World’s Longest Mountain Bike Route Celebrates 10th Anniversary

Bike giveaway, two monster races, updated guidebook, and magazine feature showcase Great Divide Route

Missoula, Mont.—Adventure Cycling Association Adventure Cycling Association—North America's largest cycling membership organization—and Dirt Rag magazine invite dirt lovers everywhere to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR). The longest mountain bike route on the planet, the GDMBR traces the spine of the Rocky Mountains for a whopping 2,711 miles in its entirety, following primarily dirt roads and tracks from Banff, Alberta, to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, at the Mexican border. Sound hardcore? It is, but there are lots of ways to be involved with the anniversary, whether your friends call you super dirt or you're still on training wheels.

Enter to win an Old Man Mountain Boomerang bike, http://www.dirtragmag.com/GDR/. Join one of Adventure Cycling's seven-day guided tours on sections of the route in Banff or Colorado. Interested in experiencing the route on your own? Peruse the freshly updated version of Cycling the Great Divide, a comprehensive guidebook to the GDMBR written by Adventure Cycling's Michael "Mac" McCoy. Adventure Cycling also offers map sections for the route featuring turn-by-turn directions, campground locations, and the best re-supply points along the way. Information about the tours, the guide, and map sections are available at http://www.adventurecycling.org.

For superhumanly fit cyclists, check out the two, ultimate racing challenges taking place on the route this summer. The fifth-annual Great Divide Race (http://www.greatdividerace.com) kicks off on June 20 (at high noon), following the GDMBR from the Canadian to Mexican borders. (Last year's winner, Jay Petervary, completed the route in a jaw-dropping 15 days.) The Tour Divide (http://www.tourdivide.org/) is new this year and, like the Great Divide Race, the Tour Divide is entirely self-supported, with riders carrying everything they need on their bikes or backs, but it ups the ante by starting a week earlier, on June 13, in Banff and includes the GDMBR's Canadian section for an additional 221 miles of riding. Adventure Cycling is not officially involved in either race but encourages all riders of the route.

To cap off the anniversary events, Adventure Cyclist's July 2008 issue will be devoted to inspiring stories from and practical advice for the route. Essays by Mac McCoy, the GDMBR's principal architect, and other luminaries will look back at the route's first decade, while Adventure Cyclist Deputy Editor Aaron Teasdale gives his account of riding the Canadian section and presents a special section, "Gear for the Great Divide." Adventure Cyclist is the member publication of Adventure Cycling Association, http://www.adventurecycling.org/mag/index.cfm.

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 Adventure Cycling Association is the premier bicycle travel organization in North America with nearly 44,000 members. A nonprofit organization, their mission is to inspire people of all ages to travel by bicycle. They produce routes and maps for cycling in North America, organize more than 40 tours annually, and publish the best bicycle travel information anywhere, including Adventure Cyclist magazine and The Cyclists' Yellow Pages. With 38,158 meticulously mapped miles in the Adventure Cycling Route Network, Adventure Cycling gives cyclists the tools and confidence to create their own bike travel adventures. Contact them at (800) 755-BIKE (2453), info@adventurecycling.org, or visit www.adventurecycling.org.