Matt Kovacic

unterhausen

Congratulations on finishing TABR, that's quite a feat.

I was never impressed by the route. It seems that ACA is taking a look at it.

I always wanted to ride Tour Divide. I don't think it takes too much singletrack experience, it's mostly gravel roads. Search for "bikes of the tour divide 2018" to see that there are very few mountain bikes. I don't know about the other races, it appears to me that many of them are bad or worse than tabr.

Steamer

Pbp?

clasher

The part of the Cascade 1200 that I rode was on pretty low traffic roads... Western Washington state didn't seem very populated and I think the organizer and route planners did a great job in keep the ride on quiet roads, at least IMO. Historically the Cascade runs every 2 years.

rando_couche

+1 most brevets in the PNW (OR/WA) go on lightly traveled rural roads. Add to that the fact that it's one of the most beautiful parts of the world....

SP
OC, OR
RUSA 3481

Brian25

I do not know if you have any preference as far as scenery goes. It's a big continent. You could use google maps/ street view, to come up with your own favorable route.

StephenH

I don't know that there's a good answer.
If you want to go from Point A to Point B by the shortest route, you're probably going to be on some undesirable roads. if you get off those roads, then you have a route that can be shortcutted by using those roads.
Here a while back, one of the ultraracers did a Texas west-to-east record, and commented on how sucky Hwy 82 was in north Texas. Well, nobody that lives around here would ever ride on Hwy 82. So no surprise to the locals that it sucked.
If you find an area with no traffic, you're liable to also find no services. I just drove Hwy 287 from Limon, CO, down to Decatur, Texas. There is a whole lot of nothing in that stretch. Including a major lack of QT stores. So you could come up with some nice routes if it wasn't for dying of starvation or thirst.
If you start planning out routes, you find that in some places, you can find nice backroads. But where you need to cross major rivers, you usually don't have little backroad bridges over the Mississippi, etc. So traffic all gets funneled to certain points at the rivers. That's true at Red River, the Trinity River, etc., and messes with our brevet routes.
Adventure Cyclists has maps for touring, but I don't know that they'd be especially helpful unless you were creating your own event.
Speaking of which, if you can find a good route, you might consider creating your own event.

Happy Feet

I use google maps street view quite a bit to look at route details. In Western Canada at least there are some decent long distance routes following highways which are usually the fastest A - B routes.

For fast long distance I prefer wide shoulders, even with high traffic, over no shoulder/narrow roads. On those roads, even though there may be low traffic, every pass involves the cyclist in the vehicles travel lane and depends on the vehicle to "miss" them. On good shoulders, although there might be higher traffic flow, every pass only needs vehicles to remain in the travel lane with no avoidance involved.

Happy Feet

I might add an idea I've had for a while regarding a Canadian long distance bikepacking road race. There is a route between Calgary - Winnipeg - Edmonton - Calgary I think of as the Prairie Triangle. It follows Hwy 1, 16 and some subsidiary Hwy's like the 21 in order to avoid Hwy 2 (too busy) between Edmonton and Calgary. 3000km's, all good shoulders and safe enough IMO with enough services along the route to be self supporting. While some might think it's boring it would be a good test of pure riding endurance without the need for complicated routing or narrow/questionable roads. Aero bars recommended!

It's still the germ of a crazy dream but I sometimes think of organizing an inaugural race/ride that probably only I would attend

bikenh

I agree, design your own race/route. Even your own race concept. I came up with a race concept many years back. I've never did anything official with it since I know the number of people that would even have the time available for a race of its type would be extremely few and far in between...first year 7000-7500 miles and each year thereafter 12,000-15,000 miles...yes, self-supported. It's a very radical different concept to bicycle racing, no official start/finish line or course. Everything is designed by the racer around the 'control/checkpoints'. First year would actually have no actual points, just 'targets' that must be reached, each following year would have specific locations that must be reached.

Like was said earlier also, the further you are from traffic the further you are from services so you have to plan accordingly.

Richard Cranium

You ride where ever other great riders train or live. Or you ride where ever your life and obligations allow.

For some reason this seems like a stupid question for someone already so accomplished. Congrats on the great rides. I wish I would have had the time and money to complete some trans-con rides.