The Great Divide (race)

Posted on by Matt Ruscigno 3 Comments

In Fall of 2006 my good friend Steevo and I set off to ride the Great Divide, a 2500-mile, 85% off-road mountain bike route along the Continental Divide from Canada to Mexico. Steevo’s photos from his blog are here and here. I only managed to get one post up here.

The key word is ‘ride’. We tried to do it in 29 days and fell a couple hundred miles short of official completion. But anything you can ride you can race. The Great Divide Race started in 2004. It follows the maps from Adventure Cycling exactly. There is no support, no entry fee and no prizes. Pretty cool. (before the official race John Stamstad, who I have written about previously blazed the course in 19 days on his own).
But the route was extended north into Canada so….see where this is going? Long story short, one of the previous years’ winners, Matt Lee, suggested that the race also be extended. The GDR race organizer (apparently) did not think this was a good idea. So Matt started his own race: Tour Divide. And they are both happening at the same time right now. If useful website is a gauge to measure a race, then Tour Divide wins hands down. They have real-time GPS on every racer. I’ll be keeping up on this and thinking about what it must be like to ride over a hundred miles a day, off-road, with no support for over two weeks.

mountain bikes are like time machines

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They take you back to when you were a little kid.

Mark, Jack and I rode Gabrielino trail in the San Gabriels yesterday. There were some hike-a-bike sections and stream crossings (over 50!) so we didn’t make it all the way up to Switzer Falls. Before too long March 9th, 2008 with all of its modern-day responsibilities beckoned us back to present-day.

Urban-Train-Road-Dirt-Road

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In how many cities can you take a 20-min train ride to mountain bike trails? Thursday morning Budge wanted to take out his new single-speed 29er (fixed gears are so 2005. 2008 is all about SS 29ers) so we rode 10 minutes to Chinatown and hopped on the Gold Line to Pasadena. We ran into an urban planner friend of mine on his way to Pasadena for a meeting about their new ‘Bicycle Boulevard’. For us, we had a short jaunt through a neighborhood and we’re at JPL.

It’s a bit of everything back there. Long, dry climbs, with beautiful views. For the single-track it’s cold and wet with multiple stream crossings (record rain fall in LA has led to snow at high elevations and heavy flow in the rivers).

I pinch-flatted twice riding the cross bike (700×32 knobby-less tires), but otherwise, what a great way to spend a week-day morning! We rode back home along the Arroyo-Seco watershed past the Rose Bowl and through Highland Park. Budge tried to talk me into eating at Cinnamon Vegetarian, but I actually had to get to work.
His blog has some more photos.

The thermometer in our kitchen.
Who says it doesn’t get cold in LA?

Cross over?

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In racing Cyclocross I should have some advantages. It is mostly off-road with some (slightly) technical sections, tight turns and running sections. I can ride in packs, throw elbows and my bike is decent. My first cross race went poorly, but I can blame that on the limited clearance on my bike. So for last race of the series I was ready to race.
I hopped on a commuter train out of Union Station that dropped me within a few miles of the Bonelli Park in San Dimas.
Because it was a UCI race, the 2.7 kilometer course had to start and end on pavement that was LONG with a 180-degree turn and a small incline. After that was a long slight downhill on gravel, then double-track before the grass sections and tight turns. On the first lap I stayed with the front group: it was tough, but I wasn’t completely blown-up. My plan was to break after the grass downhill that went off a curb into the pavement section. I wasn’t the only one with this idea and when a few others broke I tried to hang on but totally blew up. Done. Then I couldn’t shift into my big chain ring. I rode the next lap with a second pack, then couldn’t hang on through the soft, pseudo-mud sections.

After the second lap it wasn’t fun anymore. About this time Jack, Kyle, and Jim C. showed up and I could hear them yelling ‘Swarm!’ and other things to me. I have suffered through long races, but the kind of suffering that comes with super high output is so different. It wrecks you like nothing else. Concentrating enough to make the turns was tough. My whole body ached. And this is only a 35-minute race! At one point I got caught by a guy on a single-speed mountain bike. On the pavement. D’oh. 16th out of 23.

Sure, I have not trained at a high output level and it is a different sport, but man I thought I was going to do much better. Very humbling. Overall I am sold that Cyclocross is fun and I know what I have to do differently. Next year?

Jack, Jim C (both from Orange 20 Bikes) raced on fixed gear

Jim, Cole, Kyle and Jack (team beard?)

Jim C. tried to jump the barriers

Kyle on his way to 3rd in Single-speed B

Off-road city riding

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Obviously I am stoked on my cross bike. Yesterday I rode to Elysian Park (the park that surrounds Dodgers Stadium) with the intent of doing a 1.5 hour trail run. Then I hit some trails on the bike. Then some other trails. I ended up riding for 1.5 hours. It is so much fun to ride a cross bike off-road. It’s not as easy as a mountain bike. You constantly have to focus because it is faster and the lines the bike can handle are limited. When you hit pavement it is not as tedious and sluggish as a mountain bike. The perfect bike?
Steevo recently posted about woods in the city in the winter, so I thought I’d shoot some photos of urban trail riding (in not quite woods in not quite winter).

This is a few miles from downtown LA and my house.
Luckily those clouds didn’t produce rain while I was out.


I still got in a 75-min run and home before the rain. Some interesting points regarding Elysian Park:
It’s 600 acres big and touches Echo Park (the neighborhood), Chinatown and Chavez Ravine.
The Eastside of the park is known as a cruising spot for young gay men.
Lots of people walk dogs here. Most people are walking at least two at a time.
The female to male ratio is at least 4:1. The likelihood of a female walking a dog is probably 75%.

Project Rwanda 50-mile ride

Posted on by Matt Ruscigno 11 Comments

Saturday I rode a 50-mile mountain bike ride to benefit Project Rwanda with Max and Jack. Years ago I read We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families (here on google books) so I know a little bit about Rwanda. Project Rwanda was started by Tom Ritchey, the same guy that was around for the beginning of mountain biking and the guy who makes the break-away system I have on my track bike. On the website he says, ‘To me, the bicycle is just a freedom tool to a bigger vision for Rwanda.’ I couldn’t agree more, but I don’t think its use as a freedom tool is limited to Rwanda. He was on the ride and Jack and I chatted with him about our track bikes (‘How exactly did you get them?’ he asked), but I didn’t mention this to him.

I rode my freshly painted Cross-bike that was recently rebuilt with a bunch of new parts:

Jack rode his Kona mountain bike, that is set up fixed gear:

The ride started at 7am at Cook’s Corner, a place famous as a motorcyclists’ hangout. The route(with photos!) was made available beforehand and I had planned from the beginning to take my cross bike. I was a little concerned when about 75% of the bikes were full suspension! The course was beautiful and after only a few miles the hundred plus riders spread out.

Can you believe this is Orange County?


I was riding strongly, passing people on the climbs (I have a compact road crank, 50/34 and a mtb cassette that is 12-32) and getting passed on the descents. Cross-levers made the technical downhills much easier; which I learned the day before when Jack and I rode El Prieto in the San Gabriels. You can lean way back and still have access to the brakes. About 15 miles in I guess I was leaning too far back and pinch-flatted on a technical downhill. Probably for the best as it made me take it a little slower. Jack caught up while I was attending the flat and we rode together long enough to run into the guy from Planet Ultra who then told all his buddies about us at the HooDoo 500 earlier this year. With me on Cross and Jack on fixed the ‘look at us!’ factor was high.

A woman’s single-speed


The terrain was varied with fire roads, double-track, some fast, packed sections, technical single-track with stream crossings and steep, long climbs. I even passed some jumps that took all of my discipline to not go off of. Finished in about 5 hours, in time to hang out with Megan and Sufiya who had volunteered. They even had veggie burgers at the BBQ! I heard the fat, leather-wearing guy running the grill say, ‘We should of known all these healthy cyclists would want veggie burgers.’ Also, during the raffle the woman running it (also from Cook’s Corner) kept making reference to cyclists shaving their legs. How many mountain bikers do you think worry about healthy food and shave their legs? I don’t think very many.

Jack, Myself and Max giving the sign of devil to counter the earlier prayer


My only complaint (even the t-shirt is dope!) about the ride was the presence of god. At least two of the organizers are into god and insisted on talking about it and even had the audacity to have a prayer before the ride. They are not working directly for Project Rwanda, but I still think it reflects poorly on the project to have Christianity involved. The last thing Africa needs is more Christianity. Like the earlier statement about the bike as a freedom tool that is probably true for the whole world.