New Media Assets for Content Creators

Over the past few months, we’ve been receiving an increasing number of requests from documentarians, YouTubers, and content creators who wanted to include TransCanada Ultra route visualizations in their productions. The problem? Our complete route files contain over 197,000 waypoints—enough data to bring most animation software to its knees.

The Challenge of Scale

When you’re building the longest bikepacking event in the world, spanning 12500km across the second-largest country on Earth, data management becomes a real challenge. Every turn, every climb, every descent needs to be documented precisely for participant safety and navigation. But this level of detail creates files that are simply unwieldy for media production.

Video editors and motion graphics artists were telling us the same story: they’d try to import our route data into After Effects, Google Earth Studio, or their mapping software of choice, only to watch their systems grind to a halt. Some managed to work with heavily downsampled versions, but lost all the nuance that makes the TransCanada route special—the way it hugs coastlines, winds through mountain passes, and threads through historic city centers.

A Flexible Solution

Today we’re launching a new Media Assets section on our website with KML files specifically optimized for various use cases. These files are generated using extremely flexible software that allows us to create custom resolutions based on specific needs.

What’s Available

The 1200-Point Overview: Perfect for high-level visualizations where you need to show the entire route without overwhelming your system. This version maintains the essential shape while being light enough for smooth animations.

Cinematic Regional Files: These are where things get interesting. Using variable resolution sampling, we’ve created files that intelligently preserve detail where it matters most. Bends get more points. Major cities of interest are oversampled. Islands and peninsulas maintain their distinctive shapes. The prairies, with their long straight roads, use fewer points without losing accuracy.

We’ve split these into regional files too: West Coast (with all those intricate island passages), Prairies (the heart of Canada’s breadbasket), Ontario (including the challenging northern sections), Quebec (with its historic routes), Atlantic Provinces (coastal beauty at its finest), and Newfoundland (the grand finale).

Built for Creators

These files are specifically designed to work well with Google Earth, which has become the go-to tool for many content creators needing to generate route visualizations. But they’re equally at home in professional GIS software, mapping applications, or any tool that accepts KML format.

The beauty of our generation system is its flexibility. If you’re producing a documentary and need something specific—different resolutions, custom regions, specific sampling strategies—please don’t hesitate to reach out. We can generate files tailored to your production needs. Want just the mountain sections at high resolution? Need a version that emphasizes urban areas? Looking for elevation data included? We can make it happen.

Why This Matters

TransCanada Ultra isn’t just about the participants who take on this monumental challenge. It’s about inspiring others, sharing the beauty of Canada’s diverse landscapes, and building a community around this incredible journey. Every video, every documentary, every social media post helps tell this story.

By making these assets freely available, we’re hoping to see more creative interpretations of what this event represents. Maybe it’s a time-lapse visualization showing rider progress. Perhaps it’s an educational piece about Canada’s geography. Or it could be a motivational video inspiring the next generation of ultra-endurance athletes.

Important Note for Participants

These media files are optimized for visualization and content creation, not navigation. Participants should always use the official navigation resources at maps.transcanadabikerace.com, which provide the full-resolution data needed for safe route finding.

Get Creating

The files are available now in our footer menu under “Media Assets”. We’re excited to see what the creative community does with these resources. Tag us in your creations—we love seeing how our route data gets transformed into compelling visual stories.

And remember, if you need something custom for your production, just reach out. We’re here to help tell the story of this incredible journey across Canada.