THIS IS UPDATE #4: TD
Minus OMG 14 Days and Counting…
Fund Raising Update: To Date I have received pledges
totaling $14,691, or 59% of the way toward my goal of $25,000. (Up from 52%
last week.) Every pledge helps the momentum, no matter how small: 1¢ per
mile = $27; 2¢ per Mile = $54; 5¢ per mile = $135… etc. (And don’t forget about the
anonymous dollar-for-dollar match for Race Team Training Center pledges!)
Training Update: From March 15 (1st Ride
of the spring), through today we (did I mention that this is a “Team
Effort”?) have logged 46 rides, 1,659 miles and 122,400 feet of climbing.
Last weekend I did a “Shakedown Ride” with fully loaded bike
bags and camped along the way. WF to Thompson River (100 Miles Day 1); over Thompson
Pass to Kingston, ID (110 Miles Day 2); then round trip to Harrison, ID on the
Coeur d’Alene Trail (70 Miles Day 3). Total of 280 miles. Most things worked
flawlessly, but just a few things to work on:
·
The “aero bars” are still wanting to move around
but boy are they sweet for the long flat stretches! I just can’t seem to get a
good fastening system on my tapered handle bars… work in progress
·
My top tube frame bag from my old bike just
isn’t going to work – too big for the frame geometry of this bike. I ordered a
new smaller one from Revelate today.
·
Existing water bottle cage locations won’t work
with frame bags. Need plan “B”…
·
Spot Tracker worked great! (At one point Cindy
called to ask why I had stopped J…)
·
Still trying to figure out how to pack 8 L of
water through NM. Thinking about one 2L and one 4L bag strapped to frame bag
set-up, and 2L on my back in the hydration pack. Lots of guys don’t like to
carry the weight of a hydration pack on their back but I’m so used to it, it
seems like an easy way to add 2L. Plus, if I keep filling it from the other
bags, it provides an easy way to drink.
·
This means I only need 2 water bottle cage
set-ups: 1 for bear spray in a Velcro-fastened cage on the front of the seat
post and 1 for the Hammer mix de jour in a Velcro-fastened cage low on the
frame.
·
I really had room to spare on this ride, plus I
can gain some room for more stuff with straps onto the front of the Revelate
sweet roll handle bar bag.
·
It seems like my mini-charger will keep all my
stuff (Garmin, Phone & Ipod Shuffle) charged for 3 days at a time – so that
means a motel at least every 4th night. (In reality it will probably
be more like every 3rd night.)
·
Navigation is still a question – THE issue
being: The Tour Divide navigation waypoints are all sequenced for a
north-to-south ride, so when I load the route (gpx file) into my Garmin and
start riding north it keeps telling me to turn around L. I need to figure out if I can just reverse the order of
the waypoints… work in progress
Tour Divide Race Update: Lots of communication from
“The Commissioner”. Mainly just final route tweaks like this:
On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 10:45 PM, Matthew Lee <heymatthewlee@gmail.com> wrote:The official TD GPX file has now been updated to reflect the new main route btwn Basin and Butte. You can grab it here: http://topofusion.com/divide/gps.php Please note there are two versions. One is simplified to fit onto most GPS navigators (10,000pts).Happy holiday weekend. This should be your last big double-century weekend of training. Keep it safe!~Matthew
Not much talk lately about fires in NM… Just HOT!
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