I’m behind on all my usual reports for the Big Early Summer Races.
Tour de France is coming up in a couple weeks, but it’s been kinda spoiled. Mostly, I’d say, by all the infrastructure and support-jive. Drugs, money and cars: c’mon, folks, you can do better!
(If you want to follow the Tour and the culture around it, there’s no better way than via George’s Blog. He’s an old dude who bike-tours the Tour route during the race each year. He rides the route each day before the Tour passes through. He writes great and gives us all the inside scoop on the Tour and everything else. He does a copule other big tours each year as well, and volunteers at major film fests, like Cannes, and reports on those, too. Just the best! georgethecyclist.blogspot.com/)
I go for the self-supported angle these days. Keep it simple, keep it real, keep it human.
So here’s what on the plate right now:
*Tip of the Mitt — folks are racing from Oscoda, MI > Manistee via either the Inside or the Outside. They’re going by river or by coastline, in either canoes, kayaks or small sailboats. They’re about half done, I’d guess — not much tracking being done or news put out. sites.google.com/site/vkmchallenge/adventure-details
*Tour Divide — several dozen folks are racing 2700 miles from Canada to Mexico down the Continental Divide. A singlespeed rider is presently in 2nd place! They’re half finished. Great news/chat at: www.bikepacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,2179.920.html HQ and SPOT-tracking at: www.tourdivide.org
*Jay Petervary’s Self-Supported RAAM! — He’s following the RAAM route on his own, no support vehicles and such. YEAH! He’ll be the first to finish such an attempt, if he makes it! He’s halfway done. (He’s unofficial.) There’s an apocryphal 14-day record from 1958… noidletour.org/
*RAAM — It’s 3/4’s done and a new guy looks like he might break Pete P’s 25-year-old record! Sure, they have support vehicles and such but it’s an iconic US event and still pretty low-budget. www.raceacrossamerica.org/
