About the Tour Divide Race

The Tour Divide Race is a fully self-sustained mountain bike adventure race starting in Canada and ending at Mexican border.  It follows the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR), which roughly parallels the Continental Divide. That’s right baby, we’re talking 2745 miles of athletic endurance in pristine mountain settings, armed only with your wits, your rig, and whatever you can strap on to it. No vans following you, nobody handing you water as you race by them, no pre-planned assistance, no luxuries, and no prizes for winning, (much less completing) the race. You sleep where you fall over, you ride in the rain, you eat on the ground, and you drag your bike to the nearest one horse town if you break down. If you get eaten by a bear on the trail, hey, you shoulda had some bear mace in your stuff sack.

Image courtesy of TourDivide.org

I won’t go into the great detail or history here…you can read about it on the official Tour Divide  web site.  I had originally planned on doing the Great Divide Race, which follows the same route, the major difference being that it starts in Roosville, Montana, foregoing the 221 miles of the Canadian section.  The two races differ also in that the GDR prohibits use of cell phones and does not supply SPOT messengers like the TD does.  Paul and I agree that we want to race the Tour Divide because, number one, we want to ride in Canada, which boasts some of the greatest scenery of the entire trip.  And number two, being ultra distance endurance noobs, we want to the assurances of cell phones and SPOT messengers.

Read A Day in the Life on the GDR web site to get a good feel for the race, and check out the write ups of previous Tour Divide racers…be prepared to be glued to your monitor!

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