register |  login
› DENVER
Loading Ad
Visit Other Hubs:
ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Tower
RECENT STORIES

Denver man to bicycle 2,490 miles in one gear

Contributed by: Brendan Leonard/YourHub.com on 3/23/2007

Dave Nice, a 26-year-old Denver resident, may be your everyday classically trained French chef and whiskey distillery employee who enjoys 160-mile bike rides before work, but this June, he's going to try to do something special: Ride a fixed-gear mountain bike on the longest off-road, self-supported bike race in America.

The Great Divide Race follows a 2,490-mile route along the Continental Divide, from Roosville, Mont., to Antelope Wells, N.M. Nice will have to carry everything he needs to survive it -- camping gear, repair tools, first aid supplies, food and water -- and the lighter and smaller he keeps his load, the better, because it will have to fit on a small rack on his handlebars, a small pack under his seat, and a 1,000-cubic inch backpack. He wants the bike and the gear to weigh less than 40 pounds, not counting food and water. (Depending on the tires used, the bike weighs 27 to 29 pounds by itself.)

All this on a bike that has one gear. Nice rides a fixed-gear bike, a single-speed bike without gears or a freewheel -- when the wheels move, the pedals move. There is no coasting.

"I like the simplicity of it and the connection to the ground - I feel it's a more intimate way of riding a bicycle."
-Nice, on why he rides a fixed-gear bike

The Great Divide Race itself is no small challenge, even on a non-fixie. Starting at noon on June 15, the ride climbs more than 200,000 vertical feet over its 2,490 miles, spanning Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico, north to south.

The route was officially mapped in 1998 by the Adventure Cycling Association, a Missoula, Mont., nonprofit dedicated to developing bicycle routes that explore America. Some of the other routes the ACA has plotted include the 573.5-mile Grand Canyon Connector, the 4,247.5-mile TransAmerica Trail from Astoria, Ore., to Yorktown, Va., and most recently, the 2,057.5-mile Underground Railroad Bicycle Route from Mobile, Ala., to Owen Sound, Ontario.

The Great Divide Route was intended to be a cross-country off-road route that riders took 70 or 80 days to complete, according to Aaron Teasdale, spokesman for the ACA. That was until John Stamstad rode the entire route in 18 days, 5 hours and 37 minutes in 1999.

The first official Great Divide Race took place in 2004, and in the three years of competition, only seven people have even finished the race. Last year, Matthew Lee, a three-time competitor, was the only person to finish out of a field of eight.

"It's worthy of attention if only because of its Herculean nature," Teasdale says. "This makes the Tour de France look like an afternoon joyride."

One of the seven riders who dropped out of last year's race was Dave Nice, who had to, after his bike, with everything on it, was stolen on the second day of the race while he took a nap alongside the road near Bigfork, Mont.

"I guess I was really out," he was quoted in the (Kalispell, Mont.) Daily Inter Lake. "Someone nabbed my bike while I was out ... So I guess that's it for me this year. I'm going to have to figure out how to get home."

Nice walked 35 miles to Polson, Mont., and spent the last of his cash calling Scott Taylor, owner of Salvagetti Bicycle Workshop in Denver, who wired him enough money for a bus ticket back to Denver.

This year, he'll keep a closer eye on his bike. His goal is to finish the race in less than 25 days, he says, pedaling an average of 110 to 115 miles per day, if possible.

"It's a chance to push myself, but it's a chance to spend 25 days thinking and meditating," Nice says. "It's crossing the country, it's through the heart of the Rockies. You get to see some beautiful bits of God's creation."

He'll pedal all of those miles, since a fixed-gear bike doesn't allow the rider to coast. He estimates he'll need to eat 3,000 to 4,000 calories a day, of whatever he can find on the remote route ("Coca Cola, Snickers, nuts, jerky, Slim Jims, Little Debbie"). His mother is sewing him a one-pound down quilt to use as a sleeping bag, and he'll take a 28-ounce tarp tent to sleep under. He's got a stove he made from an aluminum Budweiser bottle, which will run on Heet gas line antifreeze and can boil a cup of water in nine minutes. He'll purify drinking water from streams and lakes along the way with chlorine dioxide tablets.

"It is a risk, but ... I think I'm safer there riding with a T-bone around my neck than I am riding in this city."
-Nice, on the possibility of encountering a bear on the GDR

Nice uses most of his time outside work to train, often riding 150 miles or more on days when the weather and his schedule allow. He managed to ride 937 miles in snow-covered Denver during the month of January, another 1,178 during February, and had almost 1,200 miles in the first half of March.

The weekend before I first met him, Nice had just become the first person to finish the 72-mile 2006 Laramie Enduro on a fixed-gear bike. He also was the only person who rode his bike to the starting line outside Laramie, 119 miles from downtown Denver, leaving Thursday and racing on Saturday. The day of our interview, he arrived for our meeting at St. Mark's Coffeehouse in Denver with a slight sunburn from his 160-mile ride before his shift that night at Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey in LoDo.

His personal record for miles in a single 24-hour period is 276, although he says it was "mostly pavement." He rode over Guanella Pass, Kenosha Pass, Mosquito Pass, Loveland Pass, and Tennessee Pass, and once home, he "proceeded to sleep for about 16 hours straight."

But can he handle 20-some straight 110-mile off-road days on his fixed-gear bike? Aaron Teasdale is less than optimistic.

"I wish that guy all the best; I hope he does it," Teasdale says. "I think his chances are pretty slim of even finishing ... it's a great idea; it'd be a serious badass thing to do."


Want to help?
Dave Nice is holding a fundraiser to help pay for his trip at Snooze, 2622 Larimer St. on April 18, from 5:30-9:30 p.m., with all-you-can-drink beer from the Flying Dog Brewery, whiskey from Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey, and food from Snooze. Cost is $25.

If you can't attend but would still like to help Dave out, you can send donations to:
Dave Nice
c/o Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey
2405 Blake St.
Denver, CO 80203

Links:

Great Divide Race
http://greatdividerace.com

Dave Nice's blog
http://cellarrat.blogspot.com

Joe Polk interviews Nice on MTBCast.com:
http://mtbcast.com/podcasts/MTBCastEpisode31E.m4a

Adventure Cycling Association
http://www.adv-cycling.org/

Daily Inter Lake story about Nice's bike getting stolen during the 2006 GDR:
http://dailyinterlake.com/articles/2006/07/01/news/news02.txt

Great Divide Race updates:
http://greatdividerace.blogspot.com/

Laramie Enduro
http://www.laramieenduro.org


SUBMIT COMMENT

Rate the above story



Current Rating
Based on 8 user ratings.

Talk Back : submit comments to the story

*Note: you need to log-in to add a comment or rating.

Showing 1-3 of 3 comments
Submitted By: Gladys Mercier
posted on 4/11/2007 @ 8:28:40 PM
(Not Rated)
Good luck Dave. Sounds like a lot of work!
[Report as objectionable]
Submitted By: Karen Groves
posted on 3/26/2007 @ 8:29:18 AM
Rated Story
Great story
[Report as objectionable]
Submitted By: Bradley Gordon
posted on 3/24/2007 @ 11:04:17 PM
Rated Story
that's crazy, dude.
[Report as objectionable]
Showing 1-3 of 3 comments
SAVE AND SHARE THIS STORY
STORY RSS FEEDS
WANT TO WRITE FOR YOURHUB.COM?
Want to see the stories you write and the photos you shoot featured in the YourHub.com Thursday print section available all over the Front Range and with home subscriptions of the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post? All you have to do is register, then post a story or column, start a blog or tell everyone what events are happening in town. We will print the best stories, columns, event listings, photos and blog entries in our print sections.

ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Ad

Loading Ad
ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Ad

This YourHub.com community is produced by The Denver Newspaper Agency
Web Development and Channel Analytics provided by Indigio

terms of use //  privacy policy
the staff //  advertise //  help & faq
buy photos