Weekly Newsletter: April 28th - May 4th, 2025

This week, we visited a new local park 🛝, Lindsey checked out a highly-rated bookstore 📚, Keith performed important bike maintenance 🔧, and Keith started back-to-back training rides. 😅

Check out our new posts and videos 🆕 🎥 📝

Part 8: Camino Highlights: More Favorite Moments

Keith and Lindsey have many favorite memories from the Camino de Santiago. Here are a few fun moments that haven’t been included in previous posts.

Keith and LindseyLindsey Huster

Checking out a new local park 🛝 🛹

Utah county has amazing local parks. This week, we checked out the new Cook Family Park in Pleasant Grove, UT. This park has an incredible assortment of activities for kids of all ages. The park has a large skatepark area, a bicycle pump track area, a massive jungle gym, and several sports courts.

We walked a couple of laps around the park to enjoy the warm, spring weather. The park is still under construction and more features are being added, including a large splash pad. We can't wait to see this park again when it is completed.

Repairing a broken bike part 🔧 🧰

The 2025 Tour Divide race is fast approaching and Keith has started working through his long bike preparation list. This week, Keith needed to replace all of the pivot bearings that make his bike's suspension work. As Keith was replacing the bearings, he realized that a bearing spacer had been missing for some unknown amount of time. This missing part caused the frame to dig into the carbon upper linkage, eventually cracking it! 😱

Thankfully, Keith was able to contact Intense Bikes support and they were able to quickly ship out a replacement upper linkage and the bearing spacer that he needed. Keith now has all of the suspension bearings replaced in both the upper and lower linkages on his bike. His bike's suspension is smooth as silk now!

Bikepacking gear test fit 🧳🚲

Now that Keith is close to finalizing his bikepacking gear list, he needed to determine how all of the items that he plans to take will fit on his bike. So, Keith laid out all of his gear and his bikepacking bags to test out different packing strategies.

Packing bikepacking bags is more difficult than it might sound... It requires considering weight balance, ease of access, and item prioritization in order to have an efficient packing strategy. Keith went through several iterations before finally settling on a first draft of a packing strategy. Keith will now need to start testing this strategy while he is on his training rides in order to find any inefficiencies that still exist.

A romance-only bookstore 📚 💘

Lindsey had planned to meet with her friends, Stephanie and Anna, to attend the annual Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, UT. Unfortunately, when they arrived, the event was sold out for the day. 😔 So, instead, they decided to check out a local romance-only bookstore that has been on their must-visit list.

Lagg (Like a Good Girl) book store caters mainly to women that love good romance novels. This was the perfect spot for the trio to spend some time checking out the latest romance authors.

After having their fill of books, the three headed to Redemption Bar & Grill in Herriman, UT for an early dinner and drinks.

Back to back training rides 2️⃣ 😅

The 2025 Tour Divide race is only 6 weeks away! 🤯 Through his training up to this point, Keith has proven to himself that he can ride the distance and the elevation required in a single ride. Now, Keith needs to start focusing on his ability to ride at that level, day after day after day.

Keith's first training ride of the weekend was on Friday while Lindsey was out with her friends. He packed up his bike with a lot of food, water, and gear and headed north towards Lehi, UT. Keith followed the Murdock Canal Trail to the Jordan River Trail which eventually led him into Draper, UT. At this point, Keith stopped for dinner at a local Maverick gas station where he was treated to an aerial show by all of the paragliders at the Point of the Mountain. 🪂 Keith then returned home via the Murdock Canal Trail. In total, Keith rode 68 miles (110 kilometers) with 2,172 feet (662 meters) of elevation gain.

Keith headed back out for his second training ride on Saturday. This time, Keith traveled up Provo canyon to ride the Deer Creek Parkway trail. Saturday turned out to be much hotter than Keith realized. 🥵 While on the Deer Creek Parkway trail, Keith started noticing his power dropping off and that he wasn't feeling like himself. So, Keith stopped to figure out what was going on. As he stopped, he quickly realized that the temperatures were much hotter than he expected. So, he drank a liter of water that he was carrying on his front fork and ate a sugary snack to help perk him back up. The water did the trick and allowed him to successfully finish the route. In total, Keith rode 65 miles (105 kilometers) with 2,339 feet (713 meters) of climbing.

Both of these rides were shorter and less elevation gain that what will be required during the race, and that is ok. Keith is trying to be smart and slowly ramp up his back-to-back riding endurance. Keith knows how easy it can be to overtrain so he is sticking with his plan to ramp up to back-to-back 100 miles rides over the next few weeks.

Trying to test Keith's rain gear 🌧️ 🚫

On Sunday, the weather forecast called for significant rainstorms in our area. Keith was excited since he has not yet been able to test out his rain gear. Keith also wanted to test out the waterproofness of all of his bikepacking bags. So, Keith installed the rear rack on his bike, loaded a bunch of his planned packing list, and headed out into the storm.

Unfortunately, the storm fizzled out along Keith's riding route. Keith did face very strong headwinds and crosswinds though. This was great practice for the variable mountain weather that Keith will experience along the 2025 Tour Divide. Keith could see severe rainstorms along the mountain ranges to his west and east but not a drop of rain fell on him during his 32 mile (51 kilometer) training ride. 😔

It was funny though... as Keith returned home, parked his bike in our garage, and stopped his bike computer... the rain started pouring throughout our neighborhood. 🤣 Keith considered gearing up and heading back out but he knew that the rainstorm would be short lived, and it was.

Upcoming posts and videos 👷‍ 👷‍♀️️

Lindsey is continuing her work on the post series from our three-week adventure along the Camino De Santiago, Portuguese Route! Those posts are being published as she has time. We also have several prior trips that we haven't yet shared, so be sure to subscribe to our blog if you haven't done so already.

We hope that you are enjoying our newsletters. Spring is officially here and summer is just around the corner! Do you have any summer vacation plans coming up? Let us know in the comments section below.👇 💬