Looks like our leading quartet will get to Whitefish just in time for dinner.  Piggyback BBQ?  It's right on the route.  Fuel up to motor the flat section south of town!

Looks like the leaders are now traversing Whitefish Divide.  I understand that since last year a lot of the downed timber in all the avalanche chutes there (look at the satellite view and you can see them) has beed cut out so there will be less bike carrying through all the downed trees and piled snow.  That along with somewhat less snow this year should help the pace stay high.  Looking forward to reports/photos from that stretch.

Amazing how much faster this year is, overall.  Shows, among other things, how much affect the weather can have.  We were all pretty beaten down by the rain/snow and cold by the end of day one last year (or week one).  Everyone was soaked the whole time.  Glad to see that it looks like a pretty good forecast for the next few days so there's a chance for everyone to ride to their potential and stop when/where they want, rather than having hypothermia avoidance factor into the decision.  Aside from possible t-storms it looks like clear sailing for a while. 

Wishing joy, safety and the best of luck to all TDR riders.  I hope everyone can embrace the cosmic hilarity of what you're doing, can keep focused on what's around you (and what to do next), and stay right in the the experience.  Glad to see it looks like better weather for the start this year.  Roll easy.

This is a very important tip for aspiring TDR racers that seems to be overlooked.  One thing to keep in mind while preparing for this race is what you'll do after you finish, wherever that happens to be, but especially if you make it all or most of the way.  We spend so much mental and physical energy getting ready to do the thing but, if these posts are any indication, little if any time thinking about how to recover from it, both mentally and physically.  That's how it was for me.  This isn't a typical adventure race that might last from a few days up to a week.  It's usually at least three weeks of continual physical and mental grind-down.  Given the fact that this event is front and center of our cycling lives for a year or more in many cases, and that the load put on brain and body is greater than anything most of us have attempted, it should be no surprise that what happens to you after you (hopefully) ride up to that gate at AW will be unpredictable.  Suddenly, the constant load placed on you is swept away.  All of a sudden, the one task that has dominated your focus is replaced by a kind of vacuum.  How your physiology and psychology reacts to that sudden change can be profound.  For my 2014 Divide Race I give myself an A+ for preparation, an A for the event itself and an F for planning my recovery from it.  All I could think of was how to do the event as effectively as possible, but not how I was going to taper off from it or what would fill that void.  No surprise then, that after three weeks I still wasn't feeling particularly recovered, physically, and that my mental side had started to slip sideways.  All the months or even years of build-up, then the thrill of actually doing the thing, then - BAM!, the bottom just drops out.  Your mind and body probably won't respond well to that shock, any better than they would if you were to do the TDR without any preparation.  Don't get blindsided by this part of the process.

So preparation tip offering #3 (after #1- perfect your bike fit and, #2 embrace the positive side of this event at all times) is to prepare not only for the event, but for your post-event recovery.  It's not just a matter of resting.  Ending this thing is a big comedown, no matter what the circumstances and no matter how thrilled you are with your results.  It needs to be as gentle a landing as you can manage, not like you've fallen off of a skyscraper.  My old skydiving instructor used to say "falling never hurt anybody, it's hitting the ground that hurts". Mike Hall probably could add some wisdom here, having spoken openly about his mental relationship to this kind of event and the ups/downs that can come with it.  He's certainly as qualified as anyone I know of.  So it's probably a good idea to have a post TDR cycling plan in place (other easy rides/events) and something important to engage you mentally (an important project of some kind).  I knew that doing this would kick my ass in all kinds of new ways and it certainly did.  I just wasn't prepared for some of them.  In 2016 I'll work that into the plan.  For you 2015ers there's still time to sort this out.  Good luck.

Peace

Both Marshal's and Bob's points make a lot of sense.  Like Marshal says, the nuances of "what gets you there the fastest" are infinite.  We're all different and you can't assume how your body/mind will respond to 3+ weeks of this thing (until you've done it) so some self-reflection (as Bob suggests) is in order.  I tend toward the drooling, pink-line-slave, too-shelled-to-read-a-map-coherently-yet-deliriously-happy-about-everything end of things.  That's not everyone, of course, and it's important to take a good self-inventory for everything connected with this.  Weight, for example, can be good or bad.  Do you sleep well enough in a bivy or do you need a larger volume shelter to really sleep soundly enough?  Can you sleep flopped down in the dirt among the empty liquor bottles on the side of the road, or do you need a roof over your head regularly to feel any sense of recovery?  If you've got your gear so pared down that your lack of comfort is an additional source of stress, you're ultimately not going to go faster, and definitely won't enjoy the process as much.  But if you can sleep anywhere, anytime and zip-tying your derailleur together for the next 100-plus miles doesn't stress you much, you probably will fly (at least until it breaks again).  Component choices should reflect your intentions and risk tolerance.  I had a heavy internal hub that I never thought about once and never needed any adjustment and so gave me peace of mind, and was certainly not making me climb faster, but I never had to stop to deal with it, while some others had lightweight drivetrains that were creaking and failing, leading to many DNFs and/or a lot of stress.  But if they didn't break, they were definitely faster.  I just did what I felt I needed to do.  There's no "right" way, except the one that gives you confidence and is reasonably compact and reliable for the job.  

It's good to have a mix of power sources, especially for lights, in case either a) you run out of batteries or b) your charging system goes bad (or you forget to plug something in which is what tired people will tend to do).  Both are distinct possibilities.  Dynamos are great but don't charge much or at all when you're climbing, plus you need to have a wheel built around that hub.  Batteries are heavy (or expensive = lithium), take up space and need to be disposed of properly.  The bigger capacity rechargeables seem good as long as their waterproof and rugged.  Both have their (dis-)advantages.  If you're running a dynamo, consider carefully how the charger is positioned.  Water dripping into a connection can short it, and muck constantly spraying up from the front tire (what I discovered happening on day 3 last year) can do the same thing.  That said, I love my Schmidt Son dynamo as it's bomb proof and very pretty.  A solar charger wouldn't have been a good choice last year as we didn't see any sun at all until day 6 and those are slow under the best conditions.  I've used them on cross country trips and experienced various reliability issues as well.  Now I just use mine in a window in my house to recharge batteries for things.  

Regarding Jefe, watch out this year.  If the weather holds, and his run is anything like last year, he could well be in AW in record time.  Last year was a really slow year with all the rain, snowpack and avalanche debris and beat us all down pretty badly.  For perspective, in 2013 my Freeze Thaw teammate Brett Simpson finished 14th in a little over 20 days.  Last year I finished 15th in a little over 23, almost three whole days slower.  Results in this thing are pretty condition-dependent, especially in the first week when we all have similar weather.  Next year (when I'm planning another run) it may be totally different.  If he gets good weather and some luck, Jefe will have a good chance of breaking 15 days.  But as he points out, there's something waaay bigger going on with this show than the results.  It just stays in your marrow somehow.  Rock it, sir.  We'll be cheering you on, either from home or somewhere way behind you.

All excellent points, folks.  So it's really important to have spent enough hours on the setup to find out how your body reacts.  It shouldn't take more than, say, 2 days of 12+ hours of pedaling (probably less) to discover most of the signs that signal serious issues on the horizon.  This should be part of training anyway as soon as you're ready for it.  If you hear your body barking at you in some way besides general fatigue, something needs to be adjusted.  And ditto on the cleat position.  Classic "souple" pedaling with lots of ankle flex isn't what's desired here.  Also, this rearward position will tend to automatically ensure you're using more of the backside of your stroke when you're tired, overcoming the tendency to mash when you're smoked with fatigue.  When you mash, all your leverage is focused in your quads and lower calf.  The rearward cleat position can neutralize that a bit.  But you've got to get accustomed to it.  Among other aftereffects of doing the TD was my humorous and sometimes painful (there are lots of rocks in central PA) inability to clip in since I'd sort of forgotten where my cleats were on the bottom of the shoe once I moved them back to the "usual" position.

Quick thought about bike fit.  Even a professional fitter doesn't know the hundred little idiosyncrasies of your body and how it moves.  So while they'll get you close, or maybe even spot on if you're lucky, you still have to spend a lot of hours monitoring what's going on and making the little adjustments needed.  For example, I found during training for this that literally one degree of saddle tilt made all the difference between heaven and eventually getting chafed in a certain spot by the end of the day.  Attention and patience with this will save your butt.  And maybe your TD.

I like your spirit,  pbarsom!

Thanks, Ranger.  I'm honored.

Well, in the interest of full disclosure, ya know?  I left that in there, vainly hoping that people would choose to ask me about my drivetrain or something instead.  Oh, well.  At any rate, once I got sick around Silverthorne that little medicinal expedient more than proved its value.  I did say there were a lot of things packed away, right?  Sometimes I had an extra chapstick in there, too, if I'm really gonna come clean about it.  Didn't I mention that the mental part was second to a pain-free bike?   

But seriously, aside from having a bike that fit me like part of my own body, the thing that helped the most was keeping a sense of hilarity about the whole thing (necessary long, long before Colorado even seemed a possibility, pretty much from the start in the cold rain and snow in Banff).  At the end of the day there were so many things about this event that I could only laugh at, and did.  Out loud, every day. From grappling, half-prone, completely covered in mud, dragging and carrying my loaded bike up that ridiculously steep Flathead connector trail, basically an oozing, cascading slime-fall after two straight days of solid downpour, to post-holing through the tops of trees in the rain on Richmond Peak's crazy side slope trail, to hitting mud so gluey and tenacious that it turns your bike into a 100-pound, solid mass of immobile glop in 60 seconds, the only solution is to embrace the complete absurdity of the whole thing and laugh about it.  So tip #2 is: Remember that this is a ludicrous yet perfect reality that you're experiencing when doing this race.  It's insane, and at the same time, the most natural and sane thing in the world.  It's just exactly and only what it is and it doesn't care about you or your opinion of it.  And that's just fine.  You're only doing one thing: riding a bike through a vast wilderness as beautiful as any in the world, and doing it as fast and efficiently as you can.  Everything you're doing is to serve that one purpose, eating, sleeping, planning, everything.  Honor the challenge and let it engulf you.  It's a gift (that, after all, you asked for).  Now, of course, this is a stretch when you realize that you've got 20 miles of food left and 60 miles to go to the next resupply, assuming that it's even open.  But that's got its own wry humor in a way.  Besides, what's your option? 

As promised, here's a link to my gear list from last year.  Amazing how many bits there are in these lists. 

http://pbarsom.blogspot.com/2015/03/2014-tour-divide-gear-list.html

Happy reading.

Hi All

After a smooth TDR run in 2014 (except having a nasty cold for the last ten days) I'm checking this year's threads with interest.  What a difference in how they seem post-TDR compared to before I'd done it.  A lot of the same topics, obviously: bears, batteries, etc. and mostly good advice, though, like most of you my interests gravitated toward my fears a bit.  I spent a lot of time combing this forum last winter and learned a lot.  So in gratitude for the many helpful things gleaned that way I'll likely post a couple of things including a gear list (I'd change very little, actually) and a list of tips for doing it with a minimum of drama.  I'm pretty convinced of a few things that made it better for me than most others and a few that would have made it even better still, had I known.  My 2014 TDR was charmed perhaps, except for illness, not a flat - nothing!, but I think there are a lot of things that are obvious in hindsight that I don't see much talk about yet this year.  For starters, get your saddle and bike position dialed exactly.  Make NO compromises on this.  I'm no more immune to saddle, knee, back, ankle issues, etc. than anybody else but had zero issues of any kind.  My only complaint was that first awful twenty seconds of pulling that cold, damp, disgusting chamois onto my backside in the pre-dawn darkness every morning.  So make sure you can pedal 10+ hours on that seat with no pain for days.  And there's a big difference between 7 hours and 12+.  If you can get this part dialed, all the rest is relatively easy.  The mental part is a close second.  More on that later.  Best of luck to each of you this year.  Looks like Whitefish Divide won't be the hilarious scramble we navigated last year so be thankful for that.  Hopefully not as much snowpack, cold and rain, either.  A good attitude, some luck, and thoughtful planning will let you do your best at this.  If you haven't done it before, it's a pretty transformative event.  

Peace

Paul Barsom here, just back home after a week of recovery/vacation in Silver City and Tucson with my bride of 30 years (we were married in Tucson and hadn't been there together since shortly after).  A sweet ending to an amazing experience.  I've finally gotten a chance to read through the discussion board, hear the call-ins and study the Trackleaders site.  Lots of thoughts about this event but I'll try to be as brief and circumspect as possible (not very, I'm afraid).

First, I want to thank all those involved with coordinating all aspects of this, especially Matt.  Finding the delicate balance between nurturing a "grassroots" event and keeping everything from disintegrating into chaos is nearly impossible, but finding that balance is what he's doing, and simply out of passion for the spirit of the event.  I feel fortunate to know such people.  This also includes Joe Polk, Crazy Larry, and many others, all the way to Dave, the janitor at the Calgary airport who was so supportive of me while I assembled my bike in the baggage claim area. 

I'm grateful for having had the chance to do this.  That feeling has continued unabated from long before arriving in Banff up to this moment and will continue.  Even when I became ill outside of Silverthorne and could hardly pedal the bike for a few days I felt lucky to be able to be riding on this gorgeous route, knowing I was under the watchful eye of friends, family, and the general TDR community.  It was an inspiring experience I'm fortunate to have had. Few people have the opportunity, especially the resources, to get to do this.  That was uppermost in my mind, even while climbing with my mouth hanging agape and only able to keep one eye open because of exhaustion.  I was also rarely lucky in having no serious mechanical/physical/mental/weather issues of any kind during the event, aside from the mess of the first week which we all shared.  While so many riders around me were nursing various afflictions through the race, my only issue was a head cold that plugged my sinuses for the last 9 days.  Unpleasant and tiring, sure, but manageable once I learned how to eat/drink/breathe/ride at 10k+ feet without fainting.  Nothing like the severe problems that so many of my fellow racers experienced. 

I learned a lot about riding from my fellow racers, despite my considerable experience as a mountain biker.  Just following the lines of the dozen or so riders ahead of me, first in the mud, then in the dust, I acquired new insights, not to mention the in-person information gleaned when I rode with them during the first two weeks, before becoming ill.  It was a privilege to ride with such talented, knowledgeable, and pleasant people.  In true MTB spirit, there was no sense that we were "competing", serious competitors though we were.

There is a lot of discussion this year, it turns out, about the ethics of this kind of racing, what un-supported and self-supported mean in the context of such an epic event, especially regarding re-supply.  Perhaps there might need to be some clarification as to what "commercial" means.  The opportunities to purchase food, etc. are various and there is no easy clarity distinguishing among different vendors and the situations that place them into, or keep them out of our paths on-route.  The following rule seems pretty clear to me.

"Any services utilized must always be commercially available to all challengers and not pre-arranged[1]. No private resupply, no private lodging."

The lodging part is clear.  What constitutes a commercial transaction, though, is tricky.  I was offered food, usually gratis, on several occasions by people on the route not associated with the TDR.  I refused all but one but did insist on paying for it, as it would have been available to any rider at my location and the transaction was therefore a "commercial" one.  I didn't actually need the food at the time but it seemed like an intelligent choice in case of a possible breakdown or other delay along what was going to be a pretty empty stretch.  This seemed like smart self-support to me, rather than a breach of the rules.  Any rider might have encountered this kind of opportunity, depending on locating and timing, just as they might any other along the route.  For some, not being at Canyon Plaza when the stand is open meant that opportunity wasn't available to them, to their detriment.  Does that mean that others shouldn't use the resource?  Clearly that's not the intention.  I think the emphasis of that rule is on "not pre-arranged" and "no private resupply".  Not all opportunities are equal along the route, of course, as those who get stuck in the mud on the same road that others easily traversed can attest.  I'll leave it to smarter people that I to sort all this out. 

I think I was the last person to see Andreas Fassbender before his accident out in the Divide Basin.  We stopped and chatted for a while as he told me of this, his second attempt to ride the GDMBR, this time NOBO, having crashed out of his previous SOBO attempt several years before.  The day before I had burped a lot of air out of my front tire on a descent and had just then rimmed-out crossing a cattle guard as Andreas came into view.  As we talked I squeezed the tire and mentioned I needed to put some air in it.  He immediately offered me his pump.  I had mine, of course, and could have refused.  But would I turn down such a kind offer from a venerable veteran of the route?  No.  It was an honor to use his pump.  It seemed to me more ethical to accept.

Finally, I want to congratulate every racer who started this event.  Just getting prepared enough to begin this is an accomplishment, and many who scratched did so through circumstances they couldn't control, despite meticulous preparation.  That I managed to finish in about the time I set as a goal I attribute as much to luck as to preparation and planning.  I'm not intending to do this event again, at least not at the moment.  But I wouldn't trade the experience of having done it for anything.  Like so many others, I feel transformed by it and will live life a little differently as a result.

With much gratitude,

Paul Barsom