Day7- Lima to Tetonia, 160ish miles
I hit the ground running at 4:45. Like a bolt of lightning.... no, white lightning..... no, like a bolt of 6'04'' 235 pound pasty white lightning I was out the door. My saddle sores settled down after another 30 minutes of standing and the rolling terrain wasn't so bad.
It rained on and off but I didn't really mind. I just rode in my normal clothing and enjoyed the way that the water washed over my body. I had a few conversations with cows and waved at the passing cowboys (no, that shouldn't be the other way around). I even enjoyed a brief conversation with a British couple that were doing the divide northbound on a tandem, I also plugged them for some intel on other racers. From the sounds of things I was looking comparatively fresh and some of the riders were feeling demoralized. This only served to embolden my legs.
I continued riding and I was stunned to see an actual cattle drive going on in the middle of the road. (How did the British couple fail to mention THAT?) On each side of the road the cattle fences were set back only a few feet, so the entire width of the road including shoulder was about 30 feet. The ranchers that I came across were moving approximately 5,000 cattle down the road. The road was lined with cattle that were standing shoulder to shoulder across the road (from fence to fence) and rear to head for as far as I could see out across the rolling terrain.
I asked one of the ranchers if I could ride through. He said, "Just don't get 'yerself' bit or kicked." Then he gave me a smirk like he was ready to be entertained by a city slicker trying to play cowboy. Efff that dude. I did my best John Wayne impression and started yelling at the cows to get them to move. The seas of feces slowly parted and I made my way through. After a bit I turned to way goodbye to the cowboys and they seemed thoroughly impressed at what the big boy in lycra could do.
Riding through the masses took me about 25-30 minutes and it was a good distraction for the loneliness of the road. I didn't realize this at the time but after Lima I would only see southbound racers two other times on the route. For two weeks solid I raced, rode, hiked, cried, laughed, sweltered, froze, ate, and slept alone.
I shot this video just before reaching the next town. Now that I have watched the video, I remember being REALLY tired. I say that I rode for the first ten hours of the day without stopping. From the looks of my face, I was telling the truth about the time and I must have been riding hard.
I continued on uneventfully until I reached the town at the highway crossing. I stopped at subway for a sandwich and I resupplied quickly at the convenience store. Then I was off to hit up the infamous ATV/rail trail.
Up until this point I had thought the detours went around this section and I wasn't nearly ready for it. This section is basically 30 miles of deep sand/gravel that undulates over washboard and it is VERY tough riding. I consider my self a fairly good technical rider but the fatigue from a week of riding really sucks the spunkiness out of your technique. I fell 6-8 times on this thirty mile section and I was pretty demoralized.
In this video it was hailing on the trail. I am using my hand to cover the back of my neck because the hail was stinging. Pretty unreal weather day.
Never to fear though, after a few hours I was at the Warm River camp ground and the trail turned to pavement for a nice climb up out of the valley.
This is some footage from the roadway after I finished the climbing out of Warm River CG.
However, the pavement was over too soon and I was dumped onto rail trail. At this point in the day it was getting pretty late and it looked like a significant storm was blowing in off of the mountains.
A picture of the hail-snow-rain-thunder-lightning storm that I rode into. I said it was a gambit didn't I??
I had a choice to make. I could head out of the weather towards Ashton and get a room. Or, I could ride right into the headwinds coming from the storm and try to make it further on the course. I figured I might as well make a good day of it since I had put in so much work to get ahead. I called some hotels near Driggs and found a place that would let me check in on line and leave the room open for me. Then I took off on more rail trail, what ended up being thirty five miles of rail trail.... into a headwind.... that brought a thunder and lightning storm..... that turned to snow and hail..... and took me until 1 am to ride through.
I can't tell you how dramatically exhausting this section was. Even now I get tired thinking about it. I remember trying to see how long I could ride without looking down at the clock and only making it thirty seconds at a time for several hours.
By the time I reached Tetonia I was absolutely exhausted and tired. I could hardly walk. To top it off, there was no food to be found anywhere. At least I had a room. I went to bed clean and warm but incredibly hungry. My one solace was that MTBcast showed my nearest competitors had stopped near Ashton. I guess the Gambit paid off, although I definitely sacrificed a few pawns getting better position.
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