The Tour Divide mountain bike race had its grand start yesterday on traditional second Friday in June. The link to the leaderboard is here and the discussion forum is here. A description of the route is here. Also a fun article describing 2015.

The racers that win the Tour Divide are really a different class, covering 2700 miles in around 15 days including 200,000+ feet of climbing and mostly off road. It is something I’ll follow along as a spectator but have no pretense of doing. Checking the leaderboard periodically as well as the blogs.

The route that the Tour Divide race follows is the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) as mapped by Adventure Cycling. It is partially through Tour Divide and partially through Adventure Cycling (I’m a life member) that I’ve gotten interested in the GDMBR. As a result, my plan is to try riding the route after I get to Banff. I will swap out my touring bike for a mountain bike (already sent on way to Montana). It is a bit of an experiment: I’ll see how well off-road touring goes and I’ll also get some riding this trip on my mountain bike. Overall, I’m expecting my pace to be 4x-5x slower than the winners of the race or try finishing in two months or so.

Of course, can’t get too far ahead of myself, first up on the docket is Alaska and starting my ride. So in the mean time, I’ll watch vicariously as some of these racers show their stuff and offer occasional tidbits about the route.