Start off your 2025 season with the 12th annual January Mountain Bike Marathon at North Carolina’s original trail destination, Governor’s Creek. The mountain bike-training ride will be a cross-country mountain bike ride of approximately 42 miles. Riders will do one 6-mile lap around Governor’s Creek, head out for a 29-mile loop on paved and dirt roads and return for a final 6-mile circuit on the trail. The average January high temperature is 52 and the average low is 29. In the event of threatening weather, please check the event Facebook page for the latest race information.
MT BIKE MARATHON
This is a training event on trails and roads. We have a free meal afterward. Riders will be scored and assigned a placing. All Classes will start at the same time and be scored in the categories below. Use this event for early season training. This ride is longer than a normal XC race and it could be very cold.
The middle portion of the course will be on lightly traveled, paved, and dirt roads that are open to vehicle traffic. No traffic control will be provided. Participants must obey all state traffic regulations. Riders will need to dress accordingly for the weather and pace and feed themselves accordingly for the longer distance. Expect a first-place finishing time of around 2 hrs 40 min. Riders could take up to 4 hours or more to complete. Be prepared for anything.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
12 pm:
Mountain bike mass start (1 Lap, 42 miles)
- Men under 40
- Women under 40
- Men 40+
- Women 40+
- Men 50+
- Open Singlespeed
- Clydesdale 205+ lbs
RIDE GUIDELINES AND RULES
There will be no traffic control or people on the course to direct you. It is recommended that you have a copy of the road course map and carry it with you or download the GPS file. Study the course on a Google map before you go too! Search Google Maps for 3392 Underwood Rd, Carthage, NC 28327. This will get you to the starting point and you can refer to the drawn course map to examine the road route.
The road course will be marked with red arrows on stakes at all turns.
Riders will need to complete a ride waiver. You can ride any type of bike or switch bikes during the event if you would like. There may or may not be a singletrack trail section in the midst of the dirt road section
This will be a low-key training event. We will score it in categories.
Carry your cell phone (although service will be sketchy on the road loop).
The roads we will use are 60% dirt and 40% Paved. They are country roads with very light traffic. Yield to traffic and obey all stop signs!
Riders will not be allowed to enter the last trail loop after 4:15 pm. This means that if it took you 60 minutes to do the 1st 6-mile trail loop, you would need to average 9 miles per hour on the 28.6 mile road loop to be under the cutoff time.
The 1st finisher’s time will be around 2:30. Most people will be completed by 4:15 pm and around that time we will have free food.
There will be unadvertised cash payout to the top 1–3 finishers overall (depending upon turnout and field size) regardless of the category that they are registered for.
There will be no supported feed zones anywhere. Carry what you need with you. There will be a designated Pit area at the end of the XC loop if you need to pick up food, supplies, water, switch to your hardtail, switch wheels, work on your bike, etc.
Since there are no other events to compete against this time of the year, if the weather forecast is really miserable, we will post postponement possibilities on the Back To Dirt Conservancy FB page at exactly 3 pm on the day before.
Call Back To Dirt Bikes if you have any other questions, 919-776-2453