Tour Divide Day 2

202km (includes 15km of wrong turns/backtracking). Elkford to Eureka.
13 hours total, including 2 hours stopped.

Woke up with a heavy chest and scorched lungs, but felt much better than I felt last night. Thank you, body!

A lot of people have snow shoes. Not me. I'm banking on being slow enough that there will be a lot of people before me to pack down the snow. On day 1, the strategy worked. Today, there was no snow and not even a stretch of hike-a-bike. There was, however, periods of very cold rain to make things interesting.

I've had a lot of words of support from friends. A lot of those words include reference to me as crazy. I hope that I am not, because I'm really relying on my mental fitness to get me through this.

Wildlife sightings today: a lot of deer and one moose. Cows look a lot like bears if you are paranoid about bears. Which I am. And there were a lot of cows.

Rode alone all day, but leap frogged with Vance from Texas and Lance from New Zealand. They rode faster but stopped a lot.

I took a wrong turn on three separate occasions, leaving me with about 15 bonus kilometres. The cues and gps file on the regular route were excellent up until Sparwood. After that, things deteriorated. It was a bit frustrating, but I guess that it made it more of an adventure.

I saw Lance and Vance on one occasion, realising that they had made a wrong turn, but they had still ended up at the same location as me. They turned around and went back to the missed turn, even though they could have just carried on from there (though that would be cheating). I think that is something very cool about a race like this. It is just about honour. There are a lot of opportunities to cheat, but people will do the right thing if they are given the chance and if they are there for the right reasons.

I had a small crash while I was basically stopped. I guess that I'm still getting used to the weight of my bike. Only minor scrapes. More concerning is the fact that I'm developing some kind of respiratory problem. My chest is heavy and I can take only shallow breaths. On the bright side, it forces me to moderate my pace. Unfortunately, it hurts a lot and I'm worried that it will get worse.

I saw a Deadgoat out for a ride. It was someone that I'd never met (Pete), but any Deadgoat is basically extended family, so it was a pick-me-up to see him.

It was nice to cross the border into the USA, but strange to cross a border without Carrie with me. There was no suggestion box at this one, but there were toilets. Carrie would have been impressed.

Although I was happy with the total distance for the day, I was disappointed to leave 4 hours of daylight and reasonable conditions on the table. I didn't have much choice; my body was begging for mercy and I did not have the mental strength to silence the pleas. I can't remember the last time that I couldn't use my mind to overrule my body. Even on my sickest days in Africa, even on the hardest days at La Ruta, my mind came through for me. This time, though, my body is the boss. And I am totally wasted right now. At least I can sleep longer tonight and hopefully recover well.

I expected this to be hard. And, it is.
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