Tour Divide

Adding some links
Trackleaders online race tracking
http://trackleaders.com/tourdivide15

BikePacking.net forum thread
http://www.bikepacking.net/forum/ultra-racing/tour-divide-2015-race-discussion-thread/msg74272/#new

OP
So I've been training pretty seriously for the past 18months, and am now training really seriously for next year's Tour Divide.

If you don't know anything about it, here's a quote from the site

The Tour Divide challenge is simple: Race the rooftop of North America by mountain bike; travel self-supported along all 2,745 miles of Adventure Cycling Association's Great Divide Mountain Bike Route; keep moving and be moved; exist well outside one's comfort zone in tackling a cross-continent bikepacking odyssey; finish as fast as possible without cracking.

It's almost all off-road, on fire roads, disused jeep tracks and service roads, it has well in excess of 200,000 feet of climbing (everest from sea level seven times!) and is totally unsupported. You can expect any weather from snow, to lightning storms to baking desert heat interspersed with monsoon rains. Regularly 100+ miles between towns/services, you need to know your shit!

I'll be racing, no chance I'll win with the record being 16 days (170 miles per day), but I'm aiming for 20 days or less. You'll be able to follow me online when it's happening, will post the link nearer the time. It all kicks off on the second weekend in June next year.

The route
http://ridewithgps.com/routes/5967072

There's a great movie about it, used to be available on youtube, but it's been taken down. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhrtPyr1KQI

Wish me luck!

Now that sort of post can unhinge a person - especially a person sitting at a desk in the city with the only excitement in the diary a day out to Clacton on Sea with fellow desk drivers. I hope to hell you survive in one piece and well enough to meet your targets whilst still taking time to enjoy the view. Good biking......

I'm sat at a desk, unhinged by my own desire to do this race. Must work....

Wow. I've always dreamt about doing something like this! As I bet, a lot of us have! Good luck! I'd be interested to see your bike set up..

I'll post the bike setup once I get the new frame, which is currently being made. Titanium, carbon fork, 1x10, Revelate bags. As light as possible.

Nice. I guessed as much. Yep put up some pics ASAP. Look forward to it.

wow!

Good luck

Looks like hell.

I'm sure it will be a blast and you'll come back a different person.

Best of luck.

After chatting with a friend who did it this year, it's not the bears I'm worried about. It's the arse blisters, until they pop.

Eww! Best of luck. Look forward to seeing your set up and following your progress. Hope you can avoid the arse blisters!

@Velocio What's up with the RideWithGPS embed? any idea?

@gabes - Your avatar is my exact reaction to the thought of doing this race :-)

Best of luck with it. You certainly seem to have put in a lot of training!

My god I'd love to give something like this a crack. How exactly are you training for it? Your 'beast level' would need to be set to 11 I assume?

What's up with the RideWithGPS embed? any idea?

They only really support http:// properly, they have "partial" support for https://.

You must be accessing over https:// and the choice I have is to give you nothing (as your browser isn't going to let a 3rd party http:// iframe be rendered whilst the page is over SSL), or give you a map that works some of the time (according to whatever features RideWithGPS.com support).

I have no idea why they offer an almost but not quite identical service. The trend of SSL sites is usually that they either don't offer SSL, offer a different thing over SSL, or just offer everything the same. This one is oddly different, perhaps just buggy on their part (even when SSL does work, the route profile doesn't).

I want to see that on a t-shirt : Beast Level = 11

@gabes Good luck with the prep and the actual ride, will be following your progress.

Really wanted to do the Tour Divide in 2015 but don't think fitness or finances are going to allow it at the moment. Was looking more at completion in 25 days though. Would be really interested in getting an idea of the training you're doing and also what you think the costs of it all will be? I'm just in the process of building up a rigid Salsa El Mariachi with Revelate bags.

Think it may have to wait until 2016 for me!

re: Training, I'm riding the mountain bike as much as I can, and doing long rides as often as I can. I did South Downs Double weekend before last, and regularly try to get in 60-100 mile MTB rides, and any overnighters I can fit in too, to practice unloading/sleeping/loading the bike.

From what friends have said, and from reading the Cordillera (series of books with accounts of peoples experiences racing the divide) nothing really prepares you for how massive an undertaking it is. I guess I just need to make sure my ass is like the leather on a brooks saddle. Bike setup is crucial, I had a proper bike fit with Tony Corke, and am awaiting the resulting frame.

I'm also doing races like the BearBones200 (200km, 6000m ascent) non-stop, to get myself more comfortable in that sleep deprived, hallucinatory state.

Whatever I do, Tour Divide is going to fucking hurt, and at times, fucking suck. But the scenery, camaraderie and friendliness of locals will be amazing (hopefully)

In terms of money, I don't really have enough. My mate said you can easily spend £1500 during the race. Plus flights to Calgary and out of San Francisco (visiting friends there after for a couple of weeks) And also an internal flight from El Paso TX/Phoenix AZ to SF.

Then there's the kit. You have to be happy with it all, which means buying things, and not liking them, then buying more. Not cheap.

@Black_Rainbow_Project you riding?

Yeah, I figured after when I opened dev tools in chrome. Thanks. RWGPS isn't exactly the most cutting edge, or well developed site.

Ya I've read the Cordillera and it really does seem like nothing completely prepares you for it. With costs I've tried to calculate kit, flights and spending during the race and you could easily be up to about £5,000 if not more.

The Bear Bones seems like a really good race to test staying awake for the whole distance and testing how the body reacts.

Yep, I did BearBones last year, 20h32m. It was brutal, but brilliant too.

Good luck, can't wait to see how this all works out for you. Got a friend up here who's going to racing it too. Hard to even comprehend the amount of training, effort and mental toughness required to get to the finish!

http://bearbonesbikepacking.co.uk/

After all the shit I copped on the road this year maybe my future is in mtb enduros and bikepacking silliness. OMG all the gear choices?! #brainfried Out.

Hippy, do it. BearBones200 is full this year, but there's always next year.

Or maybe the Highland Trail Race 550. It has about 40 miles of hike-a-bike too.
http://vimeo.com/97765701

Mind you, to enter HT550, you have to have done something else multi-day.