Need Help Figuring out if Finishing CSTR is an Attainable Goal for me

[michael1]

Would probably need 8-12 days. I've never bikepacked, but I'm an experienced ultralight backpacker and mountain biker. I'm not very fast. I can do 10-11k rides, but they take me about 10 hours. I've been able to do 10k rides for a couple years now, but only started "training" this past fall when I started XC collegiate racing for the first time. I did threshold training by mountain biking on a fixed loop (12mi, 2k) and brought my time down from 1:25 to 1:10 from fall to late winter. I also worked on getting in some base road miles. Longest road ride was 240 miles, +22k over 2 days (avg. 10-13 mph). More recently I built a singlespeed mountain bike, which seems like it would be good training for multi-day mountain biking. I've been doing back to back rides of 3-6 hours on weekends with a regular mountain bike or road bike and one singlespeed ride 2 hrs during the week.

If you're not familiar with the CSTR, here is the website. http://www.californiasierratrailrace.com/The_Route.php

Does anyone have advice for me? Particularly anyone who was ever in a similar position, I'd be interested if you tried something too ambitious and how it ended up going. Does anyone think it is a conditionally good idea, such as if I were able to do ride X 3 days in a row I'd be fine?

Also, I was thinking of hiking the Sierra High Route (~10 days) late June, which would give me 2-3 weeks recovery and I don't know if that would have a positive or negative impact.

[evdog]

I can't tell you if you can do the CSTR or not, but the advice I would give you is to go out for a few weekends and do some bikepacking.  Start with small distances with easy bailouts as you dial in your gear, and work up from there.  Riding a loaded bikepack rig can be a whole different ball game from regular MTB especially if you get into lots of hike a bike.  But at the end of the day you also need to be in shape to throw down multiple long days in a row.  The great thing about bikepacking is there's nothing to do but ride, eat, sleep and take in the sights.  So you can tend to put in longer days than you otherwise would.  But you can also do an easier touring pace and there is nothing wrong with that.