Good info. Thanks!


One more question: How are the bear/animal encounters when camping in the middle of nowhere?
People stringing their food up with ropes/bags when sleeping?

I would say that caution should be exercised. I personally rode until I was within safe range of a town to sleep. Or, I rode until I found a place I could sleep (i.e. I rode to holland lake lodge and stopped an hour early one night because I knew that I wouldn't make it to the next town before I needed to sleep. Also, I ran into a bear half a mile before the lodge. That definitely solidified my decision to stay the night at the lodge!)

If you do decide to sleep, I would go with big time bear protocol. Keep in mind that every little nook and cranny of your gear is going to smell like food. (I.E. Remember that burger you stashed in a jersey pocket for 50 miles? Yeah, your shirt smells like dinner to the bears.)

For the guys that rode the TD, what temp did it get down to at night in the mountains and what did you use for sleeping setups?

Ok if girls respond?
Think the coldest night was at the Holland Lake (Montana) campground, near freezing.  Highest elevation camped was Luder Creek campground before Del Norte (Colorado), 10k ft, temps maybe low 40s. 
REI Minimalist bivy, Western Mountaineering Summerlite (32F), Therm-a-Rest ProLite pad, Sea to Summit drybag.
sr

I lucked out with a room for my night at Holland Lake, so I'm not sure about how cold it was there.

My coldest night was about 60 miles before The Basin. I woke up with the worst shivers of my life every 20 minutes the entire night and my bag was frozen to my bivy in the morning. I had tested my sleep system below freezing before the race and it had worked well. I didn't realize how much weight I would loose, and thus 'insulation' loss, during the race. I ended up buying a wool base layer just after The Basin and I had plenty from there on out.

Sleep system: Western Mountaineering Highlight that I custom sewed into a quilt, custom torso length neo air, backpackinglight.com bivy.

Weight in the stuff sack:1 lb 14.3 oz

i found a thread with most people thinking about $100 a day. anybody else have differing opinions.

$100 a day is pretty minimal....

The best thing to do is vastly overestimate the cost. That way in the heat of the race you can concentrate on eating, riding, and sleeping. Not fearing a budget was a savior for me on day three (one of my tougher days). Because I had a mound of money devoted to the race, I was able to hit the lodge at Hopewell Lake. The digs there weren't cheap but I got tons of five star food (filet mignon anybody??), a warm shower, and some laughs with fellow racers. These were all needed things for me after having the most EPIC BONK of my life.

If I had to make decisions based on cost out there.... Well, that might have been what broke the camel's back.

Do you really get a hotel every night?  That would get extremely expensive doing that.  I can see eating lots of food because you need it but a hotel every night seems excessive.

No, I didn't hit a hotel every night. Out of my 20 days I 'hoteled' it ~9 nights. The 'formula' I gave was a way to get an average cost for the entire trip. Even though I didn't hotel it every night, those extra calculated nights of hotel cost would have off set the extra cost in food that I wasn't anticipating well enough.  (I.E. I figured ~7,000 every day and in reality I ate closer to 15,000 a day.)

(For my personal calorie need, keep in mind that I'm 6'04'', 230.)


When I do the race again, it will probably be a bit cheaper. I'll be racing for keeps and only sleeping inside if I HAVE to because of weather. Even then, I'll likely not sleep inside unless I am fearing hypothermia.(A non-likely event in the TD)

The hard part about budgeting is that it varies greatly. Some days I staying in a hotel and stopped for my one daily "hot meal". Those days could be ~250. (Especially in Breck where the hotels are really expensive!) Other days I only spent ~75 on food (gas station food is expensive like crazy). 

If you need to be conservative in your calculations (i.e. you have a tight budget); I would say ~75 for a hotel every night, eight meals a day (because you WILL need that much), and lots of bike parts.

Better yet, save crap loads of money and act like it doesn't exist. I picked this up from Jill and it was definitely a huge mental edge.

I would say as far as training:

Treat it like a regular season with four training goals in mind:
-Endurance
-Climbing
-Riding with weight (this cannot be under estimated)
-Gear (Yes, I actually counted the hours I spent working on gear as training)

Endurance: This sounds simple enough but you would be surprised at the amount of people that showed up in Banff who hadn't ever done a sub 24 hour outing (a sub24 is an overnighter that lasts less than 24 hours). You must ride your bike and condition your tendons and joints to handle the stress. The longest ride I did was a three day trip on a fully loaded bike. Worth every revolution of the cranks.

Climbing: This is simple, just ride your bike uphill. Intervals work well. Long sustained tempo works well. Heck anything you do with your front tire pointed skyward works well.

Riding with weight: I got this from a very well known endurance racer. It is important to train with weight. Starting in January before the divide I rode with weight on my bike nearly every time I was out. I even raced with weight. You MUST condition your tendons and joints to handle the requisite stresses of powering a loaded bike (Don't forget to ride with lots of water, that stuff is HEAVY!). Even with my uber light kit, I was still at about 32 pound. An UNREAL amount of stress compared to my ~19 pound XC race machine!

Gear: Gear. Gear. GEAR! I have an excel spread sheet with weights and packed location of all my gear. I used it, modified it, tried it out again, and re-modified it. If I couldn't buy it, I rented a sewing machine and taught myself how to make it. In Banff I was yet again surprised as most people didn't have their 'final pack list' done the day before the start, unbelievable! Trust me when I say I was so thankful for all the work I did with gear leading up to the race. I guarantee I saved ~2 days off my race time just by having a light, well thought out, and trail proven kit from day one.

One other gem that I read from JP once; you don't want to go into the race mentally burnt out. For me that means I was a little over weight (~15 pounds) at the start of the race. Dieting is pretty mentally taxing for me. So, I choose to give myself a break in that arena. It paid off though. I was racing hard right out of the gate and I stayed that way until the end. Other riders had a much harder time because they were over cooked before the race even started.

In the end, Divide training really is pretty simple. Like I read from Matthew Lee somewhere on these boards, you just have to put in the miles.

Feel free to check out my blog. I have lots of tour divide stuff on there, including my daily journal entries from the race. (I'm almost done blogging the whole thing!)

beyondthebadgeblog.blogspot.com

it will be another intersting day at the end of the year when Matt puts up next years challengers, TD starters and ITT. how many do you think, more or less then last?

More of both. The sport of ultra-endurance cycling (mountain, road, and snow) is growing at a phenomenal rate at this point. I think that the TD will continue to reflect this growth in both the Grand Depart and the ITT.

I would venture to guess that the Grand Depart will grow at a faster rate than the ITT though. The Grand Depart takes guts but an ITT takes a whole 'nother level of b@lls that VERY few people have.

But why does the tourdivide.org site not mention any times/rankings for 2011. Just pretend 2011 never happened?

I'm not sure why the times for '11 aren't listed YET. I would guess that Matthew Lee has a lot going on in life right now (what with the filming of The Path and the birth of his second child) and he will get to it when he can.

Also this year had three different courses; 1) The original course with the snow reroutes, 2) The snow reroute course with a short water rereoute through a town (I can't remember the name but it has a sign that says "Welcome to such-and-such, population 50, dogs 100".), and 3) The snow reroute, with the water reroute, and fire reroute for a forrest fire that broke out between Abiquiu and Cuba mid race (I think only the first 15 or so riders made it through before the park was closed).

As you can see, coming up with some sort of defined, sorted, and ranked field seems pretty impossible.

The E-trex is pretty much to go-to-gold-standard for the TD. It is the only unit I haven't ever heard a bike packer complain about. I personally have used the Delorme units and while nice, they weren't as awesome as the garmin.

I thought the garmin was stellar on the TD this year. I would use it time and time again.

Caroline and Jefe, while phenomenal in their performance this year, will not have recorded times under the all time GC classification. The old ss and female records still stand. Times are only counted for the GC if the route is completed in it's entirety.

Don't forget about JP's crazy mad skills and new overall record from this year(fall ITT)!

I started the Tour Divide this year with a completely new build that I had ridden on two short rides and one 140 mile shake down race. I basically started with a totally new ride that I put miles on until it was "just broken in enough".

I think it is the second Friday of June....

It's mostly a condition/rider/weather/terrain dependent issue.

For example, I raced the whole divide this year on one pair of pads (which I need to replace come to think of it). But, I descend pretty well and use the breaks sparingly, and it was a pretty dry year out there. Other racers I have talked with went through several pairs of pads on the divide due to mud, water, and a brake heavy riding technique.

Bottom line, better safe than sorry... especially given how light they are.

Same goes with a few other magical parts in my kit; shifter cable, spare cage bolts, and derailleur hanger.

These lights are pretty sweet too.

http://www.ledlenser.com/product/h7

Just curious.  Why would you need extra brake pads?

Those changes in temp can wreak havoc on brake pads.

Not to mention, there is no way you can predict if you will need a new pair out there......

I would agree that the EOS was minimal at best. It was enough but BARELY. Next time I'll bring a bit more lumen-age so that I can ride at night when the heat comes out to play.

Tire pressure will need to change frequently. Depending on water/food load. I even had to change it up as the race progressed because I lost a ton of body fat. You would be surprised how much 25 pounds changes your needs in the tire pressure department.

I don't blame him, that section is freaking brutal. I passed out twice on the bike (from the heat) and woke up in the middle of that white-hot-as-h@ll-gravel-sand.

115 degrees indeed!

Good on him for even attempting it in the heat they are having this year.

Good luck to all the other ITTer's out there this summer and fall!

Don't worry. I'll do a few posts about gear. My sleep system deserves it's own post alone!

That link works.... AWESOME!