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9.16.08
Tour de Holy S#@t!
The Tour Divide might be the hardest mountain bike race on
earth. And Maine’s Stephen Gleasner might be the most unlikely rider to conquer
it.
by
Dan Mathers
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Maine's Stephen Gleasner hauls his
mountain bike up a snow-covered mountain during the Tour Divide.
IMAGINE A MOUNTAIN
BIKE RACE where you have to pick up your bike and carry it over a lofty
Rocky Mountain peak by hand while you posthole your way through
knee-deep snow in mid-June. Imagine how you look like wounded prey to
any hungry grizzly bear in the area. Imagine your following days are
spent pedaling through fierce lightning storms, scorching deserts and
monsoon rainfalls. Now imagine the race is 2,700-miles-long from the
Canadian interior down to the border of Mexico . . . oh, and on this
race, you’re completely unsupported.
Welcome to the Tour
Divide.
Part mountain biker’s
dream, part mountain biker’s nightmare, the Tour Divide is a ride of
monstrous proportions held every summer along the world’s longest
off-pavement biking route – the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route – a
collection of long dirt roads and jeep trails that wend their way
through forgotten passes of the Continental Divide. For a thru-rider,
completing the route means climbing nearly 200,000 vertical feet. With
no prize money at stake, the race is more personal challenge than
competitive endeavor, and the real measure of victory is just finishing.
This year, Maine rider Stephen Gleasner was one of the few who completed
the race.
Gleasner, a
46-year-old artist from Appleton, Maine, is an unlikely New Englander to
conquer the Tour Divide. “I’m not really an adventurer,” Gleasner says.
He doesn’t own a tent, doesn’t go camping. He did some cycling in his
youth, but hadn’t done 100 miles at a time since his 20s. Now, with a
wife and two young kids, he couldn’t get away to do any long-term
training.
But he had seen an ad
for the Tour Divide in a cycling magazine, and he couldn’t get it out of
his mind. “I wanted to do something big,” he said. “I wanted to be
challenged.” In the Tour, he got all he wanted and then some.
In June, when he
lined up at the race’s starting line in Banff alongside just 17 other
riders, his game plan was just to let them go and to stay at his own
pace. Gleasner packed just a sleeping bag and a light tent. For food, he
had to make due with what was available and be sure to plan ahead. At
times, he’d be staring at a two-day desert crossing in front of him, and
the only food available to pack was from a gas station vending machine.
“It was constant logistical problems,” he said. “It’s very real, and you
can really screw it up.”
Gleasner was reminded
of that time and again. His darkest moment during the race came while
crossing snow banks on steep cliffs, staring at a fall that would have
meant certain death. “I was more mad than scared,” he said. “That wasn’t
how I wanted my kids to lose their dad.” Some riders ran out of food;
others were struck by injury. By the end, only nine riders finished the
route in New Mexico. And, 29 days after he started, Gleasner was one of
them.
Now, when you ask him
if he has any more big challenges like this in store, Gleasner answers
with an emphatic “No!”
“It was my mid-life
crisis,” he says. “I’ve been cured of that now, so I’ve been informed by
my wife.”
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