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News & Features
From the Idyllwild Town Crier weekly newspaper, 07.17.08 edition.
Local
completes bike race
in under 30 days
By Marshall Smith, Correspondent
Some climb mountains. Idyllwild resident Mary Collier, 29, rode over
them, completing a 2,711-mile grueling race, the American Cycling
Association’s Tour Divide, atop the spine of the Continental Divide in
under 30 days. Out of 17 2008 starters, Collier is the only woman. At
press time, nine, including Collier, had completed the course.
Tour Divide is a solo self-supported mountain bike race from Banff,
Alberta, Canada to the Mexican border at Antelope Wells, N.M. in the
United States. Think of the route this way — it straddles the fall line
over the Rockies from which water flows, depending on where it lands,
west to the Pacific and east to the Atlantic. Conceptually, should a
rider moving southward along the race course sweat droplets to the
right, they would wind up in the Pacific; to the left, in the Atlantic.
In the words of former Tour Divide racer Kent Petersen, in his article,
“Dreaming of the Divide,” “This climb is too long, the air is too thin,
my bike is too heavy and I am too slow. I am riding the crooked spine
of the continent I call my home and I am here because of the dreams.
“In 1990, Gary McFadden and Michael McCoy dreamed of a mountain bike
trail stretching from Canada to Mexico along the spine of the Rocky
Mountains. Over the years they made that dream real and with the rest
of the staff at the Adventure Cycling (now American Cycling)
Association, they mapped out a nearly 2,500-mile mixture of dirt and
gravel roads, some single track and as little pavement as possible.”
The 2008 Tour Divide race began June 13. The route meanders across the
divide and accumulates more than 225,000 feet of climbing in its
exhaustive course. Riders, most of whom are male, typically finish in
three weeks or more. There are no prizes, only the satisfaction of
having completed one of the most arduous mountain bike courses in the
world. Collier joins a proud pantheon of finishers in this year’s race,
three of whom came from abroad to compete — one from the United
Kingdom, one from Germany and one from Romania. All three international
competitors had finished as of press time.
In completing the crown jewel of the North American bicycle touring
routes in 29 days, 17 hours and 37 minutes, Collier has much to be
proud of, as her own words show from her blog site: “Hey, it’s Mary.
It’s Sunday, July 13. Steve Gleasner and I pulled through the border at
about 3:37 this morning, just a few hours under 30 days. WOW, WOO HOO.
Friggin’ awesome. This is just big. This is one of the biggest days of
my life. This is so huge. I don’t know where to start. It’s still
sinking in ... I’ve got a million things to do. I’ve got some eating to
do. I’ve got some coffee drinking to do. I have about 800 photos to
post and 800 stories to tell ... Thank you everyone. It’s been the time
of my life. I can’t believe I did it. ... Thank you all. I love you and
you’ll hear from me soon.
That much seems certain.
Mary Collier
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