It was a redemption story in the making for Durango’s Noah Bodewes last week. After failing to complete the 2,700-mile Tour Divide mountain bike race last year due to a mechanical issue, Bodewes finished this year on Monday in Antelope Wells, New Mexico with a finishing time of 17 days, 10 hours and 11 minutes. He finished 12th out of over 200 riders.
The Tour Divide started on June 14 in Banff, Alberta, Canada, and riders made their way South through Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.
“When I finished it was definitely a bit of a bittersweet moment,” Bodewes said. “Being able to say that I did it and finished was huge for me. I actually attempted to race last year and I made it about 370 miles in three days. Then I had a race-ending mechanical that took me out. So I was waiting for the last year to try again and give myself another go at it. The reason it is a little bit bittersweet is racing for that long, you get to a point where you're feeling good at it and all of a sudden it's over.”
Bodewes, 23, isn’t the first in his family to finish the huge race. His brothers Will and Luke both did the Tour Divide race in the past. In fact, Bodewes finished with the exact same time as his older brother Will did previously.
He didn’t know he had an identical time with his brother immediately. The riders follow the route on their Garmin and since it’s an unofficial race, there is no real finish line. Riders know when to stop based on their Garmin data. Bodewes reached the border with a time 10 minutes slower than his brother’s. But he soon realized he tied it with the finish line being 10 minutes North of the border.
The Tour Divide is an unofficial race meaning all the riders are on their own without anyone else physically supporting them by carrying gear or food. Bodewes said he had to pay for food, water and the few times he slept in hotels for the night. There wasn’t a prize purse for any of the finishers.
Although Bodewes couldn’t rely on anyone to physically help him with gear, he did talk to his brothers a lot about what to expect on certain days and how he should expect to feel. Bodewes said the emotional support he got from them was huge.
On his journey, Bodewes was carrying some clothes, rain gear, his sleeping bag and a type of waterproof bag on his bike. He also carried 10,000 to 15,000 calories worth of food on his bike that he’d pick up from gas stations.
To keep his caloric intake up, Bodewes would eat Honey Buns for breakfast for about 600 calories. He’d eat beef and cheese gas station burritos, hard-boiled eggs for a good protein and fat combination and six to seven Clif Bars a day. Sometimes he’d even find a Subway in a town he was riding through and buy two sandwiches to store in his bag for later.
Bodewes said he was eating every 35-45 minutes. He thinks he burned around 10,000 calories a day and was happy if he could eat 6,000 to 7,000 calories a day.
While many riders had planned out their route for each day and where they would stop, Bodewes took a different approach.
“My strategy I thought was actually a lot more effective because I’d bike until I got tired,” Bodewes said. “So a lot of times I'd be biking at 10:30 p.m. or 11 p.m., it'd be dark and I really just wanted to go to bed. I'd be slowing down. So I would pull over on the side of the road, pull out my sleeping bag and just sleep for usually between four to six hours and then I would wake up in the morning and feel a lot better and just start biking again.”
Bodewes averaged about 155 miles per day. He said the start of the race in Banff was beautiful and then he had an easy border crossing into Eureka, Montana. Bodewes said the Border Patrol people were expecting him as there had been 20 riders who had crossed the border before him.
The layout of the track was about 80% gravel roads, 10% pavement and 10% single track, according to Bodewes.
It was horrible weather for most of the race, according to Bodewes. He said the first day was fine but for the next five days in Montana, he experienced snow for at least an hour with a combination of snow and rain falling on and off sometimes multiple hours a day.
Once he got into Wyoming and Colorado the weather was fine. But the rain picked up again in New Mexico. This gave him a leg up on his opponents. With all the mud from the rain in New Mexico, Bodewes caught up to some of his opponents. The mud was so bad at points that other riders turned back because they couldn’t ride through it at that time. Bodewes picked up his bike and carried it through the worst part of the mud for a mile until conditions got better.
Bodewes’ favorite part of the ride was through Colorado because of the views, the weather and it had the best roads. He also enjoyed Wyoming which he said was very warm which was a drastic change after going through snowy Montana. Bodewes said he had a great tailwind through the Great Divide Basin in Wyoming which he said was a section of about 100 miles with no water. The tailwind helped him fly through Wyoming.
It was a somewhat lonely race for Bodewes. There were some days when he wouldn’t see another rider at all. Other days he would pass other riders and realize the next group of riders was hundreds of miles away.
Justinas Leveika won after finishing the race in 13 days, two hours and 16 minutes. The nearest finisher to Bodewes was Tom Kavanaugh in 13th place six hours behind Bodewes.
Going into the race, Bodewes wanted to get a top-20 finish which he achieved. He was also the third-best American in the race with a lot of Europeans coming to attempt the race.
“I didn't do nearly as much training as I probably should have,” Bodewes said. “I just finished my first year of veterinary school at Colorado State, so I was very busy through the year and I didn't really feel like I had much time at all. I maybe did two or three rides a week, mainly on the weekends, when I had time off school. Then, about a month before, I did like a week of hard training. I did three days in a row of hard bike packing and that's about all I did. When I started the race, I wasn't in very good shape. So it's why you can see on the race flow (race data), I got better throughout the race because I was getting in better shape every day that went by.”
Before he started this race, Bodewes wasn’t sure if he wanted to do a race like this again. But he enjoyed himself more than he expected and wants to do some more races when his schedule allows.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
