Tour Divide Blog - Day 27

I’m here! We finished! I reached Antelope Wells on the Mexican border at 01:05am local time this morning, on my Specialized Stumpjumper, now known as Lightning McBenjamin! I completed the Tour Divide, travelling a total of 2,753 miles, 4,431km in 25 days, 17 hours and 06 minutes.

Richard with Mike, who he rode with for much of the route and Nicklaus from Switzerland at the finish.

It was a fitting end to New Mexico riding against a headwind, rain and lightning! But it eventually cleared for us.

I feel tired! But I'm in good shape. My goal was to push myself, enjoy the experience and come home ready to begin a new training block - I'm frazzled to be fair, so many emotions to process! As always I feel grateful for the experience, it's been sincerely wonderful to experience America like this, but it's been a tough 5 days to finish with.

The hardest thing is the unrelenting nature of constantly pushing, overriding every instinct to sleep. Second to that was the mud.....horrible sticky cement like mud called caliche. Today was long and tough starting from bivying on the continental divide trail at midnight last night - unable to find the single-track trail. But a highlight for me was waking up and riding the single track as the sun rose this morning into Silver City.

No injuries, no ass blisters, some sunburn, some minor nerve damage in my fingers - but totally normal. Just tired...super tired, and my ass is soooo sore! Jeffrey, who is the guy I’m staying with who looks after the racers has just given me new pants after letting me use the shower!! 

I’ll be heading to Phoenix next and will write a proper final blog once I have slept a bit and got good wifi!

Thanks for the messages as always guys! Rich.