I’m definitely out…I really like riding in West Texas, but the follow car rule is a show stopper for me. I’ll be interested in seeing how 2025 participation compares with the Central Texas Showdown. They’re both long distance, only a couple weeks apart and happening “relatively” close to each other, but one is targeting RAAM-style crew supported racing and that community while the other is focused on the bike-packing part of the community, with fewer rules and requirements for self-support. My guess is that CTS draws many times more participants than NCOM. Look at how Tour Divide and TCR in Europe have both exploded in participation / popularity compared to RAAM. My interpretation is that a large percentage of the people who are drawn to the longer distances are used to riding alone and the independence and solitude of TCR or bike-packing races really appeals to them. It’ll be interesting to watch the participation trends over the next few years.
Interesting perspective that I hadn’t considered. I’ve never really done self-supported (I guess mostly because there haven’t been a lot of self-supported road events in TX historically and I don’t really have any gear for it), but I could see that being attractive due to the reduced costs of follow car setup and not having to have people take time to crew you. All that said, I can see the reasoning for this particular race. That 208 route to Lajitas is REMOTE. I don’t even like driving it alone.
Maybe if I can pull this off I’ll give the self-supported Stampede 200 a go next spring. I have to admit I don’t love hearing the family CR-V basically idling behind me for all of 16 hours lol.
Not just that, it’s the simplicity of it, stripped back to basics of riding a bike a long way in short an elapsed time as you can. You can bivvy if you want, use accommodation if you want, use a mix if you want.