DAY 1: Friday, July 13

This year’s race had a staggered start with the fastest riders leaving from the iconic YWCA building across the river from downtown Banff at 6:55 a.m. With a solid middle-of-the-pack goal of 27 days (100-ish miles per day), my start time was scheduled for 8:35 a.m. The start times weren’t officially announced until an email went out at nearly 11 p.m. the night before—long after I was dead to the world and enjoying my last night on an admittedly lumpy mattress in one of Banff’s cheaper hotel rooms. So, naturally, I woke up at 5 a.m. with no idea when I’d be riding but knowing I was going to eat as many donuts and as much coffee as I could. I rode over to witness the first wave (good luck Lael!) before going two blocks back toward downtown to Banff’s best coffee shop—Mountain Folk. The next hour just waiting around felt absurdly long and antsy.

Such a “late” start meant I wasn’t able to utilize quite a few good daylight hours, so rather than push it into the night on my first day setting up camp I called it at mile 84 on the race map (88 miles according to my GPS). It wasn’t a crazy day in the grand scheme of this thing, but it was an awakening to the start of what I’m sure will be many more, harder days. Elevation gain was over 7000 feet according to my Garmin watch. Knowing there are days coming up soon (tomorrow), that will be even steeper, well I hope you wish me luck!

Probably the scariest thing that happened today was coming upon a group of 3 grizzlies way too close. They were only about 40 feet away, but I and the other closest cyclist pulled our bear spray and passed by slowly. The bears maintained a calm and curious body language that didn’t worry us too much, but we were ready for a charge. Fun fact: Grizzlies can cover a distance of 40 feet in about 2 seconds, so don’t underestimate them.

Weather was perfect! It hailed on us during a casual ride yesterday and it was raining hard to the west all day, but somehow we missed it all. It threatened rain a couple times, but never broke. In fact, we had a lot of sun for an otherwise mild perfect day. The weather probably explains a lot of why the leaders are surpassing 200+ miles in the first 18 hours—incredible!

Once at camp I set up my tent, sent a Garmin InReach message and some more detailed texts to Jenn with updates on the day (which she has translated into this post—thank’s wife!), and ate as much as I could. The days before I had started joking with Jenn that rather than having butterflies in my stomach, there were some pterodactyls flying around in there—the nerves mostly left once I was out riding, but the first night in camp is never easy when a long trip has only just begun. Tomorrow starts with some early miles to the base of Koko Claims!