Breck Day 4 -- Around Mt. Guyot

It's a bit hard to describe today's stage. First things first though, I suppose: we won! We finally broke the 2nd place trend, and in the correct direction. We gained almost 7 minutes and now sit 2:19 back in the overall.

The stage started by climbing some of yesterday's final descent. It wasn't consistent climbing, but it still hurt. Lots of short, steep, rocky climbs until we finally hit the top of the first obstacle. But that was nothing compared to what was waiting for us. After some fast contouring on very narrow single track, we hit an extremely fast, extremely rocky descent. At the bottom we saw the race leaders at the side fixing another flat. A quick stop in the aid station, and we started up.

I don't know why, but I absolutely loved this climb. It started out gradually, but then got increasingly steeper as we passed through the forest and broke out above tree line. As we looked up, we could see a steep pitch with about 10 guys walking. We walked for about 5 minutes before we saw the real top of the climb. I was able to ride for a bit, but then it was off and walking again. I don't know how long we walked, maybe 15 or 20 minutes, but it was actually enjoyable, at least relatively so. It was just so crazy beautiful up there. I got to the top a bit before Ryan and was able to look around a bit. The view from 12,000 feet is impressive. I couldn't see our race leaders down the mountain, so I figured we had at least 5 minutes on them.

Ryan got to the top and we headed down. Well, we did eventually. First we had to cross a snow field. The guy in front of me tried to ride it, and ended up sliding on his stomach for about 50 meters before stopping just before the bottom. I ran down it before sliding the last 20 meters on both feet realizing that I either had to pull off my best 'cross remount ever, or I'd be bouncing around the rocks for a while. I don't remember what I did, but I rolled out of it.

Then we had 20 minutes of the some of the best riding I've ever done. Save for one moment when I was way over the back of my seat staring at a 3 foot drop with nothing to do (but roll it and pray), it was super fast, ripping single track. And then we climbed a bit and guess what? 30 minutes of more absolutely incredible single track. It went from blazingly fast to crazy rocky, but was an absolute blast.

I love this race!

And then we hit the final climb and I absolutely hate this race. We survived, barely, and were faced with 8 more miles of rolling and rocky forest road and some single track.

That's when Ryan said he heard a leak in his front tire. With a few miles of crazy fast rocky descending, a low front tire wasn't really going to help us much. We tried my CO2, but it wasn't working. We tried Ryan's, and it worked, but the tire didn't seal. We rode it for a while, stopped to fill it again, then kept going. We could hear the finish, but didn't know how long we had. Finally we crossed a road and the marshals said we had 2 minutes left. Ryan cruised it on 10psi and we finally crossed the finish in 4 hours, 14 minutes and 33 seconds.

Then we just had to wait. We needed 9 minutes, 2 seconds to take over the lead. We didn't get there, but it was still a blast.

Tomorrow takes us up to 12,400, so it'll be another sufferfest.