Race Report: Into Day 17

With less than two days until our first racer reaches the Mexican border, we have watched the action for 2nd place heat up.  After falling off of Kurt's pace at the Colorado/New Mexico border, Jay and Tracey had been making up incredible time through the 170 miles of flat pavement after Cuba (mile 2234).  As of this morning, Kurt Refsnider and Jay and Tracey Petervary are riding within an hour of each other into Pie Town (mile 2441). Chris Plesko, who had been staying in second-place contention through southern Colorado and northern New Mexico in spite of his singlespeed bike, was unable to keep the pace of geared riders on the long segment of highway.  Presently, he has roughly 8 miles of pavement and 32 miles of flat dirt road between him and second place.

The weather continued to play a role in the race through the weekend as storms battered the leaders Friday and Saturday.  Storms have made the Brazos Ridge nearly impassible and Kurt Refsnider reported that storms were causing flooding north of Grants.  Sunday's weather was better for the race leaders and today's forecast into Silver City looks great with clear skies and temperatures in the mid-80s.  That said, all the rain that has fallen over the past weeks have still left muddy and dangerous conditions on the route as there is a flash food watch in effect for the Silver City area until this evening.

Record Pace

The inclement weather and poor route conditions of the last few days has made maintaining a record-breaking pace difficult.  Matthew Lee, in spite of his best efforts, has been unable to maintain a record pace since leaving Abiquiu (mile 2156).  As of Pie Town, Matt is just 6 hours behind record pace; a gap that can be easily closed if the weather holds until the finish.  It will be exciting to see if Matt is able to pick up the pace and maintain his gear through the finish.  Gary Blakley, in posting some great summaries of his interaction with racers on the route, publicly revealed that Matt intends to ride his drivetrain all the way to the border, in spite of 2745 miles and an unusually high amount of mud this year:

The chain he shipped to Steamboat got returned for some reason. He chose to wait until Salida to change it but Scoty told him it was too far gone to change unless he did at least a cassette too. Matthew was unwilling to pay retail for an XTR cassette so he's riding the same drive train all the way. I put my chain checker on his chain, out of curiousity, and it is WAY stretched. I hope it will live to the border. (link)

Alternatively, Chris Plesko will have no difficultly smashing Jen Hopkins' 2008 singlespeed record of 28 days, 16+ hours.  Moreover, he is set to break Kent Peterson's 2005 border-to-border record of 22+ days.

Jill Homer is also staying well above the female record pace.  As of Salida, her lead over Jen Hopkins' time is approximately 1 day, 12 hours.  As many people may recall, Jen was struck with illness in New Mexico and took 6 days to finish the last legs of the route beyond Abiquiu.  Because of this, Jill has a solid buffer-zone to set a record, barring any unforeseen events.

Ride The Divide

As many fans may remember, last year Mike Dion, along with Hunter Weeks and Anthony Cimino, followed the race for the upcoming film Ride The Divide.  If you have not already seen it, be sure to check out the work-in-progress trailer on youtube (which I hijacked from Mike Dion's website and uploaded to YouTube for everyone's benefit).

Divide Media

Chris Plesko's wife, Marni, was able to post all of Chris's pictures from Banff to Salida online.  It is a large and unfiltered album, but there are some very interesting shots on the album.