Tonight, at 7pm in the Seattle REI, Kent Peterson will be giving a presentation on his mountain bike journey along the spine of the United States from the Canadian border to the Mexican border. Kent set the single-speed record for mountain biking the length of the Great Divide Route a couple years ago and will be showing his pictures and talking about his adventure tonight. The GDR is nearly 2500 miles long and contains over 200,000 feet of elevation gain. The Great Divide Race, which Kent partook in, also has a very strict set of rules in place that mandate you do this race solo and complete self-supported -- i.e. no support crews, no supply caches, and no leaning on other racers for help.
I get way too lonely when I'm away from Kristin for more than a couple days so attempting the GDR race is something I refuse to even consider as a long-term goal. That said, I would love to ride it with Kristin one day, perhaps as a 40-day tour.
Of course, there's the small problem of her not being terribly fond of mountain biking that will probably prevent this from ever happening. But I can daydream...
3 comments:
I'm pretty curious what your feeling about the race/route was after that talk.
I asked Kent to recommend local training routes after you guys left (too bad you snuck out, I was going to suggest getting dinner/beer), and Kent suggested:
- Snoqualmie Pass to Greenwater (and back?)
- Stuff north of I-90 near Gold Creek
- Routes northbound from North Bend into to treefarm, e.g. to Lake Hancock and Callaghan Lake.
Kent said his website has links to some of these routes... I haven't gone looking yet. Let me know if you do and you find stuff.
Yeah, I was mad that I had to sneak out the second he finished, but we had to go and get our other car from Kristin's office real quick so we could pick up her new kayak and buy a bunch of stuff for our trip next week before the store closed. Would have been good to hang out.
Snoqualmie Pass to Greenwater sounds excellent. I guess there is a way to do it afterall! Hmmm...
As for the race/route, I'm a pretty frequent lurker on the MTBR endurance racing forum and have been reading the GDR threads regularly for a while now.
Like I mentioned in my post, I know I get far too lonely if I'm away from Kristin for more than a couple days to even consider soloing such a thing, even if I did spend the next few years building up the base necessary to even consider it, but we talk regularly about taking a few month "sabatical" in 6 to 8 years and doing a lot of touring. I think that'd be something we'd enjoy, if given 40+ days to do it.
Let's just say that it's definitely up there on my life's "to do" list.
What about you? What are your thoughts on the Great Divide Route?
I've never done any self-supported touring, and don't know if I would enjoy large doses of it... but I'd love to try doing a few days' worth of the route to get a taste for it.
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