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. 

Tour Divide downfall

Silverthorne, Colorado

In case you were wondering what I've been doing for the past ten days since I left the Tour Divide, the answer is sleeping. Mostly. My parents drove from Salt Lake City to Frisco, Colorado, to scoop me up after I waffled for two days about quitting. This delay was ridiculous, actually, given how much I declined in my final two days on the route, and how monumentally difficult even the most basic tasks had become. A doctor called in a prescription for me during my "zero" day in Silverthorne. I'd languished in bed all afternoon, consuming only complementary apple juice because I was too weak to walk to 7-Eleven, and too nauseated to eat solid foods anyway. The prescription was filled at a Walgreens that was a mile away, and I decided to walk there because I felt too weak to carry my bike down (and inevitably back up) the stairs of my hotel. I don't need to describe this walk in great detail, but I was a wreck — dizzy, wheezing audibly, needing to sit down every five minutes for a break. It was a mile. The chore took nearly two hours to complete. I was as sick as I've been in ten years. And still, I waited until later that evening to call my mom, to call my race done.

 The decline was startlingly quick and precise. I wheezed my way into Colorado still feeling reasonably able. I reached the Brush Mountain Lodge, which was one of my big sub-goals, and enjoyed two big meals and a full night's rest at this haven run by the Divide's most dedicated trail angel, Kristen. Despite this, I slept rather poorly with lots of wheezing and coughing. The next morning, I had an asthma attack about five miles into the day, halfway up the watershed divide. It was worse than the attack I had outside Pinedale, and for a few seconds I fully believed I would asphyxiate and that would be the end of me. When my breathing finally opened up, I was shaken. Even if I was emotionally overreacting to this respiratory distress, I couldn't deny that this attack wasn't caused by dust or late-day fatigue. It was a beautiful, calm morning, and I'd only pedaled five miles since I started the day. I rested for ten minutes and actually started pedaling back in the direction of Brush Mountain Lodge. But then I decided that I was close enough to Steamboat Springs to reach it safely, and there I could seek medical attention.

 Mike, a Tour Divider who happened to live in Steamboat Springs, gave me advice on clinics in town when he passed near the top of the pass. He took a long ice cream break at the Clark store, and I saw him again after the long descent. I was very shaken at this point, because I was having trouble breathing all the time, even descending, and couldn't quite catch my breath when I stopped. Mike looked concerned, and I told him I was "okay, just having a tough day. I just need to drink something." Inside, I grabbed sunscreen and fruit juice. "Calm down," the clerk said with a friendly grin as I panted at the register. "It's a long race. You have lots of time."

In Steamboat, I took my bike into Orange Peel bicycle shop and asked the mechanics for replacement chain, cassette, chainrings, and brake pads — everything I thought I'd need to get to Antelope Wells. Then I made an appointment at a medical clinic. They couldn't see me until 5:30, so I spent several hours sitting on various street benches on the main strip of Steamboat Springs, feeling more and more anxious.

The doctor listened to my lungs, conducted several breathing tests, listened to me cough, and told me I had bronchitis. He seemed confident in this diagnosis, and also in the prescription of antibiotics and an albuterol inhaler. "In a few days you should feel fine again," he said. "But if you don't, go see another doctor."

 When I left Steamboat in the morning, I did feel better. I pedaled slowly out of town, around the dam, and up Lynx Pass. I stopped to talk with GDMBR tourists, told them about my bronchitis amid phlegmy coughs, and said I was on antibiotics now so "hopefully I get my lungs back."

"You're going to need them," one said.

After Lynx Pass, the route is rippled with short but steep climbs and descents into the Colorado River Valley. The afternoon was unseasonably hot, and my thermometer read 31C at 9,000 feet. At first I felt uncomfortably overheated, and then dizzy. My arms felt like they were boiling, and when I looked down, I noticed dozens of tiny, white blisters bubbling up from the skin on my forearms. I've had this before — heat blisters — usually as an extreme reaction to sunlight. I slathered myself in more sunscreen and pulled my sleeves down, but still my arms and legs felt like I was holding them in an oven. I filtered more water from a stream and took long swigs. Nothing seemed to work. It was hot, but it wasn't unreasonably hot. It didn't seem likely I was developing heat stroke at 90 degrees, when I'd spent the past two weeks outside all day every day, and was well-acclimated to the heat.

Looking back, it could have been the antibiotics I was on. They warn you to "avoid excessive sun exposure on this medication." But when the boiling sensation abated and I started to feel chilled, I became alarmed. Either this was real heat stroke, or I had a fever.

The rest of the afternoon is something of a fog. I decided what I needed was breaks in the shade. These breaks became more frequent. Sometimes I'd battle my way from shade patch to shade patch, feeling dizzy on the sun-exposed sections of dirt road in between. Whenever I had breathing difficulties, I used my inhaler, but the respiratory distress seemed like a secondary concern at this point. As the route climbed Gore Canyon, the road was cut into a steep, rocky slope, and pullouts were the only places I could rest. Direct sunlight made me so dizzy and weak that I almost couldn't stand up. I remember almost dozing off only to hear that voice in my head scolding, "If you don't get up now, you are literally going to fry." About a hundred yards later, I found a nice patch of shade and decided to lay down for a longer period of time. I sent out a message from my Delorme declaring my intentions. I'm trying not to be melodramatic about this, but at the time it seemed prudent to do so, just in case I was found unconscious. I wasn't sure if this dizzy, feverish feeling would subside enough to ride into Kremmling. I remember, before falling asleep for about ten minutes, watching dozens of mosquitoes hover over me. "The mosquitoes are biting me and I don't even care," I thought miserably. "I don't even care."

It was the worst I've ever felt amid attempts at physical activity, and I include that time I came down with debilitating food poisoning in Nepal. It took me a couple more hours just to ride the eight mostly downhill miles into Kremmling. But hope springs eternal, doesn't it? Those who have read the book about my first Tour Divide might remember my hang-ups about quitting this race in Kremmling, Colorado. I hoped I'd just had a *really* bad day, and that the antibiotics would kick in. I checked into a motel, walked to the store to purchase a half dozen Odwalla smoothies — so I wouldn't need to consume solid food on my bike — and braced for the following day.

I don't need to describe the ride from Kremmling to Silverthorne in great detail. It was a lot like the day before — starting out okay but rapidly declining into a slow-motion stumble from shade patch to shade patch. I felt the need to take more hits from my inhaler than was recommended, and decided to resist this urge on the chance the inhaler was causing my feverish decline. I was basically grasping at any rationale at this point, as I spiraled downward into a great pit of malaise.

After cresting Ute Pass — and looking back, I'm amazed I made it — I stopped to gaze over a green valley crowned with stunning snow-capped peaks, and felt nothing. "This is Colorado," I thought, "and it's so beautiful, and I don't even care. I don't even care." I realized then that I wasn't doing anything brave or meaningful. I was joylessly dragging my unwilling body over the Divide, and it didn't mean anything.

I came to the Tour Divide to search for strength, and what I found was weakness. Powerful weakness. Astonishing weakness. Humbling weakness. Several days later, when it was 106 degrees in Salt Lake City and I could scarcely drag myself through my parents' house, I wondered if this was what it felt like to be very old, and very frail, and visibly witness the life force draining from my body. My health *has* improved substantially since then. But not as substantially as I would have hoped. I still become short of breath during physical exertion. I still feel like I'm staring down a tunnel of blah. Is it because I didn't quit the Tour Divide soon enough, because I took it too far? Or something else entirely?

I don't know exactly what went wrong. Bronchitis that developed into mild pneumonia seems a likely candidate. Because I experienced other respiratory problems during endurance efforts this year (high altitude wheezing during the Fat Pursuit 200K snow bike race in January, and "kennel cough" during my Alaska bike tour in March), I worry I may be developing asthma (my father developed chronic asthma when he was in his 30s.) Further medical attention might help me narrow down the cause, but at this point it seems doubtful it will speed recovery. Quite a few people had respiratory distress on the Tour Divide this year, and at least four scratched with bronchitis or pneumonia. It's difficult to find enough connection between us to pin these maladies on a specific virus or bacteria. It could have been a perfect storm of high pollen, high winds, dust, and heat, that our bodies reacted to poorly. Or something else entirely.

Lots of great things happened during my Tour Divide, and I feel like I should be writing about those. But right now, this illness is my take-away, my lesson. What have I learned from it, besides the incredible power of weakness? It's something to mull further between naps, for now.

I'm grateful to my parents for rescuing me from Frisco when I wasn't functioning well. They spent fourteen hours driving to Colorado and back just so I could spend the night in my own (childhood) bedroom while my mother doted on me. I actually rode my bike from Silverthorne to Frisco, which is about eight miles along a paved bike path, on Sunday morning. I had to push my bike up each and every tiny incline, but I was feeling okay after all the sleep and thought I wasn't doing so badly. Then a little girl on a pink bike with training wheels passed me, and I just smiled. "When it's over, it's over."

I have a friend in Frisco, Daniel, who lives right on the GDMBR. I'd avoided going over there because entering his house meant my race was truly over. Instead, I spent those awful two days languishing alone in a hotel room in Silverthorne, just to keep the sad dream alive. I can't even describe the sense of relief I felt when I stepped into Daniel's home. It was as wonderful as finishing the race ... almost.