Last year I decided to become a bikepacker, and with the Super 8 in my rearview mirror, now’s a good time to reflect. The Super 8 was my 2026 Big Hairy Ass Goal. Actually, I had two goals:
1. Be able to compete in the Super 8. Doing this many miles and this many hours in the saddle wasn’t something I could do a year ago, so feeling confident in my capabilities was a small victory.
2. Complete the Southern Lobe. A third stretch goal was to complete the Northern Lobe, but unless things went just right, I knew it was a stretch.
The Vermont Super 8
The Vermont Super 8 is managed by the Vermont Bike Packers. It is a self-supported, ultra-distance bikepacking race that traces an 8-shaped loop across Vermont’s rugged terrain. Spanning roughly 650 miles with over 60,000 feet of climbing, the route tests riders with steep gap climbs, historic Class 4 dirt roads, and rugged singletrack. Cyclists must be entirely self-reliant, carrying their own gear and sourcing food along the way. Divided into North and South loops that intersect in Montpelier, this grueling endurance event showcases New England’s remote wilderness, vibrant foliage, and punishing terrain, demanding immense physical stamina and sharp navigation skills.
I got the date wrong and could not join the grand depart race start, so I did the race as an individual time trial a week later.
Day 1: Friday, September 25, 2026
Start time 8:00 am
Finish time 2:00 am Saturday
Miles 122
I started day 1 waking up at the nearby campsite. After packing up and heading out, I stopped by a restaurant on the way to the state house for breakfast. The camping spot was located nearby, with a bike path providing easy access to the start. The day started chilly. I knew rainy days were in store, but I was worried they would be a cold rain. I had layers, but perhaps not enough if the weather was both cold and wet.
Friday’s ride was beautiful with sunny vistas. I stopped at a general store in Stafford for a snack. Not much on offer, so I went with a banana, potato salad, chips, and a candy bar. The highlight of the day was Woodstock. My wife and I had stayed at a BnB in Woodstock a few years back, and I have fond memories of our stay there. My amazing besties Kevin and JoAnne traveled over from Ascutney Mountain, where their son was racing the VT50. It was so great to see them! Cell reception was poor, and I knew that they would get word back to my wife that I was doing well. They graciously offered a hotel bed, but it would have broken the unsupported-racing rules, so I politely declined. In Woodstock, I had pizza and ice cream before continuing on the ride. Leaving Woodstock, I missed a key market, so although I had a full belly, I wouldn’t have anything substantial for breakfast, and I would have to filter water.
In Chester, I came across the cool iron bridge featured in the picture below. Super freaky at night because you have no idea what’s underneath you. In the woods outside Chester, I had my first run-in with a porcupine. He was so cute! He wanted nothing to do with me and waddled away as fast as he could. As I pedaled through the night, I listened to the “Dark Matter” audiobook. I love sci-fi but detest metaverse books, but somehow they keep ending up in my Libby app. It wasn’t a terrible listen.
I stopped at “Bob’s Camp,” which used to be “Pete’s Camp.” It’s a cool place with numerous outbuildings. It would be a neat place to spend some time. And that wrapped up the longest ride I had ever done.
Day 2: Saturday, September 26, 2026
Start time 8:00 am
Finish time 11:00 pm
Miles 91
I grabbed 5 hours of sleep and was ready to go.
I really wanted to get 100 miles in for the day, but I didn’t know what the day would hold, so I was ready to take it as it came. Soon I realized I was on the same trails as those I had done the month before with friends. Four of us did the Brattleboro Roundabout, and Saturday’s ride was a joy as each mile brought back happy memories of that ride. Once I made it to Brattleboro, I stopped in at the Brattleboro bike shop. My bike had developed a few minor issues that I wanted to get addressed. I also knew they’d let me charge my devices and keep an eye on my things while I grabbed a bite to eat. Amazingly, the Johnsons came to visit me again and this time brought along their son. Such a welcome visit. During the race, I get so focused on the tactics of the moment…it’s super nice to see friendly faces!
After a few hours of riding, I reached the southernmost point of the ride: the Massachusetts border.
While riding around the Deerfield River, I made friends with the second porcupine. I ended up riding up behind this fella as he waddled down a narrow trail. The poor guy was so stressed out. A scary machine was following him, and he couldn’t get away. He had the river on one side and dense forest on the other. He scurried along the path for a long time, and I urged him to duck into the forest. Eventually we parted ways on good terms.
The rain was forecast to come in earnest on Sunday, but it rained a good bit on Saturday too.
With so many hours in the saddle, I think it’s worth mentioning what I thought about during the ride.
Here’s a ranked list of what I thought about:
- Tactics – I spent most of my time thinking about the moment. Asking myself questions like: Is my pace too easy/too hard? What’s coming up next? How is my body holding up? Do I need to stop for a moment to stretch? Can I extend today’s ride? On Saturday, I thought a lot about whether I could do the Northern Lobe after finishing the Southern Lobe. By then, I was starting to feel the fatigue, but I still felt good, and I knew there were a lot of miles left, not to mention the inclement weather.
- Food – A friend is a really great racer, and he told me about the power of maple syrup. According to him, your body knows exactly what to do with it, and it’s an efficient sugar delivery system. I took his advice and bought a few 500ml soft flasks, filled them halfway with maple syrup and water, and added a dash of salt and lemon juice. I had a shot of this maple syrup about every half hour. That, along with stopping for sandwiches or similar, was my food strategy. The nice thing about maple syrup is, it’s super easy to replenish in Vermont! When I got more hungry, I ate Clif bars or Carb Fuel gels. Although food stops are available throughout the Super 8, many places close at 6:00 pm. In fact, twice I got shut out when I reached a market a few minutes after 6:00.
- Power – This is where I had the biggest problems. I brought two power banks, including one with a 20,000mah capacity. But keeping my Garmin Edge, Outbound Lighting handlebar light, helmet light, and iPhone powered up became a challenge. This despite keeping my iPhone in airplane mode and only using the helmet lights when descending. I started running low on power supply.
I ended the day camping at a creepy spot at a dispersed campsite in the Green Mountains National Forest. I had only completed 91 miles, but it was a long push until the next campsite. It was already 11:00 pm, and pushing to the next campsite would likely mean riding until 2:00 am again, and that didn’t feel right to me.
Day 3: Sunday, September 27, 2026
Start time 6:30 am
Finish time 6:00 pm
Miles 66
I started Sunday planning to log 110 miles. I was eager to get the most out of the day, so I broke camp in the rain and started riding at dawn. Almost immediately, my plan fell apart. About an hour in, I started a hike-a-bike climb in the GMNF. According to Garmin, I climbed 1,400 feet in 3.5 miles. That’s an average grade of 7.5%, and much of it was more than 15%. I moved at 2 MPH for 3 hours, mostly pushing my heavy bike up a hill. It was quite demotivating.
This was the lowest point of the race for me, and I had to revisit my mental strength training. Working so hard only to move so slowly made me think about how hard this race was. My mind wanted to spiral about how long this ride was, how old I was, how utterly unworthy of this challenge I am. But I caught myself and focused on the short term. Goldfish thinking. I wouldn’t let my mind think long term. I forced myself to remember that what goes up must come down, and that easy miles lay ahead to offset these hard miles. While I was fighting these battles, I met a black bear! He was coming down the trail, saw me, did a double take (which was quite funny), and ran off into the woods. Once I saw him, I started talking to him so he knew I was strong and fierce. I also carry pepper spray and a big ass knife, just in case. Eventually I summited and started back down the hill. Unfortunately, some of the downhill was too treacherous for my rigid gravel bike, so I had to walk part of it.
Eventually, the trail smoothed out. I pulled into Arlington pretty hungry. I stopped at the Stewarts Shop, ate two sandwiches, and bought enough provisions to get me through the day. The rain finally arrived in earnest as the ride popped over the New York border for a bit. I kept thinking about the ride’s progression and how to manage it. In the short term, I had lost a lot of time in the morning hills, and achieving 110 miles no longer was possible. My concerns about power continued. I was running low on power to charge my Garmin and lights so I could finish the race. As I reviewed the race camping spots, I saw that a place called the Trailhouse offered power and WiFi, and that sealed the deal. I would end my ride early, juice up, and figure out my plans to finish the ride. The Trailhouse is on HipMunk in Poultney, VT. It’s got nice spots for van and tent camping in Slate Valley. My long-term thinking continued about whether or not I would have a shot at the Northern Lobe. I started thinking that if I could get into Montpelier in the afternoon, I could shower, charge up my devices, and find a laundromat to dry all my wet gear. It seemed like an option.
As I rode into Poultney, I was so happy to have about a dozen flat miles on the rail trail. After all that up and down, smooth pedaling was so welcome! I wrapped up the day by charging devices and thinking about the rest of the race. I had 105 miles to go, but my mileage kept declining as the days went on. I really wanted to finish the race in one last push, but I didn’t know what kind of trails lay ahead or whether I could do it. By this point, I knew the race was in control, not me. I would have to take things as they came.
Day 4: Monday, September 28, 2026
Start time 6:00 am
Finish time 1:30 am Tuesday
Miles 105
I went to sleep at 7:30 pm and got a much-needed 8 hours of sleep. I was up before dawn and ready to see if this would be, as we Formula 1 fans say, a one-stop or two-stop strategy. I had saved a pair of dry socks and bibs, and it was nice to be almost dry for a while. I grabbed some snacks at the gas station in Poultey and headed north along the trail. The rains came again. Around noon, I stopped at the Morningside Bakery in Brandon, VT, and had a breakfast sandwich and grabbed another to go. Around nightfall, I entered the Battell Wilderness area, which involved a sizeable hike-a-bike section. After reaching the summit, the downhill section began, and I had a bit of bad luck. I got a flat tire. I’m an experienced bike mechanic, so changing a flat tire is no big thing for me. But I usually don’t have to do it to a 70 lb bike at night in the mud. I was concerned because I couldn’t figure out why my tubeless tire had failed. I was really worried that it had a thorn in it and, if I put the inner tube in it, the tube would puncture as well, and that would be the end of my race. I turned the tire inside out and must have touched every inch of that tire 10 times to be sure there wasn’t a thorn in it. I eventually chalked the failure up to a one-in-a-million tire burp, but later learned the sidewall had a 1/4″ tear in it. As I went to inflate the inner tube, I discovered what a piece of crap my mini pump was. I hadn’t had a tire failure in 10+ years, so I just didn’t know it sucked! It worked, but it took me a few hundred pumps to get both sides of the tire to seat properly. It was easily the slowest tire change in my life, but eventually I got moving again.
One thing that surprised me was just how remote much of Vermont is. If you just go to Burke, Stowe, Woodstock, Burlington, etc., you don’t get a picture of what the rest of the state is like. There were times when I was on a “champagne gravel” road (well, champagne covered in peanut butter) for hours and hours and didn’t see one vehicle.
I kept debating staying a day in Montpelier to reset for the Northern Lobe, but the slow pace and time lost to the flat tire made it impossible. I had hoped to arrive in town in the early evening, but around 8:00 pm, as I stood along the trail eating the sandwich I had bought earlier in the day, I realized it would just be the Southern Lobe for me this year. But if I could finish in under four days, I would feel good about it, so I pushed on. I had one more oh shit moment ahead. After negotiating a reroute where logging operations had recently begun right on the trail, I entered a technical section with large washouts full of big rocks. At one point, I was walking the bike; I lost my footing and the bike fell, of course, on the drive side. The heavy bike fell hard, and as I feared, the derailleur hanger was bent. I had a spare ready, but the Salsa Fargo has a rather complicated axle system that I decided to avoid messing with if I could. At this point I was about 10 miles to the finish, and most rides into town are downhill. I still had the middle gears, but I no longer had the climbing gears, so I hoped I could limp into Montpelier as-is. Thankfully, the rest of the ride was flat or downhill.
Oh, and of course my Garmin died with a mile to go! At that point I was in Montpelier and could easily navigate to the state house, but it was so “on brand” for my ride that I just laughed.
