A few months ago I surprised both Kurt and myself on a growing desire to race the Tour Divide again. I remember finishing last year and loving the experience but wondering when I could get back to trail running. I continued to run throughout the summer, fall and winter, and then we moved to Prescott in early January. There were so many new trails that I wanted to explore and it was a lot faster to explore by bike than running, so I quickly phased out running and increased the time I spent on the bike. In late March I noticed my biking fitness was quickly coming back so I started pondering racing the Divide again.
Looking out over Swan Lake in west-central Montana
I loved hearing Kurt’s stories from last year’s race, because they were so different than mine. He finished in under 16 days and I finished in 22.5 days. He averaged 170 miles per day, and I average 120. He averaged 4 hours a sleep a night, and I averaged 7 hours of sleep. He did not use a backpack, and I had one of the biggest backpacks. He pushed his body to the limit, and I finished wondering how much faster I could have gone. We each had such great experiences, but I wondered what it would be like to share the experience with him on a tandem. What would it be like to see the same things, to ride bigger miles, sleep little, and ride late into the night, together every mile of the route? This will be an adventure that I couldn’t pass up thanks to Salsa, White Brothers and Revelate Designs. I know Kurt is going to remind me every day that this was my idea and I’m sure I’ll be hating my idea at some point every day.
At Antelope Wells last year
I feel just as scared as last year starting the race because this year’s experience will be much different. I hope this year I’ll finish without anything worse than a broken rib and torn thumb ligament and good memories. I also hope I don’t do stupid things like carry a one pound bag of sausage all the way from Montana to Silver City, NM and end up not eating any of it. Well, I know Kurt would not let me do anything like that.
Last week Kurt and I were
searching for photos to send in for the tracking page avatar photos. He thought it would be a brilliant idea to
send in horrible looking photos of ourselves. I did not like that idea so much
but decided to play along. I will leave you with these horrible looking photos
of ourselves because this is pretty much what we will be looking like every day
in the Tour Divide.
Luckily, Nessie is always smiling
