Iron & Pine Omnium

   2026-04-08  

In track cycling, the omnium is a test of completeness. Not the fastest sprinter, not the strongest time trialist, but the rider who can do everything well enough across four wildly different events to come out on top. It rewards consistency. It punishes one-dimensionality. The concept has always appealed to me because life, as far as I can tell, works the same way. You don’t get to choose which days are the fondo and which are the sufferfest. You just show up and ride whatever’s in front of you.

This June, we’re bringing the omnium format to the forest roads of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

The Weekend

The Iron & Pine Omnium is two days of gravel riding in the Hiawatha National Forest. June 6th and 7th, 2026. Two established hundred-milers stitched together into a single result.

Saturday is Hiawatha’s Revenge: 102 miles from Munising and the Hiawatha National Forest. Moving time counts toward the overall but the day is built for long efforts and friendly stops. Take some pictures, a few gummies, and all the rest breaks you need.

Sunday is MK Ultra Gravel: 100 miles out of Marquette, grinduro format. Seven timed gravel sectors rated by surface brutality, Paris-Roubaix style. Three KOM climbs. Mass start. Self-supported. Cell service is a rumor. This is where the omnium table gets decided. The sectors carry the heaviest scoring weight and the climbs reward the riders who race aggressively even when their legs are full of Saturday.

Combined, it’s 202 miles and 5,600 feet of climbing across two days on roads that most people will never see. The scoring is straightforward: your Saturday moving time is benchmarked against the fastest in your category and weighted at 35%. Sunday’s timed sectors make up 45%. KOM points take the remaining 20%. Each category—women, men, non-binary—is ranked independently.

Why This Exists

Mostly because my boss wanted me to spin up a couple websites to show off what we’re capable of at Neucadia.

I have a pastime for building challenging rides that hit the most fun roads. Hiawatha’s Revenge started in 2014 as a free fellowship ride out of Munising to benefit the trail network. MK Ultra came later, born from Mark Kransz’s initials and route-building obsession and a belief that the gravel roads west of Marquette deserve the kind of event that matches their character—rowdy, technical, unapologetic.

They’ve always been complementary. Saturday’s ride is the more meditative effort—the kind of day where you notice the yellow birch and the way light falls through the hemlock and you wonder why you ever lived downstate. Sunday strips away the contemplation and asks a simpler question: what really matters anyway?

The omnium format doesn’t change either ride. They remain what they’ve always been. It just gives riders who show up for both days a combined result that tells a more complete story.

The Roads

The roads speak for themselves. Hardpack gravel, snowmobile trail, standing water, NFS roads so smooth you could perform a car-bound bris. The gravel ranges from county roads packed liked cement to deteriorating two-track that hasn’t seen a grader since the Eisenhower administration. The Hiawatha National Forest spreads nearly 900,000 acres from Lake Superior to Lake Michigan and most of it looks exactly like it did before anyone thought to name it. Red pine corridors. Jack pine on dry outwash soils. Tamarack and cedar along the Indian River headwaters. The occasional clearing where the sky opens up and you remember that you’re on a planet.

Both rides are free. Always have been. We suggest a donation to the organizations doing real work up here—the Munising Bay Trail Network for Hiawatha’s Revenge, Great Lakes Recovery Centers for MK Ultra—but the entry fee is and always will be zero.

June 6–7, 2026

Start long, finish sharp. That’s the shape of the weekend. If you’ve been looking for a reason to drive north and ride one-of-a-kind gravel roads, this is it.

Everything you need—routes, scoring, registration, leaderboard—is at ironpineomnium.com.

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