TOUR DIVIDE
It’s day nine of our Tour Divide race. I use the word ‘race’ loosely, as at that point the leaders were, distance-wise, on another planet to us. Sue and I had left Butte, Montana earlier that morning (having arrived in Butte that morning too: that post-midnight switchback-laden singletrack descent to town in the dark sure was interesting—and who was that guy wandering around up there carrying a soccer ball?) and we were now in the broad valley below Fleecer Ridge. Sue is sitting on the side of the dirt road, crying. Crying?
I’m unsure what’s going on. Sue has never done this before. She tries to explain: “I’ve just got nothing left. My legs have nothing left.” In all our previous bike trips Sue just got on with the task. She’s tough. Weeks biking in the Icelandic highlands in appalling weather didn’t faze her at all. But now? Tears?
In retrospect, I think Sue’s tears came more out of frustration from not being able to ride as strongly as she wanted, rather than feeling beaten by this never-ending journey we were on. The days since leaving Banff had been pretty full-on, even at our slower pace, and there had been a lot of climbing; the average daily ascent had been over 1800 metres.
Accumulated fatigue was creeping up on us and it was all too easy to feel overwhelmed, especially with the finish line well over the horizon at around 3200km away. And we were still only in Montana! Whoever said racing the Tour Divide was mostly a mental game was right.
So we sit for a while, talk a bit, and have a bite to eat. We can’t stop where we are, so decide to tackle the remaining 600m climb up to Fleecer Ridge in small chunks. Whatever it takes to get up—and down. The descent off the ridge turns out to
