Finished!

Wow, I can't put into words how good it feels to be done with the beast that is the Tour Divide. It was an incredible year, with long snow slogs and flooded roads in the north, huge days and short nights of sleep in the middle, and 100-degree temperatures and tight racing in New Mexico. I'm still a bit in disbelief that I managed to make it to Antelope Wells before anyone else.

Photo stolen from Eddie Clark's beautiful collection.

The racing this year was nothing less than intense from the start. Ethan, Jefe, and I beat the crap out of one another for the first 1500 miles. Averaging 180 miles per day for that stretch, the toll on all of our bodies was huge. Ankles and knees seemed to take the brunt of the abuse, and watching one another try to get up in the morning when we happened to be camped at the same spot was downright comical until it was your turn to try to become less horizontal. I did a little math and found that I averaged 4 hours of sleep per night for those 16ish days, and that included two nights that I didn't sleep at all (one was the final night) and one that I only napped for an hour. I didn't really think such minimal sleep could be possible for this race, but what do you know?

I really enjoyed the company of Ethan and Jefe when we were riding together. Both are incredibly impressive athletes and simply nice guys. It was refreshing to see that all of us were racing on minimal budgets, on bikes cobbled together with whatever parts we were able to get deals on, and Jefe and I both had quite a bit of homemade gear. It really goes to show that the fanciest bikes and most expensive gear fall far short of what's required for riders to do well in the Tour Divide. It's instead sheer determination, endurance accumulated through years of cycling, savviness in planning, and familiarity with multi-day racing that the fastest racers usually possess, and Ethan and Jefe clearly had an abundance of each.

Photo by Mike Dion/The Path

I'll try to post some more thoughts on the past couple weeks at some point in the near future, and if I can figure out how to get the photos off my camera without a USB cable, I'll post some of those. In the mean time, keep an eye on the Salsa Cycles blog, Cyclingnews, and Mountain Flyer for some upcoming features on the race.

But I'll thank all that have helped me out with the gear used in this race - Salsa Cycles, Revelate Designs, Pearl Izumi, White Brothers, LaceMine29.com, Cane Creek, University Bikes in Boulder, and Michelin. Everything worked FLAWLESSLY, and that made life so much easier for me. I could focus on pedaling, eating, drinking, and enjoying the passing miles instead of futzing with components, repairing broken equipment, and figuring out how to get replacement parts. The one mistake I made was starting with fast-rolling WTB Nano tires - big error on my part. The amount of air that leaked through tiny holes in the sidewalls and the speed at which the tread wore was astounding. I swapped out the rear for a trusty Michelin WildRace'r half way through and had no more problems and spent the rest of the race wishing I had a WildRace'r on the front, too.

I'm hanging out in Silver City recuperating and waiting for Caroline to finish. She's in Cuba this evening and only has a few more days to go before she can hopefully best the rest of the women's field! Then I need to pedal back down to Separ to meet my ride back to Colorado before meeting up with Mike Dion, Hunter Weeks, and Matthew Lee to begin filming of The Path. Hopefully my body is interested in riding again next week!

Thanks to everyone that's sent their congrats...it means a lot, and I'm proud to hear that I've been able to inspire so many others simply by doing what I love to do.

The beginning of a whirlwind

In three days, I'll be on the road to Banff, watching the countless miles roll by while slowly realizing once again how dang far it is across a single state, much less across the country. The Tour Divide begins on Friday morning, and it's looking like 75 brave souls will have their sights set on making it to Antelope Wells, New Mexico. My parents are again giving me a ride up to Canada for the start, and this time we'll also have Caroline along for company as she is about to embark on her own Divide adventure.

Record-breaking snowpack along stretches of the northern half of the course have forced some detours for the first time ever, meaning that no course records can be set this year. Even with the detours, there will be more snow than any Divide racing has ever seen. Flood potential is high in many areas between Banff and northern Colorado, and fire danger is extreme along the drought-stricken New Mexico stretch of the route. It's going to be an interesting race - that can be guaranteed. Even though my primary goal for this year was to challenge Matthew Lee's record and now that won't be realized, I'm still quite excited for the race. We'll see how lady luck treats me along the way.

The TD rig, gear, and a friendly cottonwood*

You can follow the weeks-long racing action using the GPS tracking provided by Trackleaders on the leaderboard of the Tour Divide website, and there will most definitely be some discussion and commentary here and here. For a bit more insight into my goals, gear, and thoughts on the race, keep your eyes on the Outside blog for an upcoming interview.

I must thank Salsa Cycles, University Bikes in Boulder, Pearl Izumi, Cane Creek, White Brothers, Revelate Designs, LaceMine29, and SRAM for the outstanding support they've been providing this year. I've truly enjoyed working with each of these companies and the unparalleled products and support they provide, and that's why almost all of them have been personal sponsors since I got into the twisted world of ultraendurance mountain biking.


Following the Divide, the pedaling continues as filming for The Path begins. Hopefully I'll still be able to ride at that point, but fortunately, I was able to convince Mike D that I'll need at least a few days to recover. So don't expect to see many updates here this summer - it's going to be a whirlwind, and for the first time in years, I'm essentially going to be sans computer/interweb for a couple months!

And one last photo - a partially finished prototype folding snowshoe. Why are there no companies out there making folding snowshoes?

With a bit more fabric, could this possibly work?

* I predict that this will be the most viewed photo on my blog. Routinely it's a tight race between photos of Caroline and photos of my bikes, but everyone wants to see TD bike setups, (as evidenced by the search phrase "tour divide bike setup" bringing many visitors to these pages) so I have a feeling that this time the bike will win out over the beautiful lady. The internet is a funny place.

Tranquilo

This past weekend, Caroline and I headed out on one last bikepacking trip before leaving for the grand adventure that will be the 2011 Tour Divide. We opted to stay close to home, spending our precious time in the saddle rather than behind a windshield. It was, as always, good to make a few minor adjustments to gear selection, bike setup, component adjustment, and so on. My legs felt like they had finally recovered from drilling it on the Kokopelli Trail.


A beautiful evening and a warm first night was a nice change after so many chilly, snowy bikepacking trips in the past few months. That was all about to change, though, as we decided to climb Trail Ridge Road to the end of what was opened so far. The Park Service has struggled to get the road opened up this year due to record snow on the continental divide. So we climbed for 12 miles into a road through thick fog filling the void between two walls of snow. The number of Memorial Day drivers heading up the dead-end, fogged-in road was astounding. I think there was more traffic on that climb than any I've ridden in several years!


A chilly descent was followed by a quick, warm meal in town before it began raining. After a day of seemingly endless climbing, we quickly logged 30 effortless miles, but with all the canyons filled with no tresspassing signs and private residences, finding a dry place to sleep out of the rain was an unexpected challenge.


We stopped at a picnic area to fix a sliced sidewall (from pavement riding?!), found nowhere dry to sleep, and continued descending. Darkness fell, the rain picked up, and we rode on. I thought of an open space park that might work...we rode up the muddy entrance road, past 'day use only' signs, found a nice deserted out building, only to realize that the park ranger lived in the house just a few hundred meters away. We continued on, failing to find any dry spots in the next tiny town. The rain let up, we stopped to eat, and then big drops started falling with the greatest intensity yet!


It dawned on me that there was a school 8 miles down the road. With new motivation, we quickly pounded out some more pavement miles and soon had a dry place to sit down, cook up some dinner, change out of damp clothes, and stretch out.


A few minutes after dozing off, a hissing sound awoke me with an instant sense of alarm. Sprinklers! Luckily, they were at the end of the building. I jumped out of my sleeping bag and searched out the nearest two sprinkler heads and hid them beneath my empty handlebar bag and the hood from my jacket, each weighted down with a pair of shoes. Caroline never even awoke enough to realize how close we came to a miserable awakening!

Sunday morning brought more drizzle, but the clouds gradually broke up, revealing a very intense sun. We rode pavement back home as my mind wandered to the Tour Divide course, thinking about the dozen heavily snowed-in passes, the severely dry conditions in New Mexico that are resulting in entire National Forest districts being closed to all access, the flooding rivers in Montana and Wyoming. In a world of contrasts such as these inflicting such an uncontrollable influence on this year's race, it's going to be an adventure just to sit back and watch what happens. Racing is going to be a whole other level of unpredictability, demanding flexibility, mental strength, and, um, snowshoes.

All plans for a run at Matthew Lee's course records flew out the window when it was clear much of the high-altitude course sections in Montana wouldn't be melted out in time. I changed my mind on where to start and settled on a northbound attack, giving the north more time to melt. That plan failed when it became obvious that the mountains and passes of NW Wyoming will be shrouded in a deep, record-breaking snowpack until well into July. Revert to a Banff start and enjoy the company? Settle on the first-ever snow detours to avoid some of these nearly impassable stretches? Delay and start in late summer following the traditional TD course?

Self-reflecting on what drives me to challenge myself to these endeavors reveals no Earth-shattering revelations to help make any such decisions easier. But I realize that no matter how anyone takes on the TD or GDMBR this summer, the adventure will be a huge one. Challenges will differ for everyone and every start date, and each adventure will be unique, unrepeatable, memorable. Sure, one attempting to break such records could wait for ideal conditions, but there's something mentally unsettling to me about this, akin to almost trying to minimize the experience. Then again, any of these ultras are more than long enough to provide ample material for future enjoyment and reflection with even the most perfect luck, conditions, and preparation.


So I sit back in my chair, chuckling at how easy it is for one to become frustrated with the seemingly stochastic means through which the weather gods play out their annual game. But the scientist in me just grins, quietly reminding me that it was obvious in December that this wasn't going to be any ordinary spring. Take it as it comes, for a life without uncontrollable variability would be rather dull, no?

Borrowing a term used all too frequently by the famous cyclists who find themselves implicated in doping scandals, I find myself tranquilo with a week and change before the Grand Depart from Banff. It's going to be a memorable June, worlds apart in so many ways from my June of two years ago.