Luke is Touring the Divide Day 3

Well I’ve promised you full coverage of Luke’s Tour Divide, but right now I have little to offer.  Here’s what I can tell you as of Sunday afternoon.

Luke is on his 3rd day of riding and has so far ridden 335 miles. The computer is averaging his daily miles around 150.  If he continues at this pace he will finish the ride in 18 days.  The goal was somewhere around 24 days I think.  He is currently sitting in 45th place out of 142 riders.

The current leader, Craig Stappler

This is the fastest Tour Divide on record. The record to the US border was smashed by Craig Stappler by over 4 hours, he made it there in 23 hours and 23 minutes.  Mike Hall also beat the record.  Reports are coming in that there was little snow to contend with in the Canadian section and I’m sure that helped with the speed.

Luke made it to the border in 1 day and 11 hours, making him about 12 hours behind Craig, most of that time was Luke camping.  So I’ve been asked how I think Luke is doing so far, and to be honest having never experienced anything as demanding as Tour Divide I can only guess, but here’s what I think.

So far Luke’s been taking about 9 hours off to rest at night; Craig, the current leader is taking about 5 hours to stop and camp, besides that his moving average is 12.6 where Luke’s is only 10.6

I think based on the numbers that Luke is probably pushing just a little to hard, but is well within his comfort zone.  He appears to be riding on his own, which is probably good.  From his training I know that he can ride pretty much all day around 13-15 mph, of course that’s flat ground.  I think as long as he continues to give his body 8 hours of rest per night he’ll be OK.  My opinion is that it takes great experience to go all day and half the night with just about 4 hours rest like the leader is doing.

He appears to be riding on his own but is keeping within a cluster of riders who are outside the top 15.  The Top 15 are very spread out.

It will be very interesting to see how these guys who are burning up the course are going to hold out.  I was surprised to see that Craig is actually taking about 4 hours off the bike, but can he go for 11 days on 4 hours of sleep a night?

If you want to listen to riders call in go to http://mtbcast.com/site2/tour-divide-2013/ they also have a podcast that gives a news report on the ride.

Luke didn’t seem to keen on calling in, but maybe he will?

If you have time go to Luke’s link on tourtracker and post an encouraging comment on facebook.