RPI Queen's Stage Race - Stage 3
The Baked Potato - 102 miles of the best gravel that Sun Valley has to offer. Rebecca describes the course thusly;
"Oh yeah! This is the macdaddy, the original route of Rebecca’s Private Idaho and stunner showcase of our awesome mountain vistas and remote landscape. We start at Festival Meadows in Sun Valley with a neutral rollout as flat-to-rolling pavement gives way to the biggest climb of the day: Trail Creek Summit. Dropping into the Big Lost River Basin you’ll loop through Wildhorse Canyon, where washboard gravel gets your attention before you head toward Copper Basin, a lovely valley of sagebrush and willow-rimmed creeks, hemmed in by the great White Knob and Pioneer mountain ranges, the most beautiful and challenging part of the course. All of the areas you ride through today are the historical land of the Shoshone-Bannock people. With the Copper Basin loop completed, all riders except those competing in the Para-Cycling category will reverse tracks and head back via an adventurous five-mile diversion Rebecca dubbed El Diablito. A ripping 2,000-foot descent from Trail Creek Summit returns you to civilization in Sun Valley, where your tribe awaits with warm hugs and cold drinks during Rebecca's Private Idaho Festival Day at the final Festival Meadows finish arch."
The night before the race, we had sat around Peter's table, listening to his friend, Kyle Rafford, tells us about the course and more importantly, the attitude you need to have in this one - there's always a group, never give up, a lot can happen. And so, it was with that in my mind that we set off at 8am on Sun Valley Road up towards Trail Creek.
I also spent the night before on final preparations, fiddling with a spreadsheet I'd made to estimate the number of calories and carbs I'd need along the route.
Despite having finished 8th on the uphill time trial, with 2 liters of First Endurance EFS in my USWE Outlander Pro pack (I had seen Ted King use the same pack in Unbound, so figured it must be good ;-) and 2 x 750 ml bottles on my bike, I started up Trail Creek feeling nervous about blowing up with so far to go and not feeling confident to try to keep up with the first group. So, I mostly rode solo and crested the summit of Trail Creek alongside what I think was probably the first female in the field at that time. I descended Trail Creek alone and remembered the words of Kyle to wait for a group to latch onto. Fortunately, that didn't take too long and within a minute or two, a group caught up to me and I joined the pack. And, so that went until about mile 25 when my friend, Peter, showed up in a group to form a large blob of about 15-20 riders.
Anyway...our group was...odd. No-one wanted to pull, except for Peter, me, and two pro women from the Liv Racing Collective team who were unbelievably strong, and an occasional effort by one of the 15 dudes sitting behind us. And really, Peter was the one pulling the whole train most of the time. And, so it went for mile after mile until we hit "El Diablito" at mile 81 - a nasty rocky section for 5 or so miles. Peter smartly went into that hellscape at the front of the group and I idiotically entered it basically last in the group - I was busy fueling before it.
I worked my way by a few of the folks in our group in the El Diablito section, including Molly Cameron who had been in our group and was having a strong day on the bike and we'd traded words of encouragement throughout. By the time we exited El Diablito, we had, 4 or so miles to the top of Trail Creek and Peter was but a speck in the distance - I estimated he had about 1-2 mins on me. I spent the next miles solo, slowly reeling him back, but he went over the top of Trail Creek a couple of hundred meters ahead of me, and I decided to go all in on the descent. About 2/3 of the way down the gravel section on Trail Creek, I ripped past him while he was politely waiting for the cars on the road. Just before passing him, I dropped my chain, but managed to save it on the chainring by spinning backwards. As we got towards the bottom of Trail Creek gravel, I was ahead of Peter thinking, "hell yes!" and then my chain dropped on both the cassette and the chainring!! I bent down to try and get it back on, flying down the washboard gravel at 25+mph but to no avail. I think Peter even yelled at me to stop being so stupid. So, I reluctantly stopped to get the chain on and watched Peter vanish into the distance. I got the chain unstuck from the bottom of the cassette, got it back on the chainring and spent the next 8 miles frantically trying to catch him. I saw him peering backwards from time to time, and I was slowly getting back towards him but he was too strong. He beat me across the line by 13 secs to finish 16th in the Baked Potato with me coming in 17th in a time of 5:28:30 (11th and 12th among the stage racers, respectively). And so, I ended up 9th in the general classification and Peter 10th.
That Peter guys sounds like a really ass for not waiting for you when your chain dropped! Wasn’t he your teammate?! Cool that he put down two schooners at Grumpy’s though.
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