Stage 4 was a Point-to-point route from Davos to Chur, at just about 40 miles and 7700 ft vertical up but…almost 11k down we were in for a treat with a lot more descending than climbing. However, for anyone familiar, 7700 up in 40 miles is a lot of climbing. The profile for the day also revealed that you gained a lot of that elevation in 3 big chunks, there were other rises as well but 3 pretty big, sustained climbs and one of them came right out of the gate, gaining 2700ft in the first 4 ½ miles. So, we were in for a good day.
Talking ahead of the day we sort of concluded that if feasible the better idea would be to try and frontload some of the effort and get over the first pass in a good position. Then just try to make sure there was enough gas in the tank to make it over the next two climbs without completely coming apart. So that was the game plan. We had moved back into the B start group after Stage 2, which put us with a pretty good group of riders, and we generally found ourselves near the front of that group after the dust settled from the start.
This first climb went up a pretty nice gravel road for a bit with some switchbacks until we came out onto the ski area, and it just kept pitching up, steeper, and looser, and steeper, and straighter. Finally, it turned into a bike pushing conga line, a few folks tried to ride, and did, but they were going the same speed for the most part and putting a lot more effort into it. Up near the top things leveled out a little bit and we were able to get some pedal strokes in before going over the top. The descent down the other side was ROWDY, so steep, so soft, so many switchbacks. Honestly, it was hard to ride, glad I checked brake pads before the day started.
That finally opened into some other trail, forestry road, and we were feeling good. Keeping a good pace, riding strong.
The second big climb of the day started up a lot of pavements, which wasn’t bad, but it eventually just kept going, and again getting steeper as it went. It was a little tough on morale, but we were keeping a pretty good pace. At this point in the race, I was doing a lot more shifting positions on the bike, standing, changing cadence, just trying to keep my body happy. It worked, we didn’t really get caught and made it over the top without destroying ourselves.
The descent off this side got us into this loamy “trail” section, I put trail in quotes because it was more like they just picked a section of woods and were like, yep..yep..let’s go here, get the flags and chainsaws…It was steep, and soft, and had I had some bigger rotors and maybe a bigger bike it would have been crazy fun, but in this setting the brakes faded and it was a little touch and go at times. Hoping I was going to have enough brake power to get stopped before running Wes over. Any who…it was pretty amazing.
Onto the last climb and it got pretty pitchy, we got caught by a mixed team and another masters team who appeared to be pretty solid climbers. I really didn’t want to go into the last descents behind them. I did what I could to stay with the team and finally I could tell we were nearing the top. I put in some effort, but so did they, I kept at it and pushed a little harder. They finally sat down and Wes pulled me up into the woods first. This was clutch, we were ripping down the trails. It was rowdy and so much fun. We finally popped down into Chur and absolutely hammered the last 5k into town. Another strong day of riding and the best part was there was still some gas in the tank for one more day.
