Media

Adrian Stingaciu recently completed the Tour Divide, a self-supported mountain bike race down the length of the contential divide. OrganicAthlete caught up with him after the ride.

OrganicAthlete: What inspired you to do the Tour Divide Race?

Adrian Stingaciu: I heard about The Great Divide Race in 2006 after I came back from a self-supported road bike tour across the US that took 22 days. Everyone, including myself thought it was amazing feat that I pulled off, but then I learned about the Great Divide Race, where riders riding self-supported were doing the same overall distance in about the same time on mountain bikes on mostly dirt roads with an incredible amount of climbing. That was really awesome and inspiring for me. I thought this race was something right up my alley since I was proficient in both ultralight backpacking and ultralight bikepacking, and I though it would be at least twice as hard as a US road tour. But I was wrong, it's much harder than that. I wasn't ready to compete in 2007 since I had plans to do a 195-mile backpacking trip on raw foods without resupply (The Sierra High Route), so I moved it out to 2008. But this year there was a split in the Great Divide Racers, half of them wanted to race the whole route including the section in the Canadian Rockies, and half wanted to race only border to border to challenge the current 15 day 4 hours record of racing from Canada to Mexico on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. The route was mapped out by The Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) in 1998. In 1999, John Stamstad did a self-supported individual time-trial of the route in 18 days. Back then the route started at the Canadian border, but a few years ago the ACA has added a 215 mile section in Canada, the most beautiful section of the whole route. So this year, one of the original Great Divide Racers, Matthew Lee, and a few others decided to race the whole Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, instead of riding the Canadian section as a prologue or warm-up. I wanted to ride the whole route anyway, so I decided to race in the Tour Divide.

OA: What is the Tour Divide Race?

AS: The Tour Divide Race is a self-supported mountain bike race on the longest mountain bike route in the world, all 2,711 miles of The Adventure Cycling Association's Great Divide Mountain Bike Route that runs along and near the Continental (or Great) Divide from Canada to Mexico. It is a new race which runs in parallel with the Great Divide Race (GDR), but unlike the GDR it includes the Canadian section as well. Racers are allowed to travel only by their own human power, pedaling & pushing their bike along the route. Support vehicles are not allowed and supplies can only be gotten locally in towns along the route or by shipping supplies to a post office on the route.

OA: How long have you been eating a raw food diet?

AS: I've been eating primarily raw foods (75% to 100%) for about 2 years. I initially experimented with organic raw foods on the John Muir Trail (211 miles) in 2005 after reading about it from others using raw foods on the trail. My bike trip across the US in 2006 was on vegan food only, and after I got back from that trip, I started going on bike rides with the Raw Riders, a small group of raw vegan bicyclists in Orange County, CA, led by Chef Ito. The positive energy flow from the raw riders was so amazing, really intense. Their inspiration led me to decide to eat raw vegan as a way to stop eating vegan junk food and to eat more greens.

OA: What made you decide to do the Tour Divide Race as a raw fooder?

AS: The Tour Divide Race or Great Divide Race had never been completed by a vegetarian, much less vegan or raw vegan. I wanted to do it as a raw vegan because that's what I am, and because I think it's possible. It's a little more challenging but that's what the race is all about. This year the line up in the Tour Divide was really awesome, 2 vegetarians (Alan Goldsmith and Dominik Scherer), and 3 vegans (Kevin Montgomery and Carl Wilcox) and myself, that's 33% of the whole race not eating meat!!!. Reading the blogs and trip reports from others that were doing this race, as well as my own experience of riding across the US, I knew that there was little or no healthy food out there in small towns. I knew I could bike across the country as a vegan, I just wanted to take it a step higher and do it on raw vegan food. I also wanted to see how it compares to cooked vegan food and see if there are any benefits to be had in a self-supported race setting like this. I knew I would be carrying a lot more food than the other racers but I was sure the added weight would balance itself out with the added nutrition. I ended up running low on raw food on day 10 and supplemented with cooked vegan food for the rest of the race, but was able to maintain a vegan diet throughout the race and at least 50% of my food was raw vegan. I was able to make 3 of my 4 raw vegan food drops at the Post Office. There were 3 mistakes I made in reading the ingredients of food I bought that I thought was vegan, but I was never forced to eat something that was not vegan. There was plenty of vegan food on the route so that was never an issue.

OA: How did you prepare for the race, physically and mentally?

AS: To prepare myself physically, I rode my bike as much as I could, almost every day, and trained only on the bike since August of last year. The last few months before the race I rode only the mountain bike that I rode in the race and put about 4,000 miles on it in 3 months, about 5-6 hours a day, 5 days a week. Ironically, that wouldn't be enough. I would have done better to train by climbing stairs instead, lots of stairs, like 10,000 stairs a day. Most of my training was on flat pavement with a few hills but it wasn't nearly enough to mimic the climbing I would do each day. The Tour Divide has about 200,000 ft of climbing on the route, in 24 days that averages out to 113 miles with 8300 ft of climbing per day. If I was to do this again I would try to put in less miles in my training but add a significant amount of climbing instead, just concentrate on climbing as well as spending a ridiculous amount of time on the bike seat. We typically averaged 8 to 10 mph each day in the race so to finish in 24 days I averaged over 12 hours a day on the bike. Mentally I prepared myself by reading up on the route and the race, and I went into it with no expectations. I just wanted to finish and I knew the most important thing mentally was to race my own race, and to remain flexible to all the challenges I would encounter. Mentally you have to let go of the whole route, it's too big to even think about it at one time, just enjoy the ride and think only about what's directly in front of you.

OA: How did you prepare logistically?

AS: I thought it was tougher to prepare logistically for this race than the actual physical or mental preparation. Since I had my mind set on racing this on raw vegan food, the only way to get raw vegan food out there on the Great Divide and in many small towns is to ship it to yourself, c/o General Delivery, to a Post Office. Post Offices are the only place you are allowed to ship food to yourself in this race, and for me I got most of my raw vegan food there. Luckily there are quite a few small towns with Post Offices that the route goes thru. I had no idea what my pace was going to be like, I've never biked the route before, I'm not even a mountain biker (at least I wasn't before the race :-) so I had a tough time deciding where I should mail food, and how often. I thought I had a small chance at challenging the record so I planned my food drops for record pace (165 miles/day), every 500 miles or every 3 days apart. But I planned it out in such a way as to allow for pick up even at a slower pace, at 125 miles/day pace and still not have any of those drops coincide with a Sunday when the post office is closed. Still even with all the planning there are a lot of variables that we cannot control on the route, stuff that will slow you down some days, like lots of fallen trees, lots of snow on the route, mud after a rain or snowmelt, head winds, rocky terrain, thunder storms & hail, mechanical problems with the bike, you name it. So logistically, planning food drops around these variables is very tough in a race setting, but that's about the only choice I had for raw vegan food.

OA: What was the most beautiful moment in the race?

AS: I got caught in a thunder storm on a lonely dirt road near Hartsel, CO and decided to put on only my jacket as most storms out there are short lived. 15 minutes later it started hailing and I was starting to get pretty wet and cold. This was on day 17 of the race and my shorts and gloves were falling apart at the seams from lack of washing. Looking ahead I saw something hanging off my hat bill and I began to think that it too was falling apart, but looking cross eyed I began to focus on a dragonfly hanging upside down from my hat bill, taking shelter from the rain and hail storm. Imagine my surprise, excitement and happiness!!! I started laughing hysterically while crying tears of joy at the same time, thanking all the Gods and Prophets of the universe for that one magic moment !!! I started talking to the dragonfly as if we were riding together, and called him "my little brother" trying to calm him down as well as myself. The storm continued dumping rain and hail and at one point the road in front of us was completely white covered in hail. That's when I decided to seek shelter, so we jumped a barbed wire fence into a deserted ranch and found their tool shed unlocked so we waited out the rest of the storm there and the dragonfly dried off his wings.

OA: You finished in just under 24 days. What did you think as you crossed the finish line?

AS: The finish line was definitely awesome, but not as awesome as the journey itself. It was only one moment of a beautiful journey. I finished the race in a four-way tie for 3rd place with 3 other racers. We dubbed ourselves the UN Team (an American: Layton White, an Englishman: Alan Goldsmith, a German: Dominik Scherer, and myself: a Romanian). I started the race riding on and off with these guys and we kept seeing each other for the first four days. After that I bid them farewell as I was having really painful knee issues and couldn't keep up with their pace. I sorted out the knee issues riding my own pace and was able to stay in the race. For two weeks I rode alone, and thought I would never catch up to those guys, but on the afternoon of day 20 I got wind of them from a French rider going the opposite way, that they are all taking an easy day about 70 miles in Abiquiu, New Mexico. I reached their hotel room at 10:30pm that night, and since Dominik was still awake and outside, I decided to join them. Imagine their surprise at seeing me !!! From then on we all rode together the last 600 miles, and since we all thought it would be nicer to finish together and enjoy each other's company than to race for 3rd place, that's what we did. For the finish, we all got into formation and pedalled the last mile slowly, none of us wanted this to end. So what did I think as we crossed the finish line together? I thought, "ok, let's get this right and stay in formation so we can all cross the Mexican border at exactly the same time." And that's what we did.