Weekly Newsletter: January 20th-26th, 2025

This week, we wanted to give everyone an update on the status of Keith's attempt at the 2025 Tour Divide race. We also had possibly our shortest weekend of skiing ever. 😔

Check out our new posts and videos 🆕 🎥 📝

Lodging on the Camino: From Hostels to Hotels

Keith and I enjoyed the various and inexpensive options for lodging along the Camino de Santiago. Each night was a little different and offered different amenities.

Keith and LindseyLindsey Huster

Tour Divide 2025 update 🚵‍♂️ 📅

We are officially moving forward with Keith's plans to race in the 2025 Tour Divide! 🎉 Keith has spent most of the past year recovering from his prior ligament injury and creating a plan to prevent a similar situation from recurring.

Physical Preparation 🏋️ 💪

Keith has worked with the physical therapists at American Fork Physical Therapy to create a workout plan to help improve his knee resilience. This plan includes a focus on heavy weight lifting to rebuild worn tendons/ligaments. Lifting heavy weights has been shown to literally realign the fibers and tissues within tendons and ligaments thus increasing their load bearing capabilities and overall resilience.

The plan also includes mobility and balance drills to strengthen the muscles that stabilize his knees. Thanks to our tiny home gym, Keith has been able to maintain consistency with this plan since then. So far, the results have been very promising as Keith has been able to ride for 8+ hours without any signs of knee pain.

Professional Bike Fitting 🚲 📏

Keith has worked with the professional bike fitters at Peak State Fit in Salt Lake City, UT to correct his body position on the bike. The bike fitters helped to put Keith in the correct position to eliminate unnecessary load on his knees, hips, and back.

Earlier this week, Keith went back to Peak State Fit to have a set of shorter, 165mm SRAM Eagle Quarq XX1 cranks and a smaller Wolf Tooth 30-tooth chainring installed on his bike. The shorter cranks will reduce the torque applied to Keith's knees during the power part of the pedal stroke. These cranks also open Keith's hip angle when he is in the aero bar position. This has the added benefit of minimizing the likelihood of the aero bar position causing strain on Keith's hip and glute muscles. The smaller chainring will further lower Keith's gearing making it easier to climb steep roads with a loaded bike.

Lodging in Banff, AB 🏨 🇨🇦

We have once again booked our stay at the Douglas Fir Resort and Chalets in Banff, AB for the start of the race. We are planning to be there for an entire week ahead of the race start. This will give us some time to relax, see the sites, and take care of any pre-race preparation that might be needed. Keith is hoping to be off work the entire time that we are in Banff but that is still a little up in the air with his work schedule. 🤞

Official Letter of Intent ✍️ 📜

Keith has submitted his official letter of intent to race in the 2025 Tour Divide. This letter of intent is not technically necessary, you can just show up on race day. However, by submitting this letter, Keith will now be included in the officially-unofficial racer tracking spreadsheet. This will also open up Keith's chances of having himself and/or his bike featured in online publications such as Bikepacking.com's "Rigs of the Tour Divide" series.

Dinner at Bobby's Burgers 🍔 🏆

For an early date night this week, we decided to check out the new Bobby's Burgers restaurant in Orem, UT. This is a chain, counter-serve restaurant launched by the man himself, Bobby Flay.

We knew that the food would be good since this was a Bobby Flay restaurant. However, we also kept our expectations a little low since this was a counter-serve burger joint. This mind set turned out to be the perfect way to enjoy our meal.

Everything was really good and your could tell that everything was handmade, including the beef patties and onion rings. 😋 However, nothing was really that spectacular. After all, this is somewhat of a fast-food restaurant. Still, if you are looking for a solid burger and fries, this is definitely a spot to check out.

Short weekend of skiing at Snowbird 🎿 🏔️

We skied at Snowbird on Saturday but our day was very short lived. We only ended up staying for about 2 hours due to several factors discussed below...

Snowbird had received a few inches of snow overnight but there was also a solid layer of ice underneath the fresh snow. This made for very sketchy skiing conditions since it was difficult to tell what was snow and what was ice. The off-piste runs were especially tricky due to the hidden, frozen moguls that would catch you off guard.

The crowds were also a big problem once again this weekend. Even though the entire mountain was open, there seemed to be an unexpectedly large amount of skiers on the main runs. This may have been due to the icy conditions which made off-piste skiing quite difficult. We both felt very nervous skiing due to the crowded mix of inexperienced tourists and fast-ripping locals. We were constantly dodging being run into and/or accidentally running into someone else.

Finally, there were the multiple "lift maintenance" notifications. Several of the lifts on the mountain were either delayed opening or temporarily closed for lift maintenance. This caused complications with route planning and excessively long lines at the operational lifts. This was the third strike for us so we decided to head back down the mountain and grab a late breakfast.

Breakfast at Penny Ann's Cafe 🥞 ☕

After leaving Snowbird, we headed to Penny Ann's Cafe in Draper, UT to get a late breakfast. Keith had been craving their Heavenly Hot Cakes for a while now so this was the perfect opportunity to visit this local diner.

Keith ordered the breakfast burrito and a short-stack of Heavenly Hot Cakes with the plan to take half of his order home for breakfast the next morning. Lindsey ordered the "Chicken In Waffles" which is an interesting take on the classic Chicken and Waffles. The chicken is actually served inside the waffle rather than on top! 🐔 🧇 Our meal was delicious but also very heavy which made for a long, tiring drive home. 😴

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. Winter is in full swing, how are you spending your winter season? Let us know in the comments section below.👇 💬