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Ultra-cycling bikepacking coach

 

Specialised training for

Tour Divide, the Mountain Races, Triple crown

Other off-road and road bikepacking races

 

Forged in the hardest races, built for every level

The race doesn't break you at 800km

 It breaks you at 3am, in the dark, when you've forgotten why you started

This happens to riders across all major ultra-distance bikepacking events but especially the big ones—Tour Divide, Silk Road Mountain Race, Hellenic Mountain Race, Atlas Mountain Race, Taurus Mountain Race, Arizona Trail Race and Colorado Trail Race. 

Athletes training for these bikepacking races focus on fitness. Fitness is necessary. It is not sufficient. 

The riders who don't finish are rarely the least fit in the field. They're the ones who ran out of mental scaffold, who hadn't planned for the moment their plan fell apart, who didn't know themselves well enough to know what they'd do when everything went wrong all at once.

 This is what we prepare you for. 

Tour Divide weather throws everyone a curve ball

The Bikepacking label

You can't plan for what you don't know.

Many coaches offer packages with long rides and basic training blocks then add a bikepacking label. That's not coaching for these races. That's generic endurance training.

What makes this different

We've raced these events. We know where training and planning fails but also where it succeeds. We've planned key bikepacking training blocks, monitored their effectiveness over years and kept the successful ones. We can look at your race road book for Tour Divide, the Mountain Races or the Trail Races and tell you exactly which resupply window you've underestimated, which section will challenge you mentally, and how to prepare for it. We know what to look for in other races and can guide you to better road book preparation.

Our knowledge comes from experience, not theory.

True bikepacking preparation

Training that goes beyond fitness—bikepacking specific durability and strength work, so your body still functions on day four, not just day one

Planning, guided—route research, road book, resupply strategy, walked through step by step in a structured online planning portal

Mental preparation—your reasons and your rules, written down while you're thinking clearly, ready for the moment you're not

Monthly live workshops—timed to help your prepare, alongside athletes preparing for similar start lines

Testing before you race—preparation completed and tested before you race

A coach who's been out there—Tour Divide, Silk Road, the upcoming Taurus—who can see your whole preparation at once and put the work where it's actually needed

Let's find out who you are before the race does

The race will find your patterns. How you plan. How you decide when you're wrecked. What you do when it all goes wrong.

You can discover them out there, at the worst possible moment—or here, with me, before they cost you the race.

Training is one layer. We work on all of them. Most bikepacking coaching starts with fitness. We start with something harder:

 knowing yourself 

Before we can help you prepare we need to understand:

  • How you are adapting to the training load
  • How you plan under pressure
  • How you respond under fatigue
  • What your risk profile is
  • What your mental bedrock looks like when you're destroyed at 3am and want to quit

These aren't soft questions. They're the questions that help you finish.

 If we don't ask these questions. The race will. 

Your training time is valuable

We ensure it's suited to your race

The hierarchy of bikepacking needs is a check system used to ensure we cover everything in your training and that you are monitoring your fatigue and responding to the training. Fatigue is the killer of adaptation to training and easily overlooked because we need to get the training done. 

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Peta's hierarchy of bikepacking needs ©

The Five Pillars of Ultra-Distance Bikepacking Coaching

More than just a fitness plan, these pillars cover all the preparation you'll need, guided via questionnaires and workshops.

01 Know Yourself

Your planning personality (Engineer vs. Adventurer), risk profile, and self-monitoring habits determine how you'll perform in a crisis. We identify these in your onboarding questionnaire and refine them through group workshops. But more crucially, are you adapting to your training load and monitoring fatigue.

02 Comfort Systems

Saddle sores, hand numbness, hot foot, Achilles pain—these are the real race enders. We discuss bike fit specifically for ultra-endurance, contact point protection, and in-race triage so small problems can be managed in race.

03 Physical Durability

Not just endurance, but fatigue resistance—the ability to resist slowing down, making errors, losing appetite, and poor decision-making when already exhausted after 60, 80, 100+ hours of riding.

04 Route Intelligence

Three-phase research, road book construction, resupply mapping, and what impacts your pacing strategy based on the terrain and unique characteristics you will cover in your race. Every race is different. Your plan must account for that.

05 Mental Bedrock

Your Mental Bedrock Document is your worst '3am self' self-help guide. You write it rested, for the version of you that has lost access to why they started. This is not motivational. It's practical. It's your protocol for the moment you want to quit.

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Stories from the race

Strong numbers count. We train them to carry you all the way to the finish.

"I think that my systems, bike setup, and mental preparation allowed me to both enjoy the experience as much of the time as possible and to finish faster than my fitness alone could account for. My guiding strategy was to consistently check in with myself and to reflect on whether I was enjoying the experience. If the answer was no, this became a signal to assess what I might need - calories? salt? hydration? sleep? I can't be sure about the experience of others, but I felt as though meeting my goals and finishing the Tour Divide was as much related to my systems and mental strategy as it was to my fitness." 

Cameron Russell 2025 Tour Divide 22 days 123 hours 45 minutes

Riding strong in the final days while others fade. Feeling mentally fresh enough to enjoy it. That's what the training is built for, block by block.

Every plan is a progression that starts where you are and builds steadily toward what your race demands: core or strength work to help your body hold its position deep into the race, durability sessions that prepare you for the repeated long days, and a structure that means you've already met the hard work in training—before the race asks for it.

You won't be thrown in the deep end. You'll be built up—week by week, block by block—so the rider arriving at the start line is the best-prepared version of you: ready to ride strong, think clearly, and give yourself every chance of enjoying the race all the way to the end.

That's the plan. Not just to get you round. To get you to the finish still riding like yourself.

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How this coaching is built

Qualified coaching

Rewritten by years of race reality and athlete feedback

This system was built for riders who feel the weight of everything they “should” be doing and don’t know how to hold it all. It starts with solid coaching qualifications, then is reshaped by more than a decade of watching real people prepare for, struggle in, and sometimes break in these races. Out of that came a bikepacking specific coaching plan built for the longest races on the calendar, shaped to fit your race.

Tour Divide

Two part system

The fitness side

A progressive training structure built specifically for ultra-distance bikepacking, based on what these races really do to your body over consecutive days. It is designed to build durability and confidence, so you do not have to guess whether you are doing “enough” or “the right thing” as the start line gets closer.

The knowledge side

A structured planning framework drawn from first-hand race experience and overseeing athletes race preparation—route research, road book construction, self-knowledge, and mental preparation. It is delivered through clear resources and monthly live workshops, so you are never left to figure it all out alone or at the wrong moment in your build-up.

Peta has a distinctive ability to see preparation as a complete pattern—she can hold the whole picture for you, then walks you through each part, spotting gaps long before they turn into race-day problems. You bring the commitment; she brings the structure, tools, and calm, step-by-step path to get you ready.
How knowledge is delivered

Three options for preparation

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Knowledge workshops

Live sessions built around the hierarchy. Before some sessions you complete a short questionnaire. Peta analyses the responses and tells you what to look for that's specific to your own patterns. Meaghan Hackinen joins most calls.

Monthly in race season
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The planning portal

Structured modules built from first-hand race knowledge. Route research, road book construction, resupply strategy, mental preparation. Available at 11pm when you're deep in a planning problem.

Available on some plans
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The community

Athletes preparing for the same race on the same timeline. The community forms around the shared experience—not manufactured, not managed. People preparing for the same start line tend to find each other. Meaghan Hackinen co-hosts the knowledge workshops.

Through knowledge workshops
Choose your path

The ways to work together

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1:1 coaching

Fundamental level

Custom plan, 1:1 calls and Group workshops.

For Tour Divide and mountain race athletes—planning portal access with wireframe support for your race preparation.

For other races, planning wireframes can be shared.

Monthly knowledge workshops run from January to May.

 

Tour Divide
1:1 coaching

Advanced level

Everything in the Fundamental level.

Detailed planning modules for your A-race to help you plan and prepare for it.

Performance analysis with an initial evaluation during the test phase of training, presented as a PDF, with follow up information as training progresses.

 

 

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Before your Race is confirmed

Foundation Track

IIf you are struggling to commit to 1:1 coaching before your race, this pre-planned training block will get you started so you are not leaving structured training to the last minute.

Use before you start 1:1 coaching.

You will need at least 6 months of 1:1 coaching before your race if you use this route and it is only available for 3 months, after which you'll need to switch.

Your coach

Peta Mcsharry

The race is in her legs. Her knowledge is in your planning.

Peta McSharry has raced Tour Divide, the inaugural Silk Road Mountain Race, will race the upcoming Taurus Mountain Race, to name a few. This coaching system was built from first-hand experience of what actually causes athletes to scratch — and it isn't just your fitness.

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Coaching

British Cycling Level 3

My coaching foundation comes from British Cycling’s three-year pathway, moving from skills development and group riding through race tactics and into performance coaching. Alongside that, I bring 20 years’ experience as a myofascial and sports massage therapist, often working with injured athletes to help them reach the finish line when training has not gone to plan.

I have been coaching for several years, teaching massage and first aid for over a decade, supported by a qualification in designing and delivering adult-learning courses.

Bikepacking

15+ years

It's been over 15 years of bikepacking for me, I started bikepacking in 2012, taking part in many first edition races—TransContinental, SRMR, Route66 Bike Race, TransAm Bike Race. Prior to this I raced bikes and completed in many sportives, even taking on a Men's Grand Tour—the Giro D'Italia route—for charity in 2011.

My favourite result was 2nd women in the Paris-Roubaix Challenge finishing around 140th overall. I completed 6 L'Etape du Tours with the first one in 2007 and finished Paris Brest Paris in 2015. I dabbled in Cyclocross and a bit of MTBing—but was a pretty terrible at both.

Ethos

Solo, unsupported

Bikepacking takes a heap of self-reliance. My goal over the course of coaching is to enable you to make the right decisions and trust them during the race. There is so much advice and information available about preparing for a race, making the choice that suits you can be difficult. I aim to help you prepare what is right for you and if you can get it right in training, then racing will become that much more enjoyable.

I've developed systems to help you manage all the prep you need for the race. I'll manage your progress and keep you to the schedule.

Red Meadow Lake Tour Divide 2022
1 'Riding' through Red Meadow Lake on the 2022 Tour Divide, the leaders took two hours without snow versus 8 hours in these conditions.
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2 Late snow melt turns roads into half kilometre sectors carrying bikes overhead to save the bottom bracket bearings. 
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3 After being held up by a grizzly bear in -5°C, we huddle at 2,000m to warm up before the long descent and freezing ride through Flathead valley.
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4 Oops, that puddle off the top of Elk Pass was a bit deeper than it looked when I rode into it. Saved a full mud bath.
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5 Bivying at the base of Kegeti on the inaugural Silk Road Mountain race. 
Don't take it from me

Words from my clients

From race winning athletes to complete beginners, I've had the pleasure of helping others reach their goals. Here's what they have to say.

Featured riders
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Meaghan Hackenin

Peta believed in my ability to win the women's Tour Divide, this built my confidence along with her attention to the off-the-bike tasks I needed to do to tackle the race.

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Rachel Mendes

From helping select a gravel bike and all the bikepacking kit I needed, Peta prepared a training plan suited to my beginner level and helped me get my head around what I needed to do to finish the Torino Nice Rally.

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Justinas Leveika

I'm uncoachable. Peta blends in well with my adventurous side, planning key blocks of training and recovery between races and brings a consulting style of coaching rather than a prescriptive style. It's great to have someone with this depth of knowledge to bounce ideas off.

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Rob Roy Cameron

The week before the Further Pyrenees Peta stepped in as my coach to help with race strategy. Her Advanced training blocks bring a level of training I've not used before.