A mountain biking Queenstown pair are taking on a challenging 2052km bikepacking race in a remote central Asian country this month.

Tom Baker and Adam Carlson, who also competed together in the South Island’s 1330km Tour Te Waipounamu early this year, are competing from this Saturday in the Silk Road Mountain Race through mountains in Kyrgyzstan.

As to which race is harder, Carlson says “I think it would be a toss-up between those two”.

He expects they’ll need to push their bikes at some points.

Out of 35,362m of vertical, he notes there’s 3300m in one 70km stretch.

“You go along beside the Chinese border at one point and the route description just says, ‘stay left of the barbed wire’.”

Carlson says temperatures will range from about 38˚C in the valleys to -10˚C on the tops.

Hoping to complete the race in 10 days, they plan to cover over 200km a day which could require 16 to 18 hours in the saddle.

They’ll need a bit of luck, he says — “there’s a lot you can fix on a bike but there’s a lot of things you can’t fix”, while the main city has the only bike shop around.

There’ll be about 250 competitors, with a 50 to 60% attrition rate in past years.

“That’s pretty common for those kind of races because of mechanicals or just people underestimating what they’re getting in for.

“There’s a town called Naryn about halfway through which is known as ‘scratch city’ because people pull the pin there.”

Carlson’s longest mountain bike race was the 4345km Tour Divide the length of the United States two years ago which took him almost 20 days.

He did that by himself and enjoyed the experience but says it’s good to pair up with someone — “I’m a social individual”.

scoop@scene.co.nz