State-Journal.com - Taking on the Continental Divide...on a bicycle

Kevin Hall

Franklin County track coach Kevin Hall is getting a head start on his summer break today, but he’s not skipping out to relax.
Unless you have a crazy definition of relax.

Hall boarded a plane in Louisville bound for Calgary early this morning and expects to be straddling his mountain bike at the start of a trailhead in Banff, Canada Friday morning.

He will be embarking on an epic 2,745-mile journey as a participant in the 2009 Tour Divide, a self-supported bike race that begins in Banff and ends in Antelope Wells, New Mexico at the Mexican border.

The race route follows the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route maintained by the Adventure Cycling Association and is considered the longest, most challenging mountain bike race on the planet.

“It’s just one of those cool things,” Hall said. “I call it a journey rather than a race.”

The 45-year-old adventure enthusiast participated in the event last year after stumbling upon it online but withdrew about 100 miles into Montana.

“I got about 350 miles last year,” he said.

“You’re pretty much on your bike at six in the morning. There’s daylight until 11 o’clock and you just ride from (sunrise) to sundown.”

In-between sunsets and sunrises, racers traverse some of the most beautiful and diverse terrain in North America: coniferous forests, snow-capped mountains, windswept plains and barren deserts.

Hall only took in less than a quarter of the scenery last year. This year he says he’s in it for the long haul.

“I don’t feel any time constraints this year, but I’ll get it done,” he said. “It’s as much of a mental trip as a physical trip.”

Last year Hall said he ran into snow bluffs that forced him to walk his bike on the covered dirt-road trail. He also traversed the most difficult parts of the elevation gain on the route.

“It was so steep,” he said, “but once you started it flattened out.”

Competitive racers usually travel 125 miles in a day depending on the weather and terrain, Hall said. Last year’s race winner completed the route in 19 days, 12 hours. Eight of the 17 racers didn’t finish.

This year the field has expanded to 41 racers with mountain bike enthusiasts from all across North America, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Hall said he’s not into the competition aspect of the race as much as the experience itself.

“It’s a pretty good camaraderie, everybody loves the outdoors,” he said. “Of course, after a couple hours at the start, you’ll never see some of those guys again.”

He reluctantly says that his goal is to finish the race in 25 days, but he quickly learned last year that plotting out daily progress rarely pans out.

Hall’s journey can be monitored online at the tour’s Web site (www.tourdivide.org). The site posts each racer’s position through a SPOT satellite tracker that relays their exact position. Racer call-ins are also transcribed and posted on a blog for fans to follow.

Hall said he will be challenging readers to donate a penny for every mile he competes in hope of raising funds to send the FCHS track team to camp.

“If only four or five people donate that sends all the guys to track camp,” he said.

That thought may add fuel to his fire out in the wilderness – especially when things get tough and the finish line is nowhere in sight.

“I feel pretty good about stuff,” he said. “Whether you go 25 miles or 125 miles, you’re going to get there eventually.”