Does anyone have a link to snow depth (current and historical) for the passes in Montana and Colorado?

Bob

From just personally looking around, snow east of the Divide is pretty minimal - there's maybe a foot of packed, icy snow at 10,600 feet, on the East side of Mt. Evans today, there's going to be more on the North faces. This is relatively normal, as the front range and foothills (especially) climate is very dry. Snow west of the Divide is a whole different story - if you've ever gone West on I-70 through the Eisenhower tunnel, you'll always notice this incredible change.. When I talk to locals, the word, "dumping" is used and many of the ski resorts are looking forward to a long Spring season. Snow is extensively tied to the local economy, so it may be wishful thinking on everyone's part. I'll be in Breckenridge on Monday to see what's going on.

Justin Simoni (I don't know him either, but we are talking about the Colorado list here), [...]

So, my list of people that I'm rooting for has been trimmed down to just 74 southbounders and 8 northbounders. GO TEAM!

Promise not to disappoint! Feeling really strong myself, as training is going well - happy there's 90-something more days before the Grand Départ. The weather in CO has been incredible, which doesn't hurt! I can't say I'm going for the win, but making it in ~21 days is the goal.

I had a great Sunday! Rode a mountain bike for the first time, as an adult! No foolin'!

Nice! The "Around Africa" video reminds me of Brian Vernor's (Which many of you are hopefully familiar with) film about racing Africa:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/7NpubbAzKSY" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/7NpubbAzKSY</a>

(I'll start this off by saying I'm a rookie, but)

I've started to post my "training" regime here - I'll post a weekly breakdown of what I've done, plus any interesting rides a little more in full. Been training in earnest for a good two months, starting from a good base of rides, hiking and gym time. I'm 180-something lbs. and could afford to lose around 15lbs, but I doubt it'll come off.

Depending on  what bikes are available to me, what the weather is, how I'm feeling, what I'm feeling like doing and what other resources are available (weather, friends what to go on a ride, a car is available to go into the mountains, someone dares me to do something), I'm keeping things very flexible, with also the hopes that I don't get dead BORED of just cranking out miles on a bike. Which I don't want to do. I get bored easily and would rather die than do the same workout twice in a row.

I've found I've been spending ~30 hours/week on, I guess you'd say, "training", but I'm trying not to record, chart, graph and take too much data points down on what I'm doing, except just mileage, as there's too many variables in effect: I can go faster and farther with less time taken on my fair-weather road bike, than I can on my touring rig, haulin' a trailer. My one goal is to maintain a constant state of movement. Even on busy days, where I have things to, you know, DO, I'll always take a bike and trailor to do my errands and kill two birds with one stone. I don't own a car and even, "rest" days sees me doing some leisurely miles through the greater downtown Denver area. I wouldn't have it any other way.

A typical week is something like this:

Sun:   Rest
Mon:   Ride 30-50 miles
Tue:    Ride 30-50 miles
Wed:   Ride Gym, maybe ride 30 miles, run a few miles,
Thur:   Rest?
Friday: Ride 30-50 miles
Sat:     Long ride > 100 miles, or full day hiking

No week is ever typical. This week, Sun/Mon were rest days from not sleeping for the past week and Tue. Was a 7 hour ride, 9 hour hike, Wed, I barely got up out of bed and today (Thur), I'll take a small recovery ride and figure out what zany thing I'll do Fri or Sat. Probably a ~120 mile ride in the mountains if the weather holds, or go snowshoeing with a loaded pack all day in RMNP. If I had the equipment, I'd be doing winter ascents of the 14ers around me.

Gym time is a little difficult to describe and probably will go away, once the weather gets better here. I'll typically run a few miles to the gym, and then (heh) warm up on the rowing machine. Most of my work targets the core or is plyometric/explosive in nature. When I use weights (instead of just my body) it's always very low.  Try not to take more than 45 minutes of actual working out (not including rest), until I finish, I do another round of the rowing machine and run home. All told, it could be around 3-5 hours, before I hit the shower.

The other thing to mention, I don't have my Tour Divide Bike yet - I just can't afford one, yet. Once I do and the weather is nice, it's really just going to be a lot of riding, with as many bikes I can get a hold of, doing as many types of riding that I can, as much I see fit. I'm slightly worried that my being green in mountain biking will play a part in the hardships I face at the Tour Divide, but I'm also not 2 hours away from the route and I can go and recon it, anytime I can find a ride. Even now, I can probably snowshoe some of it, just to get the cues in my head.

Next month, I'll probably also join the local randoneurs and do some brevets, etc. I may tag along with my roommate to some crits and put myself in some Cat 5 races, just to get acquainted with riding with a bunch of roadies in tight corners. Just anything I can do to keep it fresh, mix it up, keep having fun and not have it feel like this boring burden. Camping in less than perfect conditions is the least of my worries. I can fall asleep in, on or around anything and anywhere. Love the cold and love to be dirty! I can also literally eat anything.

Damn, that just feeds my paranoia!

Well, it's an Adventure Race, just go out and have an Adventure. If nothing goes wrong, well, that certainly a boring 2700+ miles, no in'it?

airline reservations made. talk about nervous!!

Nice! You've literally, "Bought the ticket"

But I hope you 2011'ers don't take yourselves so damn serious[...]

No way prepare for war!

I personally think if challengers would simply refuse to motel it, many many of the purity dilemmas will be eliminated.

Put in my that, uh, camp. Bivvying keeps the soul honest. Keep things simple, including the trip's bill.

Chris Kostman would disagree...

I've done a fair bit of research on how to train for ultra events and Chris does have a good point. One point to remember is different people will react to different training in different ways. This leads to the person doing the training themselves finding out what works best for them.

BUT (and this is a big but). Mr. Kostman most likely had years of previous endurance training under his belt, before the lacking-of-long-miles training for the RAAM. Having exactly what that sort of data is would be sort of interesting.

Chris, in this article has some amazingly great points, though, some that I follow myself, most especially diversity in training. I think what a lot of people are hinting at in this thread, along with Mr. Kostman is high quality, "short" training is always better than mindless, "long" training.

I'm having trouble with this, as well, but I live smack dab in the middle of the TD course (almost), so I may hitch a ride from a friend one way - and the other. There's a chance my band will be on a Pacific Coast tour in late May/early June, which is a logistical nightmare for me timing-wise and training-wise, but I may just rent a car somewhere in, say, Portland and drop if off at Calgary and from there, shuttle it to Banff.

AW isn't super far from Denver - but it's not close, I may shuttle from it (or a town close to it) to a city and then bus it back.

I'll be a rookie too - good luck!

Hello everyone,

I'll be a rookie at the TD this year - sent the LOI via the form and got the schizophrenic response, like many else. I'm guessing I'll just have to hold tight until that gets figured out.

I'm in Denver - would love to meet up with other TD riders from now, until the race begins to ride bikes, talk gear - all that kind of stuff,