Tour Divide 2024

Some good reading here.

Starts tomorrow.

Rigs of the 2024 Tour Divide (Part One): Flat-Bar Bikes

Thanks for posting.

Looking at TD bike setups is one of my favourite things 😉🙃

TDR start day.. I always feel a sense of reflection, an odd feeling that I’m missing being somewhere where I was very much at home yet I have no need to return to.

Going back a decade now, I’m feeling older and slower now but allow me the indulgence – here’s my rig of the Tour Divide 2013, before rigs got posted on Bikepacking.com.

Computer, map and cue notes. No GPS. It wasn’t that long ago but I wanted to race by the original Great Divide Race rules. No phone, no social media, no GPS in GDR days either. Having such basic navigation cost me time, and stress when I thought I may risk going off-route and a DNF, but it’s about the experience and the way you do it as much as anything.

It’s a huge ride and a huge experience. Tailwinds (and not too much mud) to all the riders.

I rode all that way and Pie Town was shut when I got there : )

But the Basin of Wyoming was kind to me, the storm skimmed the edge and I was only hailed on briefly. 130 miles of the most wild, open country I’d ridden in and my favourite part of the route …apart from the last morning at dawn in the desert of New Mexico, about 100 miles from the border when I knew I was really going to finish it. Thank you TDR, for everything. It broke my physically but left me with something positive that I find hard to articulate. “It’s been emotional”.

Hats off for riding it. I would have cried at Pie Town.

Fair play Jameso – I would love to ride it some day.
I would have stayed at pietown until it opened.

Jameso

Did you do a write up/blog of it anywhere?

A lack of pie is always a cruel thing.

🙃

Interested to follow Duzer – different type of challenge for him as a sort of “race” this time rather than a bimble with John and Mira

I would have cried at Pie Town.

A guy was waiting nearby, a chap called Clay from the toaster house, a kind of guardian of a CDT hiker’s free house there. I got fed pizza and a beer but said thanks but no to the tokes that were going round.

I would have stayed at pietown until it opened

I was there long enough for the guy behind me to catch up, maybe 3 hours, I needed a break with people though. I want to go back as a tourer.

Did you do a write up/blog of it anywhere?

It’s on the Jones bikes blog still – https://blog.jonesbikes.com/james-%E2%80%93-tour-divide/

Also wrote something a bit abstract in the time recovering at home that was in the Cordillera book that year. Was weird thinking back and realising that some of the stuff in the rez area of New Mexico was hallucinated.

OK .. as we were.. go TD ’24 racers!

Looking at TD bike setups is one of my favourite things

Me too (despite the fact that I’m not interested in the actual event). However, anyone calling a bike a ‘rig’; first up against the wall when the revolution etc..

Another on the ‘would love to ride it one day’ list

It’s on the Jones bikes blog still – https://blog.jonesbikes.com/james-%E2%80%93-tour-divide/

Enjoy reading that (& the flickr pics), thanks for posting

Me too (despite the fact that I’m not interested in the actual event). However, anyone calling a bike a ‘rig’; first up against the wall when the revolution etc..

Absolutely agree! So annoying. And also, possibly an unpopular choice, but anyone who says ‘I’m running a…’ instead of ‘I have a..’ can get in the sea

Checks blog

I used a single 34T oval chainring …

and no mention of ‘rig’, I don’t need to check that. Phew

Well they’re rolling!

Laurens Ten Dam’s tracker hasn’t moved yet, wonder what’s going on there. Maybe he’s buried it in a bag.

https://trackleaders.com/tourdivide24

For those of you that have ridden it, it is my 50th next year and would love to ride the whole thing, but could not get that amount of time from work, if you could choose a 2-3 week section of the Divide route to ride what would you go for? (added points for micro-breweries?!)

The northern 2-3 weeks I’d say. I absolutely loved BC and Montana into Idaho and Wyoming. I’m western films fan and it was great to ride through cowboy country. If I could go back I’d ride from either Banff or the border to the far side of the Basin and pack a fly fishing rod.

I think heat and fatigue meant Colorado wasn’t great for me, it wasn’t what I was expecting and I think the GDMTBR also misses a lot of the great riding in that area. The southern half of New Mexico was beautiful and I’d love to go back there, mainly the Cruces Wilderness, but it’s probably not beautiful in a way you’d go all that way for.

Laurens Ten Dam’s tracker hasn’t moved yet, wonder what’s going on there. Maybe he’s buried it in a bag.

He’s up at the sharp end now. Be interesting to see how he does compared to the ultra-racers up there with him.

LTD appears to be well off route now, looks like it could be a scratch.

Although he’s heading back now…

He’s been Plagued by tire damage

Justinas is 7 miles out from the finish, for those who like to be watching when the dot starts bouncing! Well ahead of Mike Hall’s record, too. Amazing effort.

Finished.  Over 200 miles a day.  A new record; how is sustaining that pace even humanly possible…?

Fabulous ride. I have to say I thought his shorter sleep stops then Ulrich might come back to haunt him, but in the last day or so he’s just powered away.

Brilliant work by him and everyone else riding the event.

Yep, I thought he had started too fast and lack of sleep would have caught up.  I am not sure this sort of thing is healthy though!