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Yeah, schraeder valve, 200psi capability (150 will be enough unless you're fucking fat)

put some air in, maybe 90psi, see if it helps...

Looks like a great route!

Doesn't need to look good

I can't believe you said that. You've moved down in my estimations.

That canondale is fugly

@andy_k You're doing BB200 right?

It's a stans bogey. Pretty common, I've had several. On Tour divide, it got so heavy it made the wheel wobble at speed. Had it taken out and new goo added.

Not enough calorie burning long rides.

Do Tour Divide...

I've piled on 4kgs in the past 4 weeks, moving house, not riding enough and too much procrastin-eating.

Must drop back to 70kg!

Last 3 years I've worn Northwave Celcius. Great shoes, basically use them like wellies in mud/river crossings.

Also have Shimano M089 combined with Gore Socks, works a treat in all but coldest conditions. Had M088s before, they lasted about 4 years I think, somewhere around 10000 mile mark. Tour Divide killed them in half.

Including bike?

Yeah. Rough breakdown:

Flights £850 plus £150 to change the return flight date (British Airways, LHR > YYC, PHX > LHR)
Food, Lodging and Mechanicals en route: £1600
Extraction from Antelope Wells to Phoenix £400 (shuttle ride, and cousins hiring car for a few days).
Bike, bags, dynamo kit, etc £3000ish

Worlds most expensive free race.

Tour Divide is free.

Cost me about £5k all in.

whingy fuckers.

Have you tried it anywhere with thick clouds of mosquitoes? I tried 3 different repellents in the Rockies, nothing worked. I went for one piss in Colorado, and got 4 bites on my bellend (I didn't think to put repellent on it)! My mate went for a shit and got hundreds on his butt cheeks!

South downs way is good training. I did the double in Sept last year. Took 27 hours, but Josh Ibbet did it in 16 hours I think. There are 95 gates in each direction. Get good at mounting/dismounting the bike!

shudder

And, get brake pads with cooling fins. You'll be thankful.

some of the downhills are 16 miles long, and steep with huge exposure. I nearly went over the edge coming into Salida because I was hallucinating/falling asleep.

@skinny if you wanna get some rides in, come down to devon, I'll show you a hard time.

Also, Lael Wilcox finished her second TD this year in 15 days 11 hours. New womens record. She is beast!

I recorded Tour Divide as individual days, converted to GPX by uploading to strava, then downloaded the GPXs, combined manually in Textmate, then simplified the route to 200,000 points in GPSBabel. Voila. The file was way over Strava's stated 25Mb, but still under 100Mb, so uploaded fine...

https://www.strava.com/activities/341380125

I can tell you about tyres.

Loads of racers used Maxxis Icons, I used Continental X-King 2.4 ProTection, front and rear. They are 45 notes each, but they lasted the entire race with tread still to spare on the rear. People using Maxxis Icons had to swap front and rear somewhere in Colorado to make them last.

Wheels, if you can afford it, rohloff. I borked my rear mech on day one in the special mud around Josephine Falls. Or ride Singlespeed, which I will do next time. Just to save on mech stresses. Get a dynamo front wheel too. Sod trying to buy lithium batteries at every town after 50 other racers have been through in the past 24 hours.

I would also fit aero bars next time, if only to give the hands a rest. Not in a low aero position, but pretty high up, just to rest. I was almost asleep most of the time anyway, so might as well be comfy!

I can't even be bothered to read that Rice family QA thing. Too much ego going on with him, and the mum was at the start giving out "Billy and Lina" wrist bands. FFS. She was super offended when a few of us refused to wear them.

I did Tour Divide as a qualifier for the HT550 2016.

Yeah, should be fine, might need a service. And get some Fork Juice to help reduce friction. I spray my forks before most rides (try not to get the mist on your disc rotor!!)

Those ENVE forks are minging. I much prefer my Whiskey No9 with it's internal cable routing.