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.

source: Adventure Cycling

New Pedal Pioneers Course trains adults to lead overnight bike trips for kids

Missoula, Mont. - Adventure Cycling Association announces a fantastic new educational offering, the Pedal Pioneers Training Course(PPTC). Designed to get kids off the couch and onto a bicycle saddle, this is a leadership course for adults who want to take groups of kids on overnight bicycle adventures. The PPTC distills Adventure Cycling’s decades’ worth of experience in organizing and leading bicycle tours, and wraps it into a three-day package that will impart a wealth of knowledge and know-how on and off the bike. Continuing education credits are available.

“Our goal is to give adult leaders the tools they will need to take a group of kids on the adventure of a lifetime – whether it is an overnight outing or a month-long tour,” says Becky Douglas, Adventure Cycling’s outreach and education coordinator. “Three days of demonstrations, role-playing, lectures, and riding will hone participants’ leadership skills, and point them down the road to leading successful youth bicycle adventures.”

Craig Johnston, a teacher from California, led a weeklong bicycle trip with five kids along the Lewis and Clark Bicycle Trail. “We had a great multi-day bicycle trip! The kids learned so much, and found out what they could accomplish anything if they put their minds to it,” said Johnston. “This trip changed the lives of these five students, and of me. We literally could not have done it without [Adventure Cycling's] support.”

Douglas adds, “Overnight bike trips provide an great opportunity for youth to combine physical and mental challenges, hone social skills, learn about different regions of the world, gain confidence, and build a sense of self-sufficiency through experiential learning.”

Kids are less active today then they were thirty years ago. As a result, youth obesity rates are at an all-time high and many lifestyle-related illnesses such as childhood diabetes are on the rise. The shift to an indoor childhood has accelerated in the past decade, with huge declines in spontaneous outdoor activities such as bike riding, swimming, and touch football, according to separate studies by the National Sporting Goods Association, a trade group, and American Sports Data, a research firm. Bike riding alone is down 31% since 1995.

For more information about Adventure Cycling’s Pedal Pioneers Training Course, or to sign up, visit http://www.adventurecycling.org/tours/2008pedalpioneer.cfm.

source: Adventure Cycling