17-year-old PJ Terry and Andrew Wiedrich Co-win the 2022 TNGA

Photo by Dana Terry

17-year-old PJ Terry and 32-year-old Andrew Wiedrich spent the better part of two days vying for the lead on the 350-mile Trans North Georgia Adventure route. Somewhere along the home stretch last night, they decided to pedal to the finish together, where they’d become co-winners of the 2022 TNGA. The two completed the course in 2 days, 12 hours, and about 30 minutes, although Trackleaders shows some discrepancy.

Graham Skardon was at the finish line and conducted a quick video interview with the two of them as well as an interview with PJ and his father. As you’ll learn in the video, this was PJ’s second time on the TNGA and Andrew’s first ultra-endurance race. Congrats, you two!

We’d heard about an almost game-ending mechanical PJ had on route and reached out to him for details. Here’s what PJ had to say: “I first noticed some disconnect between my crank arms and spindle/chainring during TNGA coming into Mulberry Gap to pick up my spot tracker. I had my bike washed and checked up while I ate, and when I came back outside I got the news that my cranks were delaminating. It was a massive blow as I was told there wasn’t anything to do except ride until they broke. Hopefully that would be after the finish. I had put so much time and energy into preparation, and a massive effort to put me in second 30 hours in. I decided I would just do like he suggested and keep riding, taking it easy on the climbs and descents. On the paved transfer to Dalton a friend suggested over the phone that I needed to make a fix or it would almost definitely break. I spent almost two hours in the parking lot at a Walmart using JB Weld and superglue to reinforce the connection between the crank arms and spindle. It did improve, but there was still some play. On the Snake, the hardest singletrack of the race, I was forced to walk almost every climb bottom to top. It was mentally tough to feel like I was losing out on the extra time it took to hike, but it was better than forcing a DNF because of a crank failure. It didn’t get worse until the last 15 or so miles when they started creaking extremely badly, but I couldn’t stop to fix them that close to the end.”

At the time of publication, five other riders have finished the race, with about 40 others still grinding their way toward the Alabama state line and 25 riders who scratched. Find the Trackleaders map here.

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