Worms to Catch

by Guy Martin

  On day four I rode past Holland Lake, which was so beautiful I stopped to take photos. There’s a waterfall, a river overlooking Richmond Pass and a posh place where folk go to get married. They had a shop and a bar with a choice of fancy beers and comfy settees. It was mint, but not hard to pull myself away from it to get back on my bike. I wasn’t racing – I wasn’t clock-watching if my food took ten minutes to arrive. I was enjoying the whole experience, the views, the riding, the challenge of it and the people-watching.

  Out of Holland Lake there were a couple of climbs that I didn’t find difficult, then I found myself on a tough old road. This was a road as in a horse and cart track, not a B-road. Then I went through Grizzly Basin, a place supposed to be thick with the things, which was where I saw the cub.

  I stopped in Ovando and found somewhere to eat, where I met a bloke with a black Labrador called Convoy. It was only seven o’clock at night, but I could see rain was coming in. I’d spotted a wigwam and a cowboy-film-type covered wagon that riders could sleep in and leave a donation. I thought I could either set off in the rain or bed down early and get up at 11pm to start out again, hopefully after the rain had passed. I decided to try to sit out the rain, and that meant day four was my shortest mileage day of the whole trip.

  If I’d hung around and set off in the Grand Départ on Friday, I might have got to somewhere like Ovando and found that the wigwam was full, or the tiny backwoods shops I was relying on had been cleared out of the good stuff by the locust-like cyclists buying up and eating everything they could lay their hands on. That was another benefit of setting off early. The downside was that I had no wheel tracks to follow, so I was going off route and getting lost every now and then, and spending time working out which trail was the one I should be on.

  The wigwam seemed the best bet, but the rain dripping in on me woke me up, so I moved to the wagon. It was miserable being wet and going to bed. I wasn’t cold when I went to sleep, because I’d been cycling, but as everything cooled and condensed in the sleeping bag, which was made even worse in the bivvy bag, I’d wake up shivering some mornings. That was one of the longest sleeps I had on the whole trip, way past the 11pm I planned, but I was still on the road at 3.30 in the morning.

  The route was at a high altitude, day after day. I never felt light-headed, but it was affecting my pace. Just before the sun came up was the coldest. My water was freezing in my bottles some days, and I kept having nosebleeds. I had about 20, so one a day, on average, and they were as bad at the beginning as they were at the end of the ride. It must have been the dust and breathing hard for hour after hour. I’d blow my nose and they’d start, blood dripping out all over my Garmin and my bags, which was a pain because it would dry so quickly in the heat, and it’s difficult stuff to get off.

  Navigating the big and small stuff meant I had to concentrate a lot of the time, and I was riding with my head up, not head down, grinding along, following a white line like I would on the way to work. There was so much coming at me, changes of direction, tree branches that you had to pick a line to get through. I had big black scabs all over my arms from being whipped by branches and burnt trees going down Richmond Pass in the dark.

  I was cycling through and near areas called Bob Marshall Wilderness and Scapegoat Wilderness, national forests and national parks. When I saw a shop or a town I would always stop to eat. I wasn’t craving anything in particular or missing anything, I just wanted the most calories I could get in me. I stopped for a good omelette in Lincoln at half-seven.

  A lot of the routes were cattle tracks. The climb up South Fork was brutal, with streams to cross. The word Gulch is used loads in the names. It means a ravine, usually that a river rushes down. The guidebook was really detailed, giving all the names, but there weren’t many signposts to give me a clue whether I was on Lost Horse Road or Wigwam Road, or whatever. The guidebook was filling up with notes I was writing in it. I scribbled a line pointing to Lava Mountain and just wrote, Tough as fuck, 4x4 truck. This climb was steep and rutted. It must have been an off-road course for 4x4s, and I had no choice but to get off and push for two hours. The thought, This isn’t much fun, never entered my head, though. I was just putting one foot in front of the other. I wasn’t having negative thoughts, just, The top will come.

  If you add it all up, there is more descending than climbing in the 2,700-odd miles, because Banff is at a higher altitude than Antelope Wells on the Mexican border, but it didn’t feel like it. It didn’t feel like it at all.

  I rode into the town of Basin one night at about nine. All there was to the place was about ten houses and a pizza shop. I stuck my head into the restaurant and said, ‘I’m a bit mucky, am I alright to come in for some food?’ This lass who worked there said, ‘You’re in Basin, Montana!’ As if to say, ‘Who gives a fuck if you’re covered in dirt?’ I had a 12-inch pizza and a beer. I was drinking beer, when I could get it, because it’s good for calories.

  As soon as I stopped and sat down, I’d pull out the guidebook and notes, which Sharon had written out in a waterproof notepad, to see what was coming next and how far I had to the next food stop. I’d given up wondering about what percentage of the ride I’d done or how long I had left. I’d turned very machine-like. I didn’t want to hang around chatting too much. Eat, ride, sleep, repeat. After the pizza and beer, I was back on the bike for a couple of hours before dossing down for the night.

  Day six: I was on the road at 4.30am and had coffee and Snickers in Butte, the birthplace of Evel Knievel. Somehow, I was burning through over $100 a day in food and drink. I spent $2,000 in 18 days. I wasn’t going to fancy places, but I was eating a lot. When I found a shop or petrol station I walked up to the till with four Clif bars and four MET-Rx protein bars; Muscle Milk, which is milk with added protein; regular full-fat milk; Gatorade. And that was just for starters. Then I’d have a foot-long chicken sub, piled high with salad, but no spicy stuff, and a tub of salad with more chicken, and two big cookies. Before I set off I’d go back to the service station for more milk, more energy bars and sugary, fatty shit. I would have at least two of these stops a day.

  I’ve never had a credit card, but I carried a debit card, and it never got refused until I tried to pay for a hotel the night before I flew home. I’d go to a cash machine and take out $100 to pay for food with cash. I didn’t want to risk taking more than that out, because I didn’t tell the bank I was going to America and I was worried they’d shit themselves and put a stop on the card if I tried taking $200 out at a time. It meant that I was having to go to a cash machine more than once a day, some days.

  By now the days were already merging into one, and only looking back at the notes now, to write this, brings some of the memories back. Like this note: ‘Pedalled from Butte. Had big shit in Holiday Inn.’ Ah, yes. I remember that. At one place, there was a posh campsite, but you needed a code to get in the bog door – perhaps they’d heard rumours about a smelly Englishman camping out in toilets and flicking off the master switch from campsites further up the Great Divide. More often than not I had been shitting at the side of the trail. Once I’d finished, I’d get the thick of it off with a handful of grass, then go in with a biodegradable baby wipe. But faced with the choice of the side of the road or a Holiday Inn, the chain hotel won, pants down.

  I parked up outside, left my helmet on the handlebars and walked in with confidence. ‘Alright, love,’ to the woman behind reception and straight across the lobby like I owned the place.

  After that the trail became the hardest going it had been so far. On the way up to the Beaverdam Campground I rode under the busy Interstate 15, which runs all the way from the Mexican border near San Diego, California to the Canadian border in Montana, not far from where I crossed into America. Then I was up and down the Fleecer Ridge, and my Salsa felt a bit out of its depth. Any bike was going to be a compromise over this distance, and descending Mount Fleecer towards Wise River made me wish I was on a downhill mountain bike with decent suspension trav
el front and rear. On my yellow Salsa, with its rigid back end, I was being battered about and had to keep braking just to stay in control.

  Wise River was another memorable stop. A small town that is a big draw for fly-fishing folk, it has two rivers running through it, or near it: Big Hole River and Wise River, with the 9,436-foot Mount Fleecer in the background. I met someone there from Harrogate visiting their relatives. Leaving the town, the trail was dead steep to Elkhorn Hot Springs and then downhill, on past Polaris, before joining the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail for a couple of miles.

  I made a note in my pad: ‘It’s taken two days to get the TT out of my head and I’ll only go back if I can ride something different.’ I had seen some of the results on the internet when I was in Canada. I didn’t want to be in the Isle of Man – I was just being nosey about who was doing what and why. I’d been racing there how many years, without missing one, so it must have been in my head when my mind wandered.

  By now, if I’d been following the recommended mileages in the guidebook, I’d be on day 25. Twenty-five days of riding and, except for the Canadian bit, all of it in one US state, Montana. For me, though, it was day six. I’d lost count and the notes in my book were making less sense. I wasn’t thinking about England or whatever. I’d turned more robotic. Luckily, the twinge in my Achilles hadn’t developed into anything. The only real target I was thinking about was to finish in under 20 days. The record was 14 days, 11 hours and 27 minutes, but I heard later that this was a difficult year because of snow on some of the passes and mud and a fair bit of rain. In 2015, the year before, 26 people did it in under 20 days. In the year I did it, only 16 did, according to the official Trackleaders website.

  I think I might have crossed into Idaho, but I didn’t even know. For the seventh night I stayed in Warm River Campground. If I had access to a bog, that’s what I’d choose to sleep in. I wanted to be in bed by 11 o’clock, then up at 3.30. I would set my alarm for three and do one snooze, then get up, pack up my stuff, fill up the bladder in my Kriega with water and be on the bike before four. I took my Nokia phone as an alarm. It wouldn’t work as a phone out there, but it woke me up, and the battery lasted for 18 days.

  On day eight I stopped at a bar on the Togwotee Pass that had a computer in the corner, and I asked if I could use it. I was in the Teton Wilderness, in Wyoming. I got on the internet, sent a few messages back home, saw what progress the top riders in the Tour Divide were making and checked who’d won the Senior TT. It was Michael Dunlop, and he did it setting another outright lap record. Legend. I thought, Shit hot.

  I left there and the mud was horrible – mud on top of mud on top of mud. I was off and pushing uphill again.

  CHAPTER 12

  When I finally stopped pedalling I started to cry

  TOGWOTEE PASS WAS a big one – 9,658 feet – and it was followed by the 9,210-foot Union Pass, where the Shoshone National Forest met the Fitzpatrick Wilderness and the Gros Ventre Mountains. Union was brutal, because of the pig-shitty mud and the switchbacks. You could look in the guidebooks and count how many 9,000- and 10,000-foot passes there were on the Tour Divide route, and get it in your head how hard it was going to be, but it wasn’t that simple. It wasn’t a matter of being at 9,000 feet and knowing the pass was 10,000 feet, and thinking, There’s only 1,000 feet of climbing before I’m over the top. No, no. I’d climb to 9,500 feet, then descend to 8,000, then have to climb again to 9,700, then descend to 9,000, then climb to just short of 10,000 feet again, then descend. Bloody hell! Descend and climb, climb, descend – argh! I didn’t underestimate the climbing – I knew there was 200,000 feet of climbing in total – but I didn’t know what the climbs would be like.

  Over Union Pass the mud stuck to everything, I was getting bogged down in the stuff, and it was making the bike weigh even more than it already did. I was wearing cycling shoes that were not made for walking in. Because of their hard plastic soles and metal cleats, you can come a cropper in Caistor Co-op if you turn too quickly to head back down the veg aisle to pick up the taties you forgot – but none of it was bothering me too much. It didn’t matter how long the push was up whichever mountain I was on, I knew I’d be at the top before long. The trail would be better, the view would change and I might even have a good downhill run with a pizza or two and a beer at the end of it.

  I hadn’t expected to feel as good as I did physically. I felt better after a week of hard riding, 19 hours a day with food stops in between, even though I was only sleeping 4 hours a night, on a concrete bog floor, or outdoors on the ground. I thought there’d be a gradual dropping off of energy and power, but it was the opposite. I got fitter through the first week then stayed at that level. I got back to England the fittest I have ever been.

  Just after Union Pass I stopped for the night. I didn’t know what day it was. I had to look back through my notes in the book to see how many nights I’d slept. It was pissing it down, and I saw a log shed near a farmhouse and decided to shelter in it and get my head together until the rain stopped. I thought the farm dog might come to find me, but I didn’t hear a sound. I still wasn’t having one single negative thought, and I got my head down for an hour and set off again. According to my guidebook I’d now crossed the Continental Divide nine times since Banff.

  From there I was pedalling into a headwind for another 60 miles. It was a slog until the town of Pinedale. I made one note in the guidebook: ‘Ready for a stop.’ I had a pizza, and the waitress thought I was crackers because I ordered another one for pudding, one of those pizzas that comes folded in half, and a beer.

  It was the middle of the day, and I was eating away when the waitress comes towards me with a phone in her hand. She asks, ‘Are you Terry?’ I thought for a minute and remembered. ‘Yeah, I am Terry,’ I said. ‘Terry Smith.’ She said, ‘There’s a bloke on the phone just checking you’re alright.’ So, I said, ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Who is that?’ The waitress asked the caller, who said, ‘Stephen.’ I didn’t know what was going on or who was on the phone. It was only on my mind for half an hour at the most, and then I was back to the job in hand.

  When I got home it all became clear. Anyone who was following me on the Trackleaders website could zoom right in on the satellite map and see where I was. My mate Dobby had done that and seen that I’d stopped and there was a café or summat, and worked out that must be where I was. He googled the café’s phone number and rang up. But he said his name was Stephen. He’s never Stephen, always just Dobby, so I had no idea it was him. Anyway, I couldn’t have talked to him, because the rules of the race are you’re not supposed to speak to anyone you know while you’re on the ride. That is the spirit of the event, and the potential for loneliness is a big part of the mental challenge, but by this stage I loved the feeling of being isolated and relying on my own wits. I had nothing to distract me. No music, no one to talk to except when I stopped for food, nothing but the sound of my tyres on the gravel and mud. And that’s how I wanted it.

  After the big feed at Pinedale I bought some more food to take with me. I rode 50 miles before stopping, but over half of it was on paved roads, so it wasn’t hard going. I was about 40 miles short of Atlantic City, which is neither a city nor anywhere near the Atlantic, when I stopped and slept in the open, at the side of the trail.

  The plan was to sleep here and get up early, so I could be in Atlantic City for breakfast time, not arrive there in the middle of the night and have to wait until places opened. Stocking up in Atlantic City was important because the next stretch was 180 miles to a place called Wamsutter, which I think was the longest distance without food. But I missed Atlantic City, because the bloody GPS wasn’t clear and these places with big names are sometimes only a few low houses and not much else. Once I realised I’d missed it, I just kept going. I thought I’d be alright, but I ran out of water and was filling up bottles out of ditches and using water-purification tablets to stop me from catching owt. I was hardly carrying any food by this stage of the race, thinking that I’d a
lways be alright to get to the next town for a feed there. This day proved that it wasn’t the best idea.

  It was a tough, tough day, and I had to ride according to the energy I had. There was a brutal headwind and it was baking. The Great Divide Basin is an area of 3,600 square miles where rivers and creeks don’t merge and run to either ocean, but drain into this basin to form temporary lakes before they evaporate. The guidebooks said it was one of the emptiest and driest stretches of the whole ride – just flat, parched-dry nothingness with a few nodding-donkey oil pumps dotted through it. There was nothing to stop the wind, and I was crawling forward at only 7 to 9 mph.

  Eventually, I pedalled into Wamsutter, which is just a motorway town, where there was a petrol station. I ate two lots of Subway, pizza, ice cream, crisps, full-fat milk, coffee and Gatorade, and I slept in a ditch behind the Shell garage. It had been the toughest day of the whole trip, but it hadn’t broken me.

  In October 2014, I’d entered a round of the World Solo 24-hour Mountain Bike Championships at Fort William on the west coast of Scotland. I’d done a few 24-hour races there, and I’d been on the podium with the world champion once before, so I knew what I was getting into. Although I didn’t think I was going to come close to winning it, I didn’t expect to break down like I did. Partway through the race my head just went. I came in, sat in the footwell of my van and couldn’t make any sense of what my mate Tim Coles, my dad or anyone else was trying to say to me. I’d cracked. I did get back on the bike and finish it, but nowhere like as strongly as I expected. Now I think I know why. I’d shared a room with my dad and he was snoring so loudly I couldn’t get any sleep. I even ended up leaving the hotel room and trying to sleep in the corridor to escape the noise. And I was light, weighing 67 kilograms. I was 75 kilos going into the Tour Divide. I just don’t think I had enough reserves for my body to be able to push on in the Fort William race. So even though I was only getting about four hours’ sleep a day after climbing, climbing, climbing all day, and for well over a week, I was ready for it.