Kalkaska Airport to Timber Ridge, Traverse City. 30 miles of dirt road, two-track, abandoned rail bed and the Vasa trail. Redline Athlete forecasts your finish time from your own numbers and turns it into pace targets and a fueling plan, with the critical markers generated automatically for your head unit or watch.
No card. No account needed to try it.
High point 1,439 ft. Low point 1,025 ft. The course crosses only one paved road, Williamsburg Rd at mile 17, and runs through named sections riders talk about all year: Dockery Hills, Gussied Up, Make It Stick, Icebreaker and Woodchip Hill. It is faster and flatter than a Chequamegon or a Marji Gesick, which is exactly why pacing it wrong is so easy, nothing here forces you to back off.
Dirt road and two-track for most of the distance, with sand and loamy singletrack mixed through the technical sections and the Vasa trail near the finish. Nothing on the course sustains a long grade. The steepest pitches are short, punchy kicks rather than climbs you settle into, which is a different kind of hard than a long grind, it rewards someone who can go into the red repeatedly and recover fast, not just someone with a big engine.
For a sample rider treating this as a steady, moderate effort rather than an all-out race, the model's leg fatigue curve rises through the ride and finishes well loaded. Race it harder and that curve moves a lot faster than the extra speed is worth.
Climbing is 20% of the distance but 27% of the time, 1.35 times its share, smaller than a course with real sustained climbs but still real. Descending is 16% of the distance for 12% of the time. At 30 miles the whole race is over inside three hours for most riders, which means pacing mistakes made in the first ten minutes are still costing you at the finish.
A forecast built from your weight, fitness, and the course file, with pace targets by segment so you know what "on plan" feels like at mile 15.
See where a fast, punchy course spends your legs, even without a single long climb to blame it on.
What to eat, how much, and when, placed along the course. At under three hours for most riders it is a smaller plan than a Chequamegon, and the calculator sizes it that way instead of over-fueling you.
See what going out harder in the first few miles actually buys you by the finish, and where the trade stops being worth it.
Fatigue is the slow bill. Anaerobic reserve is the one you pay on the spot, every time a short kick or a sandy rise pushes you above threshold, which matters more on a course built from short punchy sections than on one with long climbs.
For a sample rider it dips to 78% at mile 4.6 and finishes at 85%, a shallower drain than a longer race like the Chequamegon 40, because no single effort here is long enough to spend the reserve deeply. The costliest single pitch is at mile 4.2, spending 4.3 kJ; the ground right after it, mile 4.6 to 5.8, hands back 2.0 kJ. On a course built from repeated short efforts rather than one long grind, staying out of the red on the ones that do not matter is most of the game.
A printed sheet is only good until you stop looking at it. Redline Athlete places markers at the points that matter, your fuel stops, the technical sections, the punchy climbs, and exports them straight to your head unit.
The model marks the decisive sections and your fuel points automatically. Rename or add your own, and it remembers what you typed.
Wahoo and Zepp read either. Garmin needs TCX to show course points on the map, not just a cue sheet, so that is the one to pick if you ride a Garmin.
Your device beeps at the fuel stop and the punchy section, not after you have already ridden through it.
It depends on you. The front of the race finishes well under two hours while much of the field rides two to three. That spread is exactly why an average is useless: the calculator forecasts your time from your own numbers.
Yes. Run the full analysis as a guest, no account. Pro ($9/month, or $59/year) adds saved rides and a saved athlete profile.
The model reads elevation and curvature straight from your GPX, so it does not know a stretch is loose sand unless you tell it. Set trail conditions in the calculator if a section runs soft, and the plan adjusts.
Same course, your fitness, your pacing. Two minutes of setup now beats thirty miles of guessing on November 7.
Same model, one page per course.