We're lucky that we slept

During the Tour Divide I always felt best in the morning, which is the opposite of my usual modus operandi. Regardless of the total hours of sleep I managed the night before, mornings always brought cool air and clear lungs. I indulged in deep gulps of sweet-tasting air and gazed up at the pink sky with renewed optimism. This would be the day the sun wouldn't scorch my skin, dust wouldn't fill my airways, and gunk wouldn't clog my lungs. This day, I'd be free.

A number of riders had trickled into the campground during the night, and it seemed I was the first to leave. Without realizing it, I'd ascended about half of the climb up Fleecer the previous evening, and was surprised when I reached the wall only a half hour into my day. I pushed my bike up an eroded track, skirted around a saddle, and dismounted again to hike downhill. Brave or reckless cyclists will ride their loaded bikes down Fleecer, but it looks like this:

It only gets steeper as you descend. Once you go over the horizon line, you've entered the no-brake zone and just have to hang on and hope for the best. No thank you. I prefer to have my bicycle endeavors kill me slowly, through gradual suffocation.

Even pushing downhill is more of a shoe-ski than a hike. Clumsiness caught me and I ended up on my butt, after which I inched downhill at an embarrassingly glacial pace. The reward following the downhill hike-a-bike is a screaming descent through Jerry Creek canyon, and I was grateful that morning lucidity let me enjoy every spark of exhilaration and joy.

I reached Wise River just before 9. Eleanor was sitting in front of the tiny town's general store, eating a breakfast sandwich.

"Did you stay in town last night?" I asked.

"No, I camped in the canyon," she answered.

"So you went over Fleecer in the dark?"

She nodded. "I crashed, pretty bad."

"That sucks; are you okay?"

She shrugged and looked the other way. "Yeah, I'm okay." She sounded dejected.

Whenever I meet someone clearly having a low point during these types of efforts, I'm always at a loss about what to say. I'm not a pep talker, and hate to be pep-talked — few conversations are more grating than those served with a heavy dose of artificial cheeriness. But shallow sympathies and small talk aren't exactly helpful either.

"Do you need anything?" I asked. She shook her head, and I wouldn't have been able to offer anything, anyway. Race rules stipulate that nothing can be shared among competitors, just to make everything fair. I purchased my own breakfast and sat down in the sunlight.

Brett Stepanik and Russ Kipp at the Montana High Country Lodge

The scenic byway over the Pioneer Mountains was steeper than I remembered, but I made relatively strong progress to Polaris, home of the Montana High Country Lodge. The proprietor, Russ Kipp, first entered the Tour Divide micro-community back in 2010, when cold and wet racers came stumbling up to his doorstep to inquire about rooms. The hunting and fishing lodge is more of a reservation-only establishment, but he welcomed them inside and has actively promoted his services to Tour Divide cyclists ever since.

I'd already indulged in a long breakfast stop in Wise River and considered passing by, but realized it would be a mistake not to visit a friendly place that's become so deeply embedded in Divide culture. I'm glad I did. I had a chance to chat with a few riders who I hadn't yet met. Russ's wife served a hot lunch of chicken marsala, and Russ prepared brown-bag dinners with a turkey sandwich, brownie, and an apple. The Montana High Country Lodge offered an experience similar to the daily support stations in the Freedom Challenge, where families set you up in their homes, stuff you with homemade meals, and generally dote on you to your heart's content. It was a bit of harsh reminder about how quiet and lonely of a place the Divide can be, but it is wonderful that these islands of kindness exist at all.

As I was leaving the lodge, Eleanor rolled in, looking much more upbeat. I was happy to see her, as her demeanor in Wise River left me wondering whether she was going to go on. She seemed so shattered then, but of course I should have realized that was only temporary. Out here, we get so caught up in our own struggles that it's easy to forget that everyone else is fighting a battle, everyone else is getting knocked down, and everyone else has to find the strength to keep going, every day. We all have to carry our own weight, but nobody is alone. This is what I value most about racing. Sharing difficult objectives with others lends depth and perspective to my own experiences.

I pedaled toward Ye Old Bannack Road — home to miles and miles of much-maligned death mud, — as dark clouds gathered overhead. Bile filed my stomach, because getting caught in thunderstorms on Bannack Road ranks near the top of my list of things on the Divide that scare me. Bannack Road was established in 1862 as a freight route between Corrine, Utah, and Bannack, Montana — two towns that don't really exist any more. As such, it's a dirt road from nowhere, to nowhere, through the middle of nowhere, and nobody uses it. The maps warn of fifty miles of nothing, and if you get caught in unrideable mud anywhere along that stretch, you could be in for a very long wallow.

Luckily the clouds continued rolling south, but they brought with them a gusting wind that renewed my lungs' daily battle with dust. My pace slowed considerably, and I could only nod and exhale a wheezy "hello" as others passed me like I was standing still. The road climbed gradually but persistently through the Carver Creek valley, which was populated by free-roaming cattle. As I neared the Medicine Lodge/Sheep Creek Divide, a young black bull looked up from a herd and charged toward me.

"Hey! Hey!" I screamed as the bull wheeled around, galloped up the road, and turned to charge me again. "Hey! Hey! Hey!" I screamed louder, with a high-pitched animal voice that I didn't recognize as my own. The bull came within six feet of me and reared up on his hind legs repeatedly in a taunting dance. He was just a bully bull, but I was extremely frightened, as I think anyone would be if a thousand-pound animal was messing with them. "Go away go away go away go away!" I yowled in a piercing scream that tore through my throat and ripped my lungs to frayed shreds. The bull continued to shadow my bike as I sprinted up the road, gasping and screaming "go away" until my lungs seemed to close up entirely. I gasped again and again, but it felt as though no air was getting through. I launched into a full panic of hyperventilating and crying, still awkwardly attempting to sprint away from the bull. A dark screen flickered across my field of vision, and I screeched to a stop. I couldn't breathe. I was on the verge of passing out. This was probably how I was going to die.

There's a gap in my memory at that point. I don't think I lost consciousness, but my mind flipped some kind of survival switch, and the next image I remember is walking my bike toward the final steep pitch of the divide and feeling a deep trepidation.

"The bull charged me and I panicked," I remember thinking. "That was all. I just panicked."

I pushed my bike up the pass in a daze — a thick and chilling mental fog that permeated not just my thoughts, but my emotions as well. My legs were Styrofoam that leaked out the last fumes of energy, and only hollowness and exhaustion remained. The adrenaline surge had drained me, and the mental fog obscured any perspective on what had happened. Some deep, primitive synapses in my brain understood that what I'd been doing before the whole debacle was turning pedals along this dirt road, so that's what I should continue doing.

Looking back on this experience of being sick on the Tour Divide — the worst part about it wasn't the physical weakness. No, it was the mental dullness. Each evening, as the congestion in my lungs deepened and my breathing became more rough, my oxygen-depleted brain conceded to lassitude. It robbed me of the awe and intensity of the experience, leaving me out here on this quiet nowhere road, beneath the vividly lit Big Sky of Montana, gazing at snow-capped peaks, including the mountain where I mourned for my grandfather when he died five years ago ... and all of my emotions were muted. I descended through the valley, amid this sweeping expanse of space, on a clear and gorgeous evening, lost in a fog.

For all of my mental inertia, I still had my plan. My plan said to keep going until I could eke out 135 miles from the day, which I did near the confluence of two creeks in a narrow gorge, about 18 miles from Lima. I set up my bivy near a fence and walked down to the creek to collect water. As I crossed the road, a strange wobbliness rippled through my Styrofoam legs, and I had to sit down.

"I am really weak right now," I thought, believing that the scare with the bull was what emptied me out. And then later, after I'd already crawled into my sleeping bag, the thought continued. "I came to the Divide to search for strength. I'm going to keep searching." 

I guess I'll ride this winter out

For reasons unknown, it was more difficult for me to sleep indoors than outdoors. After my coughing fits, I tended to toss and turn rather than passing back out, as I had in the bivy sack. It was the air, I suppose — drier and warmer — along with the stimulation of city lights and sounds. Around 2 a.m. I scrolled through Facebook for a half hour, and learned that the woman leading the Tour Divide, Lael Wilcox, sought medical attention for respiratory distress and was diagnosed with bronchitis. She received treatment in Helena and continued down the trail that evening, about four hours before I arrived.

Lael and I spent two nights in the same house in Banff, so it wasn't implausible to speculate that we'd caught the same bug. Her symptoms sounded similar to mine — night coughing, congestion that got worse through the day, tight breathing and wheezing. But they also sounded much more severe. I wasn't having asthma attacks, and my tight breathing didn't force me to stop. I've had bronchitis once before, while I was living in Idaho Falls in 2005. During that bout, my symptoms were so severe that I nearly called 911, because I couldn't pull myself up from the floor without blacking out, and I had to lay on the floor because it was the only way I could breathe at all. There was no way a person could ride a bike a hundred miles a day with that kind of illness, unless they were super-human like Lael. No, my Divide crud was uncomfortable, but it wasn't bronchitis.


In the morning, I added Benadryl to my daily dose of caffeine and Claritin — another antihistamine that I'd been taking as a preventative measure since day one. As I rifled through my drug baggie for the pink pills, I realized I hadn't taken a single painkiller on the Divide. So far, I was riding pain-free. Knees, toes, butt, shoulders — all of the issues that I expected hadn't cropped up once. My bike hadn't had so much as a flat tire. But the worst allergies I've yet experienced? I never expected that.

At least the indoor stay seemed to have the effect I hoped, and my lungs felt clear when I wheeled my bike into the warm morning air. For arriving in town reasonably early, I left my room late — after 6 a.m. I felt guilty about that, so I made only a quick stop at a convenience store and devoured two bananas and a green smoothie for breakfast. But I did get a coffee, and pedaled away from Helena feeling like an indestructible super hero.

The first 1,500-foot climb was a breeze, and I started up Lava Mountain with an abundance of energy. I attacked the root-clogged doubletrack with zeal, clearing steep pitches that I normally wouldn't have attempted with an unloaded bike on a day ride. Topping out at 7,500 feet, my lungs were still clear and I could breathe the fire I hadn't felt since the first day. Helena may have forced me to endure the wrath of the Gordon Lightfoot fan and a crappy night of sleep, but in exchange she had cured me! Hallelujah!

After descending into Basin, the route turned straight into a fierce headwind along the Boulder River. I felt the familiar squeeze of my airways beginning to constrict, again, and pulled a buff around my mouth to temper the barrage of dust and allergens. The old GDMBR used to skirt along frontage roads of I-15 before joining the freeway for a screaming descent into Butte, but it's since been re-routed to continue following the Boulder River to Lowland Creek. The gravel road gradually ascends (into fierce wind) seemingly forever to a Continental Divide crossing where the CDT also cuts through, then continues through steep, rolling hills until you're convinced the climbing will never end, and then you're in Butte. What happened to the screaming descent? How do you keep climbing for thirty miles and somehow end at the same elevation where you started? Mysteries. It's also twelve miles longer than the old route, and for me it was at least three hours slower. I expected to arrive at 2 p.m., and it was well after 5 by the time I rolled into town.

Afternoon thunderstorms rumbled overhead, and I raced past the brick buildings and run-down shops of downtown Butte. The route made a wide arc around the outskirts of the city — a scenic tour of open pit mines and other industrial areas. The maps indicated I'd have to ride at least a mile off route to find services, and it wasn't wrong — somehow the GDMBR managed to wrap around city of 30,000 without passing a single viable business beyond downtown. Finally there was a gas station, and I stopped for a large resupply while mulling how excited I felt about a dinner of beef jerky and cheese eaten on the bike. I'd been promising myself Subway since Basin, but the sensory overload of streets, traffic and people left me anxious to flee the city.

Eleanor walked in as I was filling a basket with all of the store's remaining string cheese, along with my new favorite power fuel that propelled me up Lava Mountain — cinnamon bears. She asked if I was aiming for Wise River that night. "Oh no," I replied. "Not with Fleecer Ridge in the way. No, it's far." I scanned her expression for hints of whether she planned to take on Fleecer that night. I wanted to warn her the approach is faint and difficult to locate in the dark, the descent drops off the face of the Earth, and the area has a reputation as a haven for mountain lions. But I felt I shouldn't try to influence the decisions of a competitor. As it was, it seemed she may have stopped into the store specifically to ask about my plans, because when I turned around again, she'd already left.

Evening was always my favorite time to ride, and this evening was the best one yet, with cool temperatures, open hillsides and incredible views of the Highland Mountains. Steeper climbs did ignite shallow breathing, leading to dizziness and muscle failures that forced me off the bike. Congestion was deepening as well, but I could formulate a reason for that — I hadn't taken allergy meds since Helena. Still, I couldn't deny that even though the morning had started out so well, each passing hour added increments of struggle, until twilight brought the dizzy, dull-headed, fatigued symptoms of oxygen starvation. As darkness settled I slipped into a daze, still pedaling forward but oblivious to everything else.

I was aiming for the Beaver Dam Campground, just 116 miles from Helena, but it was about as close as I was willing to get to the mountain lions on Fleecer. When I caught glimpse of the campground sign, consciousness came flooding back in a tsunami of fatigue. It was a strange sensation, as I don't recall feeling terrible on my bike. But as soon as I stopped, I felt utterly shattered. The audible wheezing had returned, and I looked up at the stars as I gulped air through the narrow straw of my lungs.

After taking a Benadryl, I settled into my bivy feeling inexplicably depressed. In hindsight, this was perhaps another symptom of low oxygen levels. My mental energy was just fumes, and I wondered if I should try to eat something, but I'd already slung my food bag over a branch.

"Tomorrow," I mumbled, and then found myself humming, "the sun will come out, tomorrow," and then I was asleep. 

These veins of mine are now some sort of fuse

I guzzled a liter of water during the night coughing, and still felt parched when I woke up in the morning.

"Why am I so thirsty?" I wondered as shook out my dew-covered bivy sack. My hands went numb as I collected another liter from the creek. The 6 a.m. sky was already bright, but the air was icy and damp, and I felt an odd pressure in my chest as I breathed.

The first seven miles of the day were spent obsessing about coffee. It had been more than four days since my last cup — that incredible sugar sludge I obtained in Elkford. Each morning I took a caffeine pill to stave off headaches, but it wasn't the same. It just wasn't the same.

I rode by a sign fixed to a fence that read, "Ovando is Open!"

"I sure hope that's true!" I yelled back, out loud.

Ovando, population 71, is a lonely town in the Blackfoot River valley, tucked away between the Mission and Swan Ranges. It's close to Missoula, the city in Montana where I lived for a short time in 2010-11. For this reason, I was excited to visit, and scanned the vaguely familiar highway for signs of old friends. It's ridiculous, I know, but this is one of the scenarios I fantasized about — that people I knew would be waiting for me on the side of the road, cheering. It funny, these dreams you conjure as your thoughts become more childlike.

In town, there were a half dozen bikes parked next to the museum, where a small cabin and teepee were available for campers. Jeff Wise was walking his bike toward the Stray Bullet Cafe as I rolled up beside him.

"You're just in time," he said. "Restaurant opens at 7."

I glanced at my GPS. It was 7:01.

"Ovando is open!" I yelled triumphantly, and Jeff regarded me with a squinty grin.

Jeff told me that the camping area was overflowing with cyclists the previous night, but most had left before the crack of dawn. I was glad I stopped short of town, because I had no interest in wedging myself into crowds amid all this open space. Jeff ordered the same combination of breakfast food as me, and when it came, he exclaimed, "I can't eat all this."

"Oh, I can," I said, and it was true, but I was mainly focused on guzzling cup after cup of coffee. So satisfying.

The owner of the fishing shop next door, a woman who goes by the name of Angler on the bikepacking forum (and I'm sorry that I've forgotten her real name), came inside and took pictures of all of us. Angler is the Divide's most dedicated journalist. She photographs every cyclist she comes across and posts a small anecdote about each one on the forum. She was extremely nice and upbeat for 7 a.m., and I visited her store to buy bug dope and a few energy bars. (Along with fishing supplies, Angler also offers an array of cycling-related items. The whole town of Ovando has come together to create a cycling-friendly destination, and it's wonderful.) Anyway, I hoped to find salt tabs, thinking that electrolytes might help balance this strange thirst I was experiencing. She dug into a box full of Hammer samples and found several packs of Endurolytes, and gave them to me for free.

Back at the cafe, I bought several of these dense, homemade-looking food discs called "Protein Pucks." (They were mostly almond butter and very tasty. I wish I could have purchased a dozen just to avoid terrible protein bars a little bit longer.) Someone had also recently brought in a whole pan of fresh cinnamon rolls, so I bought one for the road.

I pedaled 15 miles out of town before I was famished again, and decided to devour the cinnamon roll at the bottom of Huckleberry Pass. This was the second time that I would consume a massive pastry at the bottom of a huge climb, and it was the second time I'd regret it.

I rolled into Lincoln in the early afternoon, still thirsty, and the wheezing had returned. The weather had turned extremely hot, although my thermometer said it was only 26C (79F.) "Lies!" I thought. I went into the gas station for ice and the candy supply I'd been promising myself, and met a family of six — kids ranged from age 9 to 18 — touring the GDMBR. They'd also started their trip in Banff, about three weeks earlier. When they asked me how long I'd been on the road, I had to think about it.

"Maybe five days?" I replied. "I think this is day five." We talked for a while as I shopped, and I told them about the best parts of my race so far.

They left before I decided to sit down and devour a personal pizza (so hungry on this day. Why so hungry and thirsty?), but I caught up to them a few miles down the road. The 16-year-old daughter raced to catch me after I passed, and asked more questions. We rode together for about ten minutes, and I turned the questioning to her. She told me she'd been really into bikes since she was a kid, but just started mountain biking a year prior.

"I really like it," she said. "I feel so much faster when I'm going downhill."

"And you haven't had any problems with the more technical stuff, the rocks and mud?"

"Oh no," she shook her head. "I just hold on tight and go."


She turned around to return to her family, and I turned off Stemple Pass Road to battle this rocky doubletrack that shoots straight up a steep canyon, in the Death Valley-like heat of the day. (only 25C? Lies!) Piles of rotting tree trunks were stacked in clear-cut meadows along the road, and it looked like a battlefield. It felt like a battlefield. I was coughing up the afternoon crud and breathing swift and shallow at this higher altitude (only 6,000 feet? Lies!) The pass topped out at 7,000 feet, and the descent was similarly steep and dusty.

Below Stemple Pass, the region feels remote. You're surrounded by the tall, rounded peaks so characteristic of southwestern Montana. The valleys are home to abandoned mines, a handful of ranches, not much else. Just past the bridge over Marsh Creek, I passed a house where a man in the yard called out, "Do you need water?" Yes, I thought ... I'd guzzled most of my three liters of ice water in a matter of hours. "No!" I called back. "I'm good, thank you." In the intervening years since my first Divide ride, the ethics regarding trail magic have been more clearly defined by the bikepacking community, and the consensus is "Just say no." I respect that, and approve as well. This ethic urges us toward greater self-reliance. I stopped a few miles down the road to refill from a creek with my sluggish filter.

When it was time to climb again, my legs balked tremendously. They were all emptied out again, and my lungs felt constricted, even when I managed a good, loogie-producing cough. At this point I'd convinced myself that my breathing difficulties were allergies, and this air was particularly aggressive. The empty legs were, well ... I actually couldn't quite convince myself that the hundred-mile-plus days were the culprit. The struggle was different from my first Tour Divide, my multi-day ultramarathons and the Freedom Challenge. In those events, my legs had pain, but they still had power. Here, my legs had no pain — not even mild knee soreness — and yet no power. And really, I wasn't doing too badly. I was still able to climb, and still staying near my daily mileage target. But it felt like such a huge battle. Like I was forcing my muscles through this effort, and they might give up on me suddenly, without warning, and then I might just collapse on the dirt, utterly broken.

The 6 p.m. slump sank in as I battled a rolling ridge along the Continental Divide, and I brooded over my physical state. I reflected back on recent endurance-related struggles: falling backward and collapsing onto the slope as I tried to carry my bike up a rocky scramble during the Freedom Challenge; gasping and wheezing on Two Top Divide during the Fat Pursuit; dragging a rigid leg up a talus field during the Tor des Geants; pushing my bike with all my might and still failing to move forward in knee-deep snow drifts and gale-force headwinds on the Iditarod Trail. All of these instances had legitimate extenuating circumstances, at least in my mind. But what if there was a pattern? What if I no longer had access to strength or vitality that I used to take for granted? What if I was developing this ... weakness? A weakness I could neither improve nor control?

Rather than continue to brood on unfounded theories about why I'd soon be joining the ranks of endurance athletes who no longer had the capacity to pursue their passion, I returned to my allergy theory. A stiff breeze blew along the ridge, and there was grass everywhere. Even though Helena was a little bit short for my day — just 110 miles from where I camped — I decided to stop in town so I could clean the potentially toxic layer of grime off my body, sleep in a climate-controlled room, and hopefully clear my lungs of pollen and dust.

I rode more than a mile off route before I finally found a hotel, which had a line at the front desk at 9 p.m. I walked to the back to use the bathroom, and when I returned to the lobby, the last guy in line was just leaving. So I went to the desk and inquired about a room. Before the clerk could answer, this woman who I didn't even notice earlier rose up from a lobby chair and berated me, loudly. She was the next in line, she screamed. She'd been waiting for a half hour and had to sit down because she was so sick, and people kept butting in front of her, and she wasn't going to put up with it any longer. She had driven all the way from Missoula for the Gordon Lightfoot concert, and now she had the flu, and why was I being such a selfish bitch? Then she started coughing, loudly, pounding her fist on the desk to the horrified expression of the clerk. I just gaped at her, mouth open, hair matted to my scalp, clothes and legs coated in dust, with my own illness crushing my lungs. "You know," I seethed, "all you had to do was say something. Use words. No one knows you're in line when you're not in line!"

I couldn't let it go. After I finally secured a spot, I stormed into my room and stomped around while swearing and throwing all the pillows against the wall. I hated being in the city so much, here with the crowds and sprawling streets and crazy bitches and stupid Gordon $%&! Lightfoot. All I wanted to do was escape on my bike, ride away from my rage and flee back into the mountains. But I had to get this breathing issue under control. The city might be mean, but the air outside was killing me.    

Troubles on the headwinds, troubles on the tailwinds

The coughing returned for another round of midnight fits, and all I could do was prop open the bivy sack so I could dislodge whatever piece of lung was trying to escape this time. I drank all of my water trying to soothe the coughs, and fell back asleep with the bladder valve between my teeth.

Despite the coughing fits, I slept fairly well, and rose to beautiful light on the edge of my grassy clearing. While rifling through my backpack, I rediscovered the piece of chocolate cake I'd purchased at the market in Whitefish. It was another one of those items grabbed on a whim (as all Divide food is), and I'd completely forgotten about it. It held it in both hands for several moments, admiring the five layers of cake slathered in dark chocolate frosting with floral designs. It wasn't even smashed. I wanted to eat it badly, but no — this cake was too special, and mornings were too easy. I needed to have my cake for hard times. I gently placed it back in the pack after pulling out two protein bars. Then I sat in the sun gnawing miserably on the bars, without any water to help me choke them down. 

I pedaled up Yew Creek Road, scanning the hillside for signs of tributaries. In Canada and Northern Montana, there seemed to be creeks every few hundred meters, but here the drainages were bone dry. As I crested the 1,500-foot climb, my map indicated Yew Creek and that too was dry. Even though I understand on an intellectual level that a short dry spell won't kill me, I really dislike running out of water. Thirst ignites all these fear responses, and I felt sick to my stomach.

"You're probably the biggest water hoarder on the Divide. Why didn't you fill up in Ferndale?" I scolded myself.

Elliot passed with another rider and told me that he, too, was hunting for water. I understood on an intellectual level that we were directly above Swan Lake, and eventually we'd descend to a low enough elevation that one of these creeks would be running. But I was letting my phobias get the better of me, and raced after Elliot just in case he had a sharper eye. We did have to descend to the bottom of the hill to find water in Yew Creek, but it was there, running clear and cold.

Imaginary disaster abated, Elliot and I continued along a series of lower-elevation logging roads paralleling the Swan River. This 60-mile segment is fairly tedious, following short but frequently steep rollers through secondary forests with few views. There are some intriguing larch groves, and a whole lot of black bear scat to capture attention. But if you're here when the sun is bearing down, you've developed drinking water anxiety that heat doesn't help, and there's this piece of chocolate cake taunting you from your backpack ... it's not the most fun section of the Divide. (This photo is from the Holland Lake area, later in the day.)

Elliot was gracious enough to ride with me for a while and told great stories about the Arizona Trail Race — hiking his bike into the Grand Canyon, being offered a free steak dinner from tourists at Phantom Ranch after he'd already eaten a full meal, and then struggling to hike out in the dark with 700 miles of tough biking on his legs, 40 pounds of bike and gear on his back, and an extremely full stomach, plopping down for naps while trying not to appear asleep just in case a ranger caught him "illegal camping." I laughed and laughed.

Soon Elliot outpaced me and I settled into my late afternoon slump, which was happening far too early on this day. My breathing became rougher and the phlegmy cough came back with the afternoon wind.

My symptoms didn't entirely line up with past experiences with cold viruses. The mucus in my lungs, for starters, and the ragged breaths. I was starting to move away from my theory that this was a cold. "It's pollen," I thought. "It's allergies."

And then there were my legs, which seemed to be emptying themselves out by the pedal stroke. It wasn't normal leg fatigue — at least it wasn't like any fatigue I'd experienced before. They only similar experience I had to compare it with was last year's Freedom Challenge, when excessive lifting of my bike with weak little arms resulted in muscle failure in my triceps and forearms, as though I'd done one too many reps with a heavy barbel and could manage no more. On the Tour Divide, my legs were exhibiting this similar shuddering weakness. When I held two fingers against my quads, I could feel them quaking. I didn't know why.

I fought leg wobbliness on the gradual climb to Holland Lake, with the day's next huge objective — Richmond Peak — looming like a monster in front of me. At Holland Creek I stopped next to the river and pulled the chocolate cake out of my pack. I held the now-fairly-smashed confection in my hands, cradling it with smiling appreciation, but admittedly not the same affection I held in the morning. Now, this was just sorely needed fuel. I devoured the entire thing with my hands, ending up with frosting smeared on my nose and cheeks like a toddler, and a stomach ache to match. Despite the massiveness of the cake, I didn't feel the sugar rush I expected to feel. I filtered water out of the creek, acquiring about 12 mosquito bites in the process, and turned to face my monster with a churning stomach and no energy. Elliot's story of the Grand Canyon crossed my mind.

"I guess if worst comes to worst, I'll take a nap."

It was such a long way up. "It's just 2,700 feet," I told myself. "It's like Black Mountain at home. It's just one Black Mountain." But the legs didn't care. The muscles had turned to styrofoam, and pushing them only left me winded without any increase in power. "You love climbing," I reminded myself. The legs still didn't care.

With great difficulty and some whimpering, I managed to schlep myself to the trail intersection where the route begins to contour around the mountain. From here I half-hoped to see snow, because I just needed to walk for a while. Richmond Peak is well-known in Divide lore for being buried in snow at terrifyingly steep angles, where slipping in the wrong spot could actually prove fatal.


When it's not buried beneath a 60-degree snow slope, Richmond Peak is just a smooth, flowy trail cut into the mountainside on the eroded remnants of an old road bed. Not scary at all. I made an effort to enjoy myself but I was in a low place, struggling with efforts that should have been easy, wondering what was going on with my legs, my lungs, the coughing. All of these are fairly normal occurrences during an endurance effort, when I'm spending entire days and nights out in the weather, taking in the oxygen I need to keep my heart rate in zone two and three for 16-hour spans. But something just didn't feel right, beyond what I've come to expect from endurance-related fatigue. It was as though the air was attacking my body, gouging tiny holes into my lungs and legs and draining me from the inside.

I stopped several times during the descent to shake off dizziness, and ate handfuls of trail mix. I'd already resolved at my next resupply to just buy a bunch of candy, because this protein-focused diet wasn't working and if I had to cannibalize muscle to get through this, so be it.

I soft-pedaled up the next small climb and contoured around Cottonwood Lake as the sun was setting. The tips of larch trees reflected a neon shade of orange, and pink light filled the sky. I felt a surge of gratitude that I had the legs to reach this place at all. The ability to travel five hundred miles along the remote backroads of the Rocky Mountains is a beautiful privilege.

About seven miles from Ovando, I rolled across a bridge over Monture Creek, sparkling under intense starlight and a coal-black sky on the night of the new moon. I'd been aiming for town, which I heard had cyclist-friendly camping. But I realized then that I didn't want to go to Ovando tonight. This was where I wanted to be.

I rolled out my bivy on the bank, and then crawled over boulders to sit next to the creek, filling my Sawyer Squeeze filter with cold water, drinking an entire liter, then filling it again. The water tumbled down my throat and filled all the porous emptiness in my body with new life. I leaned back and gazed at the sky, splattered with the orange and purple light of the Milky Way. This was everything I needed.

Of course we just do not know

Approaching Red Meadow Lake. Photo by Dan Hafferman.

Several times in the night, I woke up coughing violently. "Well, here comes the hacking part of the cold," I thought. I blamed the air inside my hotel room, which was too dry and too hot even though I'd cracked a window. Coughing brought up some mucus, and I worried I might be developing mild altitude-related edema. But no, that couldn't be it. Eureka is way down at 2,600 feet. It's the lowest elevation on the entire Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. 

The morning of day three started out warm and calm. I went for a lovely spin through the hills along the Tobacco River, then launched into my favorite kind of riding — a winding, well-graded, 2,500-foot climb up a mountain. When I tell other cyclists that this is my favorite type of riding terrain, they look at me like I need a professional intervention. Nobody likes the fireroad climb, they tell me. Tedious, boring ... fireroads are what you endure to get to the good stuff. I can only shrug — "I don't know why, but, baby, I was born this way." Climbing gravel roads is simple and meditative, allowing me to explore the landscape of my mind while my body cycles through a wonderful elixir of blood oxygen and mood-boosting biochemicals. Of course I need a generous helping of glycogen and paucity of pain to continue enjoying these climbs, but when they're good, they're really good.

This is why I love the Tour Divide. 

I believe that's Alice on top of Whitefish Divide. Honestly ... I missed the snow.

Despite the love, I was having a difficult time finding my rhythm. The sore throat was gone, but my breathing still felt raw, and my legs just didn't have any power. It would seem logical to blame fatigue from the 270 miles that came before. But usually, even when I'm tired, I don't experience this same sort of ... weakness. Muscle pain, sure, but leg emptiness? That's usually reserved for times when I'm sorely out of shape — like when I had a knee injury last fall and got back on my bike for the first time in eight weeks. Those were some empty legs. And this ... well, I just didn't know what this was.

I think most Tour Dividers would agree that after working through initial pains and other kinks, they feel themselves getting stronger every day. It's a sentiment that thru-hikers share as well. Sure, there are inevitable body breakdowns, and if you lose a bunch of weight, you're not going to feel strong. But if you take care of yourself and don't develop any acute issues, bodies are remarkably adaptable to this kind of effort. I experienced this in 2009 — by the time I reached Colorado, there was a kind of effortlessness to the big climbs, and a normalcy to the 120-mile days. I did experience big meltdowns in New Mexico, but I'd also lost 15 pounds and gotten quite sick outside Cuba. So this was my strategy for 2015: take care of nagging pains early, eat protein, be efficient but relatively generous with sleep, and wait for the strength to come to me.

For most of the day, I wrestled with this dynamic — loving the long, meditative spins, and fretting about this weird hollow feeling in my legs. Although I felt like I was crawling along, I probably wasn't doing too badly. I shadowed Alice for a long while, faltered some on the climb to Red Meadow Lake, and then was passed by several groups on the rolling hills into Whitefish. Red Meadow Lake was another section where I felt wistful tinges of 2009 nostalgia. Back then, there were five miles of snow to negotiate, and I remember stomping around downed trees with John Nobile while he complained that his little roadie booties did nothing to keep his feet warm in the shin-deep slush. Good times! This year, the road was dusty and campers surrounded the completely non-frozen lake, and I admit I missed the mystique of those snow-shrouded peaks. And the hiking. All biking all day is really quite taxing on empty legs. 

I didn't plan to stay long in Whitefish, but I did need to buy more chain lube, as I'd nearly used up the useless bottle of dry lube that I started with. The bike shop in town was kind enough to open up for Tour Divide riders on a Sunday afternoon, and had become this vortex of frenetic energy and time-sucking distractions. Somehow this simple stop for lube turned into two hours as I got sucked in, talking with at least a dozen others who were gathered around the shop, stealing glances at my phone to try to figure out where Beat was in the Freedom Challenge, hosing down my bike (it did need it), looking for spots to recharge my electronics, and eating pizza with Sarah Jansen. It was nice, but extremely draining for me to navigate all these chores and social interactions, and I left town feeling a bit of that deer-in-the-headlights, just-want-to-flee-back-into-the-woods reaction. 

It was in Whitefish that I resolved to avoid towns, to just do my resupplies and get out. I believed this would help me maintain a rhythm, be more efficient with my time, and hopefully gain strength. 

As I pedaled through Columbia Falls, I lapsed into much nostalgia about the day I met Beat. Our paths first crossed here at the finish line of the Swan Crest 100, where I was a volunteer and he was a runner. Beat's sweeping grin, the energy he exuded after 34 hours when even the volunteers were shattered, his confidently proclaiming that I, too, could run a hundred miles if I wanted to ... as the daylight grew long and saturated the Swan Range in golden light, I lapsed into these memories as though it were July 2010 all over again. I became so lost, in fact, that as I pedaled by the road to Strawberry Lake, I nearly turned off the GDMBR to go to the aid station where I doled out canned ravioli to shell-shocked runners all those years ago. The realization hit me as a surprise — that's not where I'm going. It's 2015. I'm on the Tour Divide. 

So instead, I continued pedaling south through the Flathead Valley, battling a headwind that only seemed to pick up strength in the evening. Tedium sank in, and I found myself listening to "Of Course We Know" from the new Modest Mouse album on repeat, singing the lyrics out loud:

"The streets are just blankets and we sleep on their silky course.

Covered up by them, why would we ever want to wake up? Oh no."

Eleanor passed me shortly after I'd really belted out the refrain: "Lord, lay down your own damn soul." After that, I felt too self-conscious to sing — but I sure did eat up a lot of miles with the ghosts of the Swan Crest 100 and Modest Mouse. 

Darkness had settled by the time I pedaled sleepily along the streets of Ferndale. I found some Wi-fi near the fire station and ate all the fruit I bought in Whitefish (because I hadn't planned to stop for dinner) while I checked my phone to track Beat's progress across South Africa. This is usually all I checked on my phone: e-mail, text messages, weather, Freedom Challenge updates, and then I'd post an update to Facebook. My browser wouldn't upload Trackleaders, and I found that I didn't really care. I knew where I was in proximity to my goal, and I understood what I needed to do. 

I pulled into a nice spot in the hills above Swan Lake with 140 miles on the day. I'd ridden 150 miles the first day and 120 the second, which means I was holding onto the average I needed for a 20-day finish, but only just. I'd hoped to feel stronger than I did, especially since I wasn't logging any extra mileage, but I felt optimistic that my best days were yet to come. 

Settling in for the long haul

I woke up countless times in the night, shivering. The inside of my bivy sack was clammy, like the interior of a cave, and my sleeping bag was not insulated enough to ward off the damp, frigid air leaking in from outside. Each time I woke up, I decided enough was enough and it was time to move on down the road. But then I imagined the icy darkness outside, and the urgency of packing up when I was already cold. As I pondered and shivered, a thin layer of warm air enveloped my body — enough to soothe me back to sleep. 

The alarm rang out at 5:30 a.m., which at this latitude was after sunrise. I groaned as I rolled onto a stiff shoulder and opened my bivy to a clear, frosty morning. Hoarfrost coated the ground, and my wet shoes were frozen solid. My shirt and socks were still damp, and a light breeze hit my face like a freezer blast. 

I beat the frost away from my bag and rushed to pack up gear as my extremities went numb and shoulders quaked — which was probably why they were so sore. I smiled as I remembered feeling a similar urgency when I went bikepacking earlier this year in Fairbanks, Alaska — when the temperature was 35 below. Only then, it wasn't as bad because I just pulled on my expedition mittens and down parka and instantly felt so much better. Here, in the Canadian Rockies in June, I had only the clear-sky promise of coming sunshine to quell an instinctual panic. With the last of the dexterity in my fingers, I checked the temperature on my bike computer: -4C (25F.) 

I pedaled slowly up Corbin Road, trying to work up power from muscles that felt like freezer-burned meat, and berating myself for choosing such a poor camp spot. Low-lying valleys are prone to inversions, and sleeping right next to the river meant humidity and cold. The rising sun made short work of the frost coating the ground. As soon as I felt comfortable enough, I stopped at the river to wash my bike. Clay-based death mud is as good as cement when it dries, and there were still large chunks clinging to nearly every part of the bike. After twenty minutes of holding the wheels in a swift current and chipping away at mud, I removed what was probably five pounds of gunk. The bike was still filthy, but what can you do? A mile later, a pair of riders passed on sparkling bikes.

"How did you get your bikes so clean?" I asked.

"Car wash in Sparwood," one answered.

"Oh," I said, feeling deflated. Not stopping in Sparwood was probably not the best strategy. The rough night of cold sleep took a lot out of me, my food supply was a little on the low side, and my throat was now fiercely sore. But what can you do?

At least it was a gorgeous day, and already warming up substantially. A dozen or so riders passed me on Flathead Pass, which is steep and rocky on one side, and so badly eroded on the other that the creek re-diverted right down the middle of the road. I expected to see a lot of riders in the morning, as most cyclists prefer not to camp in bear country, so a large percentage of faster riders stayed in town. I kept pace with one guy for a while, trying to power some life back into my dead meat legs. I couldn't breathe hard without feeling a burning sensation in my throat, and I'd also developed a cough that left me fairly certain my body was battling a cold virus. Overall I felt frustrated about my physical condition, and trying to keep up with faster riders wasn't helping morale. But what can you do? I reminded myself it was the second day, which is always a hard day, and sang a Grateful Dead song that I always sing to myself on these multiday trips: "Well the first days are the hardest days, don't you worry anymore ..."

The valley surrounding the upper North Fork of the Flathead River is a remote place, teeming with wildlife. I frequently rode by fresh bear scat, enough to keep me calling out "Hey Bear" for much of the day even though I felt confident that a steady stream of riders would probably prompt most bears to steer clear of the road. I find the rampant ursaphobia surrounding the Tour Divide to be over the top. Yes, grizzlies are dangerous, and yes, the Flathead Valley is home to one of the densest populations in interior North America. There are still only an estimated 100 grizzlies in nearly a thousand square miles, and with little human presence, they're not habituated to associate people with anything they want. The odds of running into one as a matter of bad luck are low, so I don't feel uneasy riding in bear country. I'm respectful and I hang my food and make noise, but I don't view bears as the most urgent threat of the Tour Divide, by a long shot.

What is scary for me on the Tour Divide? Lightning, first and foremost. Next, I fear running out of drinking water — with a filter, I was frequently topping up my three-liter bladder, just in case there were no streams for the rest of the day (water isn't exactly scarce in the mountains of British Columbia.) Third on the list is heat and heat exhaustion. Then drenching, cold rainstorms that last most of the day, far from shelter. Then stranger danger — there can be some odd creeps on these remote back roads. Of course there's injury — I have a lot of speed-inefficient habits I employ to keep body parts comfy on the bike. Then there's crashing, mechanicals that I can't fix when I'm a long walk from anywhere, running out of food, GPS death (I carried a spare eTrex 20), camera death, iPod death (I brought four Shuffles), sleeping pad death (I don't understand people who don't use pads. The ground is cold), suicide squirrels getting caught in my spokes ... well, you get the gist. There's plenty to be wary of on the Divide. I suppose fixating on bears is at the very least a helpful distraction.

Illness hadn't been anywhere on my fears list, or my radar. It was mid-summer, and I've long relied on a relatively robust immune system. So as my throat continued to burn, I just wrote it off as another one of those early-days issues I needed to work out, like my squeaky Achilles. Achilles tendinitis is perhaps the number one overuse injury in the Tour Divide, and I often experience minor Achilles pain after just one long day in the saddle. My strategy to ward off tendinitis is to change the position of my feet at regular intervals. It works for me, and is one of the main reasons I ride platform pedals (though not the only reason.)

I rolled through the Flathead Valley, then climbed and descended Cabin Pass without seeing anybody else. Elliot caught up to me on the Wigwam Road — a segment I've come to regard as "the most horrible rollers" — while I was battling through a slump that I would later come to think of as my "6 p.m. meltdown." Late afternoons were always the hardest time of day for me. My body was craving a hot meal and a nice evening wind-down, and I was telling her we had to eat dirty handfuls of nuts for dinner, and then keep pedaling until midnight. Nobody was happy.

But Elliot's a cheerful guy. We chatted long enough that I perked up, and then we arrived at the "singletrack" connector, which perked me up even more because I could hike for a while. The faint, mile-long trail between two abandoned logging roads follows a deer trail along the Wigwam River, then skirts a bend by shooting straight up the mountain at a rate of 400 feet in 0.2 miles. It's one of the infamous segments of the Tour Divide — a grunt of a push in dry conditions, and often a bike-dragging portage when it's wet and the "trail" becomes a waterfall. It was fairly dry this year, and I was grateful for the chance to stretch my legs and back, and give my wee little arms a bit of a workout (all while feeling grateful that I only had to do this for 0.2 miles, unlike Beat on the Freedom Trail.)

I'd planned to camp on Galton Pass, but the stubborn northern sun was not even close to setting. Also, I was nearly out of food. Everything I had would make an adequate dinner, but I'd be setting myself up for a hungry morning into Eureka. I was fairly disgusted with the mud crusted to my tights and legs — even though I promised myself I wouldn't let griminess bother me — and I'd become fearful of another cold night out (add that to the list of fears.) I'd just told Elliot that I intended to camp that night, and hopefully most nights, because Tour Divide was "a camping ride." Now I was already talking myself into spending the second night of the race in a hotel room. Oh well. What can you do?

The late-evening descent from Galton Pass was worth throwing away my willpower. Orange and red light glowed on treetops as I screamed down the narrow canyon, breathing fire as cold wind hit my raw throat. After descending 3,500 feet in just over seven miles, the loose gravel road spit me out into the pastoral Kootenay valley, four miles from the U.S. border.

The border patrol guard asked me more questions than I was expecting, given he'd probably seen at least thirty other cyclists that evening. After the guard let me back into my own country, I followed a farm road next to a three-foot-high wire fence strung right along the border. It would take no effort to jump right back into Canada there, and if it were later, likely no one would know. Ah, security theater. But I was thrilled to be back in the USA, already ahead of my 2009 pace, and maybe if I could kick this cold, I could really start flying. 

The best day

Me, Katie Monaco, and Lael Wilcox in Banff. It was great to hang out with these ladies before the race.
I've been meaning to ask Katie how long she wore those flip-flops.

 I spent most of the day before the start of the Tour Divide feeling slightly embarrassed. As the streets of Banff filled with cyclists, people stopped me to say they read my book, thanked me for the tips and inspiration, and asked questions. My face flushed and my friend Leslie teased me about being a "Tour Divide celebrity." I hardly felt like an expert. Let others decide the best gear and strategy; I'm just a tourist with platform pedals, a backpack, and no chamois. I can't offer secrets for success any more than I can offer guarantees. When pressed for advice, I'd answer, "Just stay flexible."

 Some asked me what's changed since 2009. I love that having raced the Tour Divide a mere six years ago — when organized Divide racing was already six years old — gives me status as an "old-timer." My answer was, "it's not all that different." There were 152 starters this year, as opposed to 48 in 2009. When I compare that to the 2,500 runners I've lined up with at UTMB, it's still a trickle. But it warmed my heart to see more people embracing this journey. "Everyone seems more prepared, like they understand better what they're getting into," I'd say. "In 2009, Matt Lee just handed us a cue sheet to the new Flathead Valley section at the start. It was up to us to find an unofficial GPS track, which was an older version of the border-to-border route, and a lot of people still relied on only maps. 'Ride the Divide' wasn't out yet. There wasn't all that much info on the Internet. We didn't have a clue."

Geez, I was starting to sound like a curmudgeon.

 But I did wonder what it would be like, returning to all these places I'd been before, now that I had something of a clue. My goals for the Tour Divide still weren't completely clear to me. Last fall, when I was down with injury following the Tor des Geants and Beat signed up for the Freedom Challenge, I told him I didn't want to commit to a long race in 2015. I hoped to plan an Alaska bike tour in March and maybe a week-long backpacking trip in the Sierras or Montana while he was in South Africa. "Maybe I'll sign up for UTMB," I shrugged, because damn it, I really want to complete a loop around Mont Blanc. Alpine foot races had dragged me through a series of failures that — I have to be honest — have hurt my self esteem. Beyond that, I've thought it would be healthy to take a step back from endurance racing, and try to renew my perspective on the outdoors and adventure.

 And here I was, back at the longest mountain bike race in the world. I've never made good on these promises to myself to take a step back, and true to character, I came home from Alaska and immediately signed up for the 2016 Iditarod Trail Invitational — the full thousand-mile race to Nome. This is something I've wanted so much, and been so afraid of, for so many years. I greatly admire people like Beat who have been able to jump into the Iditarod head-first, when I couldn't make the leap. A thousand snowbound miles is too long, I'd say, and I'm too weak. Struggles during the Freedom Challenge and injury during the Tor des Geants left me feeling even weaker. Then I embarked on my tour along the west coast of Alaska in a show-stopping windstorm (it brought the entire mid-pack of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race to a screeching halt.) It took me four days to cover the first 60 miles, often amid a struggle so great that I genuinely wondered if forward motion had become impossible. Why would I even dream of the race to Nome, given my sorry lack of strength?

"I'm going to need to do some serious preparation," I said to Beat. "Maybe I should ride the Tour Divide again."

 The Tour Divide is obviously much, much more than a training ride. It's a soul-rending journey in the best of circumstances, and one can hardly expect the best circumstances over three weeks of near-constant motion across 2,700 miles of muddy roads, big climbs, rocky descents, remote forests and arid deserts. But the desire to begin preparing for the Iditarod planted the seed, and embarking on training rides with Beat and Liehann solidified my desire. I love to ride my bike all day long. Here was a ready-made excuse for an endurance-minded summer bike tour, on a route I enjoyed, where logistics and planning were simpler because I'd done it before.

 My goals for the 2015 Tour Divide were to keep moving as much as possible, and try to finish in the 20- to 21-day range. I'd given the day-to-day strategy a fair amount of thought since my 24-day finish and 2009, and decided this would be a challenging but realistic goal. I planned to make every effort to keep the necessary 130-miles-per-day average, try to bank extra miles for inevitable setbacks, but still stop and rest for four to five hours a night to avoid falling apart. This is about as methodical as I get, but the combination of experience and a numbers-specific plan did inspire confidence. Nerves didn't really set in until after the start, as tandem racers Billy Rice and his daughter Lina led the neutral roll-out through Banff. I peeled off the peloton at the Spray River trailhead and rode up to my friends.

"I just need one more hug," I whimpered to Keith. "I feel so scared all of the sudden."

Keith indulged me for the ninety seconds it took to start at the very back of the pack. And just like that, I felt better.

 From Banff, the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route cuts south through a series of narrow valleys flanked by craggy peaks of the Canadian Rockies. Many agree it's the most stunning section of the route, even though it tends to rile up the mountain runner in me: "Why can't we just go up there? Why do we always have to be stuck down here?" But I love that my bicycle allows me to travel so efficiently through these wild places, taking in many miles of jaw-dropping scenery in a matter of hours.

 I settled into a comfortable pace and leaned back on the saddle, cruising happily. There were frequent stops for photos and snack breaks, which wasn't part of the plan. But, hey, it was only the first day of a very long race. Decisions I made on this day didn't matter that much, anyway. Dark clouds began to blur the mountains surrounding Spray Lakes Reservoir, and then the rain moved in, dropping the temperature to 6C (43F. My digital thermometer was set to Celsius.) The sudden onslaught of cold air was exhilarating, and I was surrounded by a larger group of riders who I knew were going to bottleneck in the upcoming section of singletrack, so I didn't stop to put on my coat. The rain makes me feel so alive! But then my fingers went numb, and soon my legs felt kind of dead, and finally I stopped to pull on my eVent jacket and mitten shells. By then I was shivering forcefully.

As the trail wove through the forest, precipitation had become noticeably thick and white — snain. In the surrounding mountains, snowline descended nearly to the valley floor, and my thermometer had dropped to 4C. My base layer was soaked and I was not warming up. "That was dumb," I thought, and made an effort to increase my pace. Despite my cold body, I was riding a wave of joy, so happy to be moving through the world with nothing on my agenda but more miles. I munched on shelled pistachios and grinned as I stood and sprinted, then sat and soft-pedaled, shifting the pressure points on my feet and stretching my back, windmilling my arms and taking deep breaths, doing everything I thought needed to do to help my body adjust to all biking, all the time.

 There was this nostalgia factor, too — a window into the past that was already opening wide. Rain poured down and I cycled through memories that hadn't crossed my mind in years. Smooth spinning carried me around the Kananaskis Lakes, and I finally regained feeling in my extremities on the steep climb up Elk Pass. The descent was a comedy of bike racing. Everyone was hopped up on adrenaline and passing each other aggressively, slicing through the greasy mud and launching into puddles with no regard for delicate bike parts that wouldn't see real service for hundreds of miles. I watched two guys crash in front of me in quick succession, and then I skidded off the trail and flew over the handlebars into thick brush. I lost my bear spray in this crash, although I didn't realize it at the time. If I wasn't covered in mud before, I definitely was by then, but I could only giggle about it. A few miles later, an ambulance passed while negotiating the slimy road to collect a rider who was badly injured.

On the road into Elkford, we encountered our first patches of death mud — you know, the kind of mud that collects on a bike's tires and frame until wheels won't turn at all. The secret to death mud is to try and power through it, but power mudding is exhausting, extremely hard on drivetrains, and impossible for weaklings like me. Walk and the mud will probably pull your shoes off, if you wear them a size and a half too big like I do. Death mud can be incredibly frustrating, but I had a bemused attitude about it on this day. I passed Arizona rider Elliot DuMont as he was tearing into what looked like a full-sized baguette. We rode together for a stretch, and I enjoyed his animated company. I can be standoffish during these types of events — not intentionally, but socializing with strangers takes a lot energy that I don't necessarily have to spare. Long, solo races like the Tour Divide are full of introverts, and we don't always find the best ways to connect. It's nice to meet naturally social people who tell engaging stories and have a good sense of humor about death mud.

The bulk of the mid-pack was thoroughly wet and shivering by the time we reached Elkford, which is 110 miles from Banff. I stopped into a convenience store to restock for the next 170 miles to Eureka, so I wouldn't need to go into Sparwood, which I figured would be mostly closed by the time I arrived. Inside the store, eight other riders were huddled around counters and smearing mud pretty much everywhere. I felt bad for the employees, but it was marginally warm inside the building, and I was desperate for a hot drink. I filled a cup with coffee and dumped about four creamers into it — a strange thing for me to do, as I usually drink coffee black. But I tend to make odd food choices in the heat of battle, and always arrive at the conclusion that calories are calories and the specifics probably don't matter much.

"This is the most amazing thing ever," I announced to the others as I downed the sickly sweet brown water. I microwaved a frozen mystery meat sandwich and purchased a large bag of nuts, a block of cheese, some energy bars, some chips, and one bag of candy. The specifics of calories may not matter too much, but I was determined to get more protein this time around.

Most of the other riders at the convenience store seemed reluctant to leave town, and there was talk of sharing rooms at the only hotel in Elkford. I had no interest in calling it a day. I felt like I was finally warming up, and was surprised when my legs balked on the climb out of the valley. "I guess I do have a hundred miles on them," I thought. Elliot caught up to me at the Josephine Falls trail, and we fumbled around for a bit, trying to discern the correct route from a maze of fading logging roads and deer trails winding through clear-cut forests. After descending a faint singeltrack, we landed in a morass of the worst death mud. Elliot and I plowed forward in good humor. "I just lubed my chain!" Elliot exclaimed with indignation, and I laughed. After a few hundred feet my bike locked up completely, but when I tried to pick it up, I couldn't because it was at least thirty pounds heavier than before.

"Argh," I'm so weak, I grumbled. I picked up a stick to scrape mud from the frame and continued shoving the locked-up wheels through sludge.

Daylight faded completely as we dropped off the muddy logging roads onto the gradual paved descent into Sparwood. Alice caught us at the highway and I soon fell off the back. I suppose that's embarrassing, as Alice was on a singlespeed, but I expected that most everyone was a faster rider than me. The road into Sparwood was choked with cars leaving some kind of Friday night event, and I was annoyed by all the traffic. I had everything I needed, so at the turnoff to town I just continued straight and quickly put the chaos behind me.


I didn't have a plan for the next stretch, but already figured I'd just ride until 1 a.m. and then set an alarm for 5 a.m. As I pedaled along the highway, shivering set in again. I amended my plan to stop shortly after the turnoff to Corbin Road, so I could crawl into my sleeping bag and get warm. Ten miles past Sparwood, I rode down a steep path and found a nice, secluded spot next to the river. Clouds had cleared out entirely, and the sky was splattered with stars. As I unrolled my bivy and tried to remember the steps to this bedtime routine, I noticed that the puddles surrounding my campsite were already glazed with ice.

"It's going to be a cold night," I thought. This realization should have made me uneasy — I was already cold, my clothes were still wet, and I was relying on a seven-year-old sleeping bag that was never rated for temperatures below freezing. My bear spray was gone and just a few minutes earlier I heard coyotes yipping. But all I felt was an encompassing sense of tranquility. I'd been on the move for 16 hours and traveled 150 miles through the Canadian Rockies, and I found what I came here to find — peace. My moving tunnel of peace.

I crawled into my sleeping bag, still shivering, and hoped I'd warm up soon. Having finally stopped long enough to relax, I realized that my throat was quite sore. Also, my lungs had a strange, scratchy feeling with I breathed.

"Damn, I hope I'm not catching a cold," I thought. But I wasn't too worried. I don't get sick all that often. Beat will catch a cold that will take him out for a week, and I'll catch the same virus, get a runny nose for a day, and move on. Little cold viruses had nothing on the challenges I was going to face in the coming weeks, and I knew it, because I'd been here before. I shrugged off my sore throat, curled into a ball, and shivered myself to sleep.