On Friday morning, in the parking lot of a YMCA in Banff, a town in Alberta, Canada, Mark Gibson will point his mountain bike south and start pedaling. If everything goes well — and he’s realistic enough to know it probably won’t — he’ll arrive in Antelope Wells at the U.S.-Mexico border 25 days later, having survived the harrowing Tour Divide, a 2,745-mile off-road journey through mountains, valleys, and deserts, plowing through foot-deep snow in some places and blazing hot temperatures in others, and catching a couple of hours sleep each night under the stars, while keeping a watchful eye out for wild animals.
“I’ve been working toward this for five years,” says Gibson, a 62-year-old Perkasie resident. “I’m very excited about doing the whole thing.”
No stranger to extreme physical challenges, Gibson has been pushing the limits of his physical endurance since 2010 when an invitation to join AARP shocked his sensibilities. Less than a year later he ran his first 50-mile ultramarathon. Next, a 100-mile run along the Florida Keys. And the list of crazy ideas is still growing.
To celebrate his 60th birthday in November 2020, for example, Gibson completed his self-proclaimed “Rocky Steps Everest Challenge,” running up the 72 steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art approximately 880 times for a total distance of just over 29,029 feet, which just happens to be the height of the highest mountain in the world. He didn’t include running back down the steps, so it was actually the equivalent of both ascending and descending the famed Himalayan peak.
Gibson, who owns Boing Gymnastics Center in Perkasie and is a motivational speaker, has also run from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia in 10 days, a distance of about 276 miles, the equivalent of a marathon a day. Just recently, for the second year in a row, he completed the David Goggins 4x4x46 Challenge, running four miles, every four hours, for 48 straight hours.
For Gibson, pursuing himself is all about the journey. He’s developed a philosophy he calls the CAT Advantage: Curiosity, Audacity and Tenacity. “So many (others) get fired up about the dream,” he says. “They’re focused on the goal and not the process of achieving the goal.”
This journey will be a doozy. There is no trophy, no prize money for finishing first, just the satisfaction of knowing you set a goal and completed it, he says.
The Tour Divide roughly follows the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, considered by many to be the most recognized off-pavement cycling route in the United States, if not the world. The route crisscrosses the Continental Divide from north to south using mostly high-quality dirt and gravel roads, trails, and a few short sections of unmaintained tracks. While riders need only intermediate off-road mountain biking skills, it is a painstaking test of endurance based on the sheer scale of the route, with over 200,000 feet of elevation gain and loss.
Along the way, Gibson will travel through a cross-section of the American West defined by spectacular scenery, a variety of landscapes, historic mountain towns, and boundless remote wilderness. He’ll encounter wild river valleys, remote mountain wilderness, open grasslands, and high desert. Toward the southern end of the route, he’ll traverse the Chihuahuan Desert.
As if those physical challenges aren’t enough, Gibson will carry bear spray in case he comes face to face with a grizzly or some other wild animal.
The key to finishing, says Gibson, is “time in the saddle turning pedals.” He’ll probably average about 10 miles an hour but will ride for up to 16 hours a day, stopping only for food and supplies. “The question you keep asking yourself is ‘Is the bike moving forward?’ If not, you’re losing time.”
As a veteran of extreme physical challenges, Gibson says most people drop out because they don’t have a realistic expectation about how hard it is going to be. The first three or four days will be the toughest. “I’ll be thinking ‘This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, what was I thinking?’” he says. But then he settles in and “it becomes your lifestyle.”
That’s what happened a couple of years ago when Gibson biked across the country from Santa Cruz, CA to Ocean City, NJ. Those first few days, peddling alone through California’s agricultural land with its boring, flat terrain, brutally hot temperature, and diesel-belching trucks rumbling next to him “were horrid,” he says. But then one cool evening, Gibson found himself on the other side of the Sierra Mountains camped out next to an orchard. “It was such joy,” he says. “I thought to myself ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this.’ From then on it was easy.”
Gibson will ride a rugged steel-framed bike he painstakingly built during the pandemic, sourcing parts such as self-healing tires, the gearbox, saddle, and hydraulic brake system from around the world. He has no idea what it cost. “This is the most expensive free race I’ve ever been in,” he quips.
He’ll carry minimal gear to keep the weight down below 50 pounds: just two pairs of socks, one pair of shorts, two T-shirts, and a sleeping bag. The nearest creek bed will serve as his washing machine.
“There will be ups and downs,” says Gibson. “Just like life. But you just keep moving forward and eventually you reach your goal.”
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