EPISODE 1 THE ROUTE
Is about 3 years, I am thinking about participating in the legendary tour divide/great divide classic, and normally people use this time planning and setting all the details.
I am now 1 month ahead of my flight to Calgary and this is the current situation:
1 – my new bike is in Lipsia, Germany
2 – I have no idea about the final setting (is everything packed in and IKEA box)
3 – I feel I have to train a bit more
Plus, I am leaving my actual job, starting my own design company and searching for a new house / city. Ok, as always, I have too many irons in the fire.
Maybe writing down here this short memo can help me to organize an efficient checklist of what I have to do.
Better start with the base, the route. The Tour Divide Mountain Bike Race 2022 will start in Banff Alberta, Canada June 10th at 8am, I exceptionally book a flight 3 days before so I am quite confident to arrive on time.
Very important, and the only updated page of the official website since 1993, are the rules, if you want to participate in the future have a look here: link
From here I will start the 4.300 km ride that hopefully will bring me to Antilope Wells, New Mexico. I am using Komoot to schedule the race and you can find here a first draft of the day by day tracks link
I made an amazing Excel with all the major cities, the distance between the resupply points and valuable information like BEAR! You can enjoy it, plus an incredible mix of english/italian narrative here: link
My idea is to ride at least 230 km per day, enjoying as much as possible the place, sunset, sunrise etc. dealing with all the different kind of pain after the third day of race.
I talked with several guys who ride the Divide before, and I tried to figured out the main difficulties: technical parts, terrain typologies, lack of resupply points etc.
Seems like everybody have a different memory about what happened, a sort of psychological trauma, except for the very general insight, which is “Montana bear, after Colorado easy ride”. Ok, let’s see, I never saw a bear, I never rode in Colorado, and I am really curious about it.
My general understanding based evidence I collect are:
Canada will be a shot generous gravel roads
Montana tough and some technical segments
Idaho – Wyoming generous gravel roads rocks + desert
Colorado maybe some technical segments snow + mud
New Mexico generous gravel roads + desert lack of water
Anxiety is growing, and my first thought waking up in the morning is what the hell I am doing. But anxiety is also good, make you nervous but helps put things together.