time.
Gabriel: It was broken.
Alden: I found that out later. Yeah.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Alden: It was definitely broken, but better my helmet than my head.
Gabriel: That’s what they’re there for.
Alden: Yes. Yep. I jumped up, I ran back to the bike and I just looked at the wheel, you know, in midair as time sort of froze. I was like, “Oh, no, this is awful. This is going to hurt. Hopefully my wheel’s okay.” And then when I finally landed and recomposed myself and looked at the wheel, I said, “No, it is not okay.” I mean, it literally was bent in half like a taco.
Gabriel: That’s why they call it “tacoed.”
Alden: Right. And the impact was so strong that even the disc brake, the disc rotor, had bent in half. Spokes were broken. The rim had cracks in like three or four places. Not cracks. completely bent and broken. But luckily I had connected with some Americans that worked at the embassy in Bishkek. They like to ride bikes. I called them and I said, “Do you know a bike shop in Bishkek that would have a spare wheel?” And so they started calling around and, you know, of course I had a very specific wheel. I had like a 110-thread Boost wheel that is not normal for that part of the country. But for whatever reason, this little bike shop in Bishkek had just bought one off Facebook Marketplace from a guy from China.
Gabriel: Oh, wow.
Alden: They said, “Okay, we have the wheel. You just have to get to Bishkek.” So then I had to walk five kilometers to that next town where the restaurant was, but I had to carry my bike with me the whole time.
Gabriel: When you said you had to carry the bike, was it carry-carry or were you able to wheel it along on the back wheel somehow?
Alden: So I tried to wheel it with the back wheel at first, but with the way that my weight was distributed on the bike, I had a lot of bags on the front fork and in the frame. The way it was. My pedal kept hitting my leg and then I would bang the fork off of the road every now and then and I was like, this is not working. With a spare inner tube, I figured out a way that I could sort of hoist it on my shoulder and walk pretty briskly, but it meant I had to actually hold the whole thing and I think my bike with all of my food and everything, it weighed about nearly two hours and then I got there, I had some dinner and I asked the restaurant owner, I said, “Can I get a taxi from here?” And he said, “Yes.” And as we were talking about where I wanted the taxi to go, one of the guys that was eating, he was a truck driver and he said, “I’m going to Bishkek right now if you want to go with me.”
Gabriel: Perfect.
Alden: And I said, “Yes, please, thank you.” So we threw my bike in the back of his truck and then he drove me to Bishkek. I trusted this man with my life. I fell asleep in the car and woke up and thankfully I was back in the middle of Bishkek, and not somewhere that I would have no idea where it was. So the truck took me from the Oasis to Bishkek and then I got my bike fixed in Bishkek and then got a taxi back to the Oasis. And then I rode the last 160 kilometers.
Gabriel: I think this is a young man’s endeavor.
Alden: The way I do it, yes. I ended up riding the last bit of the race with a man named Mark from England and he was in his 60s. There were definitely some people up there in age, but young in heart and they really pushed it and they made a good show of it as well.
Gabriel: And in terms of the race rules, the detour was allowed.
Alden: So I rode the entire course. If you needed to go to the capital city to get your wheel fixed, like I did, you’re allowed to have a car help you to and from.
Gabriel: Got it.
Alden: In previous races, I know that Alan Shaw, he had a crash and he broke his hand and so he, very similarly, took a taxi from the Oasis to Bishkek, got his hand fixed up, got a taxi back to the Oasis and then finished the ride in the same fashion. We didn’t skip any of the actual route and so we were still allowed to get a finish.
Gabriel: I have no idea who Alan Shaw is.
Alden: Oh man, he used to do their podcast, the Silk Road podcast.
Gabriel: Oh, okay. I don’t know about the Silk Road podcast.
Alden: It’s a great podcast.
Gabriel: Oh, okay, cool. It seems like this Oasis, it sounds tempting, but it’s a death trap.
Alden: Yeah, I think you have that right. It’s like, okay, only 160k left, only one more day of riding. Let me just get to the Oasis and relax. And then your excitement gets the better of you.
Gabriel: Yeah, you’re so desperate for any kind of amenities that you lose focus and then crash.
Alden: Yeah.
Gabriel: Wow, that is just an incredible story. So many things had to align, but that happens sometimes. In the oddest circumstances, things kind of line up, and the universe conspires to allow you to finish, which is great.
Alden: Yeah. I think that’s sort of the beauty of bikepacking and bike touring is like, things that shouldn’t happen or shouldn’t work, they do, because you’re out there doing this great thing and people that you meet, they see that, or maybe they see something of themselves in you, and they just want to help you, even if it’s totally inconvenient for them. They’re like, “I don’t care, you can stay at my house tonight, I’ll cook you dinner too. No, you can’t pay me.” And it’s like, “Wait, are you sure?”
Gabriel: Well, the hospitality in that part of the world is actually well known to bicycle travelers.
Alden: Absolutely.
Gabriel: What happens when you finish? Is there any kind of ceremony or any kind of event where everybody can meet up one last time before going to their different parts of the world, the people that you saw along the road the whole time? How is that when it’s all done?
Alden: So they do have a finishers party on the evening of the last day of the race. Sadly, I had to miss that because I was still riding my bike. I did technically finish outside of the official time window and I didn’t get to experience the finishers party, but I heard it was really epic. They obviously congratulate the winners and then they highlight some of the other people that didn’t win but had really important or impactful experiences. I was sad to miss that, but then the next day when I arrived at the finish line, Nelson Trees, the race director, he was there and I said, “Man, I’m sorry, I missed it.” And he said, “That’s all right, you finished the ride. That’s the important thing.” It was sort of a double- edged sword of, I didn’t get to see the party and say a final farewell to all my friends, but I did finish and I got that acknowledgement from Nelson and so that was really special. Hopefully this second go around, I’ll actually be at the finished party, knock on wood.
Gabriel: That’s what I was going to say. That’s a reason to go back this summer. When you said “winner,” it just kind of blew my mind. I had completely forgotten that, yeah, of course, it’s a race, so there is a winner, but I can’t even imagine what it’s like to win the race. It’s hard to imagine just completing it, but yeah, somebody won.
Alden: They did, yeah. I mean, the race took me a little bit over 15 days to complete. The winner finished in a little bit over six days.
Gabriel: What?
Alden: Yeah, so he averaged 200 miles a day and I think he said he slept only two hours every night. And that is just, that’s a different, that person is a beast. I don’t even know how to comprehend that.
Gabriel: No, and you’re someone who does ultra-running, so if you don’t comprehend it, then most people certainly will not. That is insane. I can’t imagine how you can push your body that far.
Alden: Me too, me too.
Gabriel: It seems like Instagram has been a pretty important part of your life. You’ve at one point posted daily on Instagram for two years. You also said that that’s how you found out about the Silk Road Mountain Race and how you met your good friend, Erik. So for listeners who are interested in following your exploits, can you share your Instagram?
Alden: It’s aldenroth2. So my first and last name and then the number two. And don’t ask me why I wasn’t aldenroth1. I can’t remember. I made it 15 years ago. There must have been another Alden Roth and I thought, yeah, I’ll just be aldenroth2. But then it worked out. My cap in Silk Road, I had the number 2 cap. So for once in my life, I was Alden Roth 2.
Gabriel: Oh, nice. Okay. Well, that answers that question. And then the last question, I guess, and maybe it’s a reason why you are going back, but do you have any regrets about the first experience?
Alden: Yes, I do. I think in the middle of it, I got a little caught up with, like, okay, I need to beat this snail. I need to make it to the finish line on time. And so there were a handful of instances where I wish I had lingered. I really love finding swimming holes and going swimming in the swimming holes. And I passed two or three really epic swimming holes, and I did not get off my bike. I did not get in them. I said, you know, that’ll waste too much time. It’s hard to say how things would have gone had I slowed down and spent some time in a swimming hole, maybe my legs would have felt a little fresher, maybe my mind would have been a little clearer, or maybe, you know, the stars just would not have aligned for me to crash my front wheel. We’ll never know. But I think the thing that I will pay a little closer attention to the second go-around is, if I see that swimming hole again, I’ll stop and get in it for maybe even just five minutes. I think that would be really great.
Gabriel: It sounds great.
Alden: Absolutely. I’m very excited to go back. Hopefully I will train a little better. I’ve got one year of Russian lessons under my belt. So, hopefully a second year, I’ll be able to talk a little bit more.
Gabriel: Oh, wow.
Alden: Yeah, I can’t say much. I can say, you know, “Where’s the store?” “I need to use the restroom.” So, we’re working on it. But I’m really excited that I’m going to have so many friends when I go back this year. So it should be a great time.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
Alden: Come May 11th, the main seven of us are descending on Portland and will be there for a week to ride bikes with people and get the word out.
Gabriel: You missed the chance to say, “The Magnificent Seven.”
Alden: I’ll have to keep that in mind next time. That’s good.