Tour Divide

And she's like, on day three, she's like, Josh.

Craig's doing the tour divide.

And I was like, really? She's like, yeah, that's fantastic.

So, so she, so she followed you and told me every day where you were at and what you were doing and any, anything that any information that you released is, you know, as soon as you got home, basically, she's been like, you got to get Craig in the pockets.

And I was like,

who? Just kidding.

anyways so tell us man like what i guess maybe to start like what is the tour divide and what's the body of organization and all that kind of stuff like educate us

so a little history i suppose uh the tour divide is an ultra distance bikepacking mountain bike event that takes place on the second friday of june every year uh this year the 2026 was the 18th running of the tour divide uh that includes a year that they skipped for covid but uh The route that it follows is the Great Divide mountain bike route that was created, designed, and published by the Adventure Cycling Association back in 1998.

And I, in my mind, I was already like, I cannot believe you got, you're going to get second.

Like I had almost conceded and it was more like, is anyone coming behind? Is Katie still there? That was kind of my mindset because I, For me, coming to this race, I honestly, I just wanted to finish a race and not end my season on two DNFs because I dropped out of Unbound and I dropped out of the Tour Divide.

So I literally came here just to get something done before offseason.

And so I was already stoked.

That's kind of about the only real sport I do on a regular basis.

And we've got a big race here called the Tour Divide.

You should come over and do that someday.

I've actually already registered for next year's Tour Divide.

I'm getting all my kits and everything.

So Christmas is a great time for me because all the little things I need, my wife can buy me for presents.

And I actually need to remind myself to stop and look around.

I often miss things because I don't do that.

And this was like the first one back, you know? So I don't know.

It was just, it was, um, plus I've had some like, uh, some back issues and i mean i have like a knee issue on this that i thought would go away on the first day and it just got sort of worse and worse and worse yeah i gotta go back and get it looked at while i still have my out-of-pocket maximum paid for the year um But congratulations on Tour Divide.

Oh, thanks, man.

Dude.

Right.

So I'll forget about what happened in the race for several months.

And then I remember going back and preparing for this year, looking at last year, I mean, 2022 tour divide, which is several years ago.

And my memory is just so sharp on every moment that happened during that event.

Riding my bike alone but surrounded by other riders through the mountains feels like a fitting place to mark the occasion.

My last big race was the Tour Divide, an event that I was returning to, and it didn't have so many unknowns.

My prep for Taurus feels pretty different, and I'm definitely feeling some insecurity and anxiety about what the route is actually going to be like, but also excitement.

Outside of reviewing the race manual and making a few switch-ups to my bike setup, I've gone to flat bars instead of drops in order to better handle the rougher terrain.

Yeah, for sure.

Like you said, and this isn't, this isn't just, like, in the hunting world, but I think, like, there's certain events like the Tour Divide or this, you know, the Iditarod, and, like, we are like, by the end of these events, like, we're just a bunch of, like, garbage cans.

It's so bad.

Like, you look at the, the Tour Divide, they, you know, they can only get supplies on the route, what they find along the way.

Like, all these racers, and these are world-class athletes, by the time they're, like, halfway through the race, they're eating nothing but, like, hot dogs, french fries, like anything that's high fat, you know, high, high carbohydrates, you know, get some protein in there as well.

But, like, like, for me, I remember, um, in, in '24, I remember, uh, can't remember the name of the village.

So look, while we have broken down our experiences in the last, uh, last few months here, um, we've also been able to lean on some of the greats of the sport and, and luckily enough, um, a friend, Lachlan Morton got back to us, uh, kind of talking about his experience around scratching and his thoughts around it.

And, and as well as Megan hacking in, uh, tour divide winner, tour divide record holder, uh, just crushing almost every frigging bike packing race.

She goes into local gal too.

So that's pretty awesome.

I think it's useful to decide how you'll respond when things go sideways before you even get to the start line, when your head is clear and unfogged by fatigue, hunger, and competitive drive.

I have guidelines around what I can tolerate as discomfort, what represents a genuine threat to my health and safety, and when it's time to stop.

Going into the 20-26 tour divide, one of those guardrails was concussion.

If I fell, hit my head, and suspected a concussion, I planned to seek a professional assessment before continuing.

I am your host Chris Penaskey, and I gotta be real honest, this is the first interview I have done in some time.

I, I think the last interview was some time around the end of June or early July with Megan Harkenen after she broke the women's record on the Tour Divide.

And, uh, and then I got really busy.

It was unfortunate.

Felix Laberge has spent the last couple of years making a pretty strong case for the idea that you don't actually need a lot of gears to ride really far or really, really fast.

He rides a custom built Tulipe Cycles single speed, and in 2025 he set the single speed FKT on the 800 kilometer long Log Drivers Waltz before going on to set both the overall and single speed FKT on the 1,650 inaugural Golden Horseshoe.

And then in 2026, this year, Felix returned to the Tour Divide, this time on that same single speed Tulipe and rode the roughly 4,400 kilometer route in just over 14 days, setting a new single speed record in the process.

But what I find most interesting about Felix isn't necessarily the numbers.

And then Rocky Ging? Ging? I'm not sure on the pronunciation.

Is second, followed by Javier Chiriboga or The Farmer, who's in third, and this is also the last race of the Triple Crown Challenge, having done the Tour Divide and the Colorado Trail earlier this year.

Liz Ryan leads the women's race ahead of Katie Aplin and Tori Berry still.

The route's changed quite a lot this year.

He's taken a bit of a break from racing.

Um, I think he burnt out on it a little bit, to be honest, having spoken to him a few times.

But of course, he won Tour Divide and was second at Tour Divide, so him and Justinas had those battles a couple of years back, and it'd be really good to see him back.

And I know Ulrik just doesn't turn up to come second.