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Most riders are either off the course or will be finishing the 2009 Tour Divide race soon. Despite the phantasmagorical weather this year, most records fell—an interesting portent for the evolution of self-supported Continental Divide racing. Alaskan Jill Homer broke the female record with a time of 24 days, 7 hours and 24 minutes. Jay and Tracey “T-Race” Petervary set a tandem (that’s right) record of 18:13:44. And 27-year-old engineer-turned-teacher Chris Plesko blew the asterisks off the single speed record in the 2009 Tour Divide with a time of nineteen days and sixteen minutes. He spun his Vassago 29er through unprecedented bad weather. I caught up with him just after he returned home to Colorado.

JB: How the hell did you keep up with the chase group for most of the race? They had gears (in case you didn't notice).

CP: The first part of the race course is quite singlespeed friendly. It's got loads of climbing and not too many long, gradual downhills which are my nemesis from the perspective of racing with the geared guys heads up. I geared really big (for me) at 32x17 but I knew from training in the mountains above Boulder with a 32x16 that I could push
that gear up almost all of the climbs without walking. Additionally I just tried to save time where ever I could, eating and drinking on the fly, changing clothes while riding, etc.

JB: You not only ride a single speed, but a rigid one. Are you a hippie?

CP: Haha nah I'm as far from a hippie as you can get probably. I love technology most of the time. I'll have to blame Dave Nice for riding rigid. I actually love the Rock Shox Reba forks but Dave gave me a rigid fork for my old Monocog one winter and I soon fell in love with the handling and simplicity of the rigid. No stanchions to freeze up in the winter slush, no pressure settings to fiddle with, just get out and ride. Plus I'm a decent expert XC racer but a terrible pro class competitor, even with gears and suspension, so the rigid singlespeed keeps things interesting in the expert class.

JB: You started last year and pulled the plug--what was different this year, considering the weather was epic?

CP: Experience, plain and simple. Like I mentioned before, I tend to jump right into these things whether I'm totally "ready" or not. Last year I still hadn't successfully completed a multi day endurance race but I wanted to give this a try anyway. Plus I didn't want to choose sides between the TD and GDR since I have good friends firmly on both sides
so I did an individual time trial. Between my lack of experience and the loneliness of the ITT, all the little problems that cropped up (achillies pain, lost GPS) made me pretty unhappy and I felt like I wasn't really racing as hard as I should be. Luckily Marni planted the Colorado Trail race seed in my head as soon as she picked me up from
Lima and I had really good success there finally. Of course in hindsight I should have kept going last year on the Divide because the weather was bomber compared to this year!

JB: From your call-ins you sound like the most positive person on the planet. Are you?

CP: In general I think I'm pretty positive. I feel extremely lucky to have a great wife, wonderful family and supportive friends. The off road ultra racing community is just incredible. We are all out there racing each other, pushing hard and yet we still are so crazy psyched when our buddies succeed. It's hard not to be positive when you've got that
kind of support. When we were dealing with the snow I thought of the epic AZT 300 this year and when the mud was horrendous I thought of all my Grand Loop buddies who battled truely epic mud this year. I do get down and have low moments like everyone does but generally I was having a ton of fun out there and that's the overriding goal.

JB: Were you ever tempted to get to a town, call Marni, and go home?

CP: This year, no. I am amazed myself that I never felt like pulling out this go around after how I felt last year. I did really miss Marni and wanted to see her, which I was able to do in Colorado, but I had no desire to go home until I got to Mexico.

JB: When I did the GDR in 2007, while I was riding I fantasized about baking. I went home and made muffins every day for a month. What did you think about when you were riding all those lonely hours?

CP: Anything and everything. Lately I've been climbing more in the mountains and I did think a lot about that, especially riding by the Tetons and near all the obscure rock formations scattered about the route. Kurt (Refsnider) is a Phd geology wiz and I loved learning about all the science behind everything from him. In fact my theme for racing in
2009 is "commitment" in honor of all the self sufficient alpinists who go out there and commit to huge routes with no chance for bailing. The Divide is even a little tame by comparison, at least from that perspective. I also thought a lot about my life and how much my wife and I have grown together through biking and touring and how much I
can't wait to do more of that. Sharing bike touring routes with friends and family, whatever their ability level, has been really amazing the past few years.

JB: Thousands of spectators watched your record-breaking ride this year. What advice do you have for the two or three who are convinced they can challenge the Divide on a single speed?

CP: For those who want the record, come prepared to race heads up with the geared riders. You chose a singlespeed and that's awesome but it's a choice you made so don't treat it like a handicap. For those who want to finish the Divide on a singlespeed, just make sure it's geared appropriately. Make sure you can climb the majority of the climbs on the route with your gearing and train on the road with the same gear to learn to deal with long term high speed spinning. As far as I know the successful people have run somewhere between 32x17 on a 26er and 32x17 on a 29er.

JB: What's the one thing you wished you'd known before setting out this year?

CP: That the weather was going to be epicly wet? My clothing was sufficient but not awesome for extended wet weather riding. I was quite wet and cold at times and did eventually have Marni mail me a Smartwool long sleeve base layer and a warm hat. Those who aren't totally experienced with going really light in bad weather, make sure
you bring enough warm clothing.

JB: Kent Peterson told me he's happy you broke his record. How important was his 2005 ride to you?

CP: It was pretty important to me actually. I had quite a few people last year who really doubted I could ride the Divide on a rigid singlespeed without hurting myself permanently. I'm a long time reader of Kent's blog and I read his Mountain Turtle story over and over again to both learn about the route and also to realize it could be done on a rigid singlespeed. He is very inspiring to me and I'm really excited to hear he will be riding the full route in 2010. He will just love the Canadian section, it's so beautiful.

JB: What does Chris Plesko eat for breakfast in, say, Del Norte? What does he buy at the Piggly Wiggly to get him over Indiana Pass?

CP: Breakfast for me on the trail almost always includes coffee of some kind even though I don't regularly drink it at home other than on our weekly friday morning Starbucks date. A little canned Starbucks DoubleShot with a couple 600 calorie muffins or danishes was my usual breakfast. If I was lucky I got a couple microwave egg sandwiches or breakfast burritos and a couple times I actually got a real hot breakfast of pancakes, omelets, potatoes and even green chili in Rawlins! In the worst stretch I didn't get a single hot meal for over 300 miles. My trail food was heavily peanut based now that I think about it. I ate dozens of Reese's Peanut butter cups, pack upon pack of king size peanut M&Ms, peanut butter Twix when I could find them and just plain old salted and honey roasted peanuts. Anything new and novel and easy to eat, pizza, cheese bread, cheese sticks, ice cream, brownies, donuts and all kinds of other junk food found it's way into my frame
bag too. The key is just to keep eating whatever you can get down because there was no way I could get close to enough calories out down the hatch out there.

JB: What's next? You gonna be back in Banff next year?

CP: Next up is a lot of recovery but perhaps a 1200k randonee or TransUtah later this year. I do want to qualify for Paris-Brest-Paris in 2011 and I'd love to keep my options open with a RAAM qualifier at some point. I can't really afford RAAM right now but it is intriguing. Next year I won't be back to race from Banff but I do plan to go back to the Grand Loop and perhaps up to the Ultrasport in March if I can figure out how to get up there. I have some other plans for next summer but they're not ready for public announcement at this point.

JB: The Tour de France started Saturday. Will you be kicking back with a few Dale's Pale Ales and yelling "Pussies!" at the plasma screen?

CP: I'm more of a wine or stout drinker these days but I'll definitely be keeping tabs on the Tour. It's really fun to watch those guys duke it out, even if they do sleep, get fed and get massages every night. Besides I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to see how Lance is going to do.

It’s a barn burner for third place in the men’s singlespeed category here in the Breck Epic. Jake Kirkpatrick (New Belgium Brewery) rode like a total badass today, taking out nearly all of my lead. He’s riding incredibly strong, descending like a madman on his fully rigid bike and its four bar Franken fork. Best of all, he’s a great sportsman. This is the essence of amateur bike racing; I nearly lost my marbles on the last few climbs, seeing stars, praying for downhill, a meteor shower, something to put an end to those excruciating climbs. But I didn’t give up- not with my first ever shot at standing on a podium.  I know carbon handlebars are pretty damn strong, but it felt like I was trying to pull it off my bike as I heaved and hoed trying to get that one-geared backbreaker up those hills.

 After the stage we joked that watching each other over our shoulders on the climbs was like the zombie-chasing-the-blonde in B horror flick. We’d glance back and see the other person moving so slowly, and then a few seconds later we’d look again and the other person would be closer. I didn’t let out a blood curdling scream, only because I couldn’t frickin’ breathe.

So today’s stage was awesome. We once again awoke to perfect blue skies, low humidity and cool temps. After a “neutral” start, we climbed Boreas Pass Road for a bit only to bomb down the Aspen Grove Trail. This is the kind of trail you see on granola bar ads on TV.  The field was tight and there was fast and fun wheel-to-wheel riding around me. And then the rolling climbing started, up and up through forested jeep roads and popping out into a beautiful alpine valley that defines Colorado’s beauty.  After a big descent down Boreas Pass Road, we hit the Banker’s Tank Trail. At one point, we passed the 8 foot deep hole that I fell into a few years ago in the Firecracker 50. (it was super cool- people watching, bloody leg, crawling out of the hole…  I felt like a first grader who peed his pants on recess). After bombing down French road, I thought I was pretty much done, but there were three brutal switchbacks before a loose descent to the finish.

So those of you who might have been encouraged to come try the Breck Epic next year after my first few blogs might be think this sounds discouraging. Au contraire is my reply. Who wants to plan a week around an easy stage race? A lot of people I guess, but then again most people think mountain bike stage racing as a vacation ranks above solitary confinement only because of the beer.  No, today’s fast and furious stage was a shit ton of fun, and a warm up for tomorrow’s circumnavigation of Mt Guyot, a fiftyish mile, ten-thousand-feet-of-climbing beatdown that will bring the field to its knees.

That’s all for now. Big pasta meal and birthday cake for my friend Brian. What a week so far. I’m so glad I’m here. Thanks for reading.

I've know Steve Yore for quite some time now, our friendship goes beyond 24 hr races. When he came to LA to be photographed by Jill Greenberg for the cover because he was crowned the Outside's Fittest Real Man In America, I stopped by the shoot.

Now, his time in the limelight is over and this new guy (picture above one the July Issue) gets to wear the jewels. I couldn't pass up the opportunity of asking Steve Yore what it feels like to pass his title on to David Goggins.

Are you crestfallen that your title is being passed along?
I'm thrilled. The new crew is a bunch of badasses. They deserve the recognition!

 “This is a lot of work Brian” I gasped to my buddy as we rode up the last climb before the bitchin singletrack descent on the Flume Trail. I was of course referring to racing a singlespeed, which is new for me this week.  Big grunts uphill, spinning out on flats, but hell, it’s bike racing in Summit County and therefore a damn good time.

Today was the first big stage of the Breck Epic, and it certainly lived up to my expectations. Sick, Sick, Sick. Beautiful blue sky Colorado day, Ten Mile range green and white with summer snow fields towering over us as we queued up for the start. There were familiar faces and smiles all about, but more importantly there was a total lack of the annoying lineup shitstorm that defines the huge stage races like the Transalp. By this I mean standing in crowd of 400 people in a beautiful but cramped village square basking in the overwhelming aroma of BO and Ben Gay.  But I digress, we’re talkin’ Breck Epic here folks. 

So after a neutral start we hit some dirt road climbing that quickly spread out the field. We got up into the maze of mining roads that crisscross the Golden Horseshoe above Breckenridge, including up the appropriately named Push Hill. One of the great things about mountain biking is feeling the history of the land you’re riding and nowhere is this more apparent than in these old mining roads with their tumbledown shacks and abandoned mining equipment.  I might be suffering on my singlespeed but that is nothing compared to those poor prospectors hand digging the flume trails we are riding today.

Eventually we got to the super goods, riding 17 miles of the Colorado Trail from the Middle Fork of the Swan to the dredge. This is my go-to Summit County ride and it was truly great to race this section of trail I have ridden so many times. Perhaps it was a small advantage as I knew what was coming, but I’ll take it. The descent on the Colorado Trail down Westridge is a magic dirt carpet ride that is worth the trip in itself.

So what’s the deal with racing crazy big wheel singlespeeds? I’ve ridden singlespeeds for quite a few years but have been reluctant to race them (see pre-race blog 1). But I’m kind of getting into it. As I have said, my belt-driven Spot singlespeed is a sick bike, but the fun transcends the bike. You’ve got one gear and so that’s what you ride. Maybe you crank past some geared rider up a hill, only to have them pass you on the flats. I can’t say I’m regretting the choice, although the Wheeler Pass loop in two days my change my mind.

OK race fans. I currently stand in third place in the men’s SS category with a slim 41 second lead on a hard charging Jake Kirkpatrick. This is completely new territory for me, but I’ll do all I can to keep this place. Thanks for reading and check back in tomorrow for more updates.

Bachar Portrait (Photo By Karl "Baba" www.peaklightimages.com)

Renowned climber John Bachar was found dead at the base of the Dike Wall near his home in Mammoth Lakes, California on Sunday, July 5. Environmentalist and outdoorsman Auden Schendler wrote the following eulogy after hearing of Bachar's death.

As a recreational rock climber and mountaineer, I’ve always seen my work on environmental issues as a natural extension of that passion for the outdoors, and also part of a long tradition: climbers and mountaineers have a long history of moving from their sometimes solipsistic, self-involved, and meaningless-by-definition sport into hugely important and weighty work, often in the environmental field. Names that come to mind include Yvon Chouinard, a shy and soft-spoken dirtbag climber and gear inventor who later founded Patagonia and became one of the leading thinkers, philanthropists, and spokesmen on sustainability. David Brower, the pioneering American mountaineer and tenth mountain soldier who ran the Sierra Club and defined modern environmentalism; Ed Hillary, whose mission in life and identity was tied as much to helping Himalayan villagers as summiting Everest for the first time; and of course John Muir, who was first and foremost an alpinist. Today, we have Greg Mortensen, Peter Metcalf, and many others working on important environmental and human issues.

This is not to indict those who were, or are, simply, climbers. In the climbing community there have always been other sorts of characters too—for some, climbing was the end in itself, and what the world did with that was up to them. John Bachar, who died yesterday while climbing solo in California, was one of those. He was a pure rock climber who redefined the sport by ascending sheer rock faces of extreme difficulty without ropes to protect him in the event of a fall. What he did was athletic achievement at the highest levels of human ability and training, on par with the skill and discipline of Nadia Comeneci, Michael Phelps, Lance Armstrong, or Michael Jordan. His climbs, only a few years earlier, had been deemed impossible, even roped; climbing them without protection was as absurd as if a man had presumed to fly. But Bachar did fly. And as a result, one can’t compare his numinous climbing to climbing: instead, you have to compare it to art. To explain it best requires words used for Beethoven’s transcendent ninth symphony; it was an “expression of the divine.”

I had never heard of Bachar, or rock climbed myself, until I was sixteen and read an article in Outside magazine, in 1986. There was Bachar, climbing the impossible, alone, wearing red striped tube socks and revealing running shorts. The article changed the way I looked at the world. When I started climbing, I also wore tube socks (it actually meant your shoes fit poorly, most climbers go barefoot inside their shoes) in homage to Bachar. And there was rarely a day of climbing that passed without a reference to Bachar. “Here’s Bachar pulling the crux on the hideous 5.7 directissima…”

Today, I work in an office, and I don’t climb that much, or that well when I do. Several of us at work convinced management to fund a small climbing wall, and we get out there for ten minutes a few days a week, returning to our desks to type awkwardly with pumped forearms. On the bouldering wall, it’s almost certain someone will mention Bachar, just for the fun of it: coming around a corner, a moderately difficult move, a colleague slips, and complains about the slick hold. “What are you, chickenshit?!” someone yells, referencing an alleged comment by Bachar to his partner on a legendary Tuolumne climb.

In college, when we were most avid, Bachar was always more than just a climber for us; he was more than a human being: he was a talisman, a kachina doll, a phylactery that we carried with us for courage and for inspiration. A friend on a climbing trip to Yosemite came back one summer and, as if he had seen Sasquach, reported that Bachar walked in front of his car. “He was huge,” my friend said. Bachar was ripped, for sure, though no giant. But he was huge to us.

Though I never met him, I didn’t need to. I had seen him climbing on videos, his smooth and deliberate and meditative progress up vertical and overhanging faces of granite. This virtuosity in fact and in concept tied to what I was learning in school: Bachar was proof of what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature,” evidence for a human will powerful enough to do great things; to end slavery; to solve large and pressing problems. I imitated him in the same way that I imitated McEnroe’s awkward but beautiful serve.

I spend my days working on what I consider an impossible task as a footsoldier in the battle to solve climate change. If you know even a little about the science, the challenge is awe inspiring. The best scientists tell us we have to cut global carbon dioxide emissions 80% by 2050, and even then we’ll have warmed the planet by several degrees and suffer the consequences. I call solving climate change the challenge not of our generation, but of our species. And the things we’ll have to do are so absurdly difficult that they are almost literally impossible: we have to retool society away from fossil fuel almost immediately, if we hope to succeed, and that means we have to change a cripplingly slow political process, reinvent capitalism, and bring the rest of the world along with us. I spend some of my time in despair. But perhaps that is too strong a word, because there are rays of hope. One of those rays is Bachar.   

Of all things, in this office today, as far from his life and his beloved Tuolumne as conceivable, John Bachar is helping me in my work. Bachar didn’t so much influence the sport of climbing as he altered our understanding of what is possible in the human world. His life suggests that if we’re not pursuing something impossible, we’re not achieving to our full potential. He unlocked a door of possibility, the idea that in the same way that we only use a tiny portion of our brain, we are also only tapping a tiny portion of our potential, a potential so great that like some of Bachar’s climbs, we can’t even fathom it. We will all need—and use—that vision in our common struggles ahead.

--Auden Schendler