The final stage is referred to as our “reward” for the previous 5 stages. It’s only about 30 miles with about 4,900 feet of elevation and the average times for my “group” would be somewhere under 3 hours. Also a lot of the climbing is on a gentle grade gravel road, so it is relatively easy climbing. The start for the day would be similar to stage 5 in that we would start in waves of 10 separated by a minute and based on our previous day’s finishing time. Based on that I would start in the 6th wave with Dan Durland and Vince Anderson the 3rd and 1st place in the GC. Dahn (the 2nd place GC) would be starting 2 mins behind us.
Vince had a pretty commanding lead in the GC and earlier that morning had learned that he broke the frame on his bike at some point during the wheeler stage. He managed to come up with a loaner but it was quite a bit different from his normal bike. So he was basically there to finish and preserve his 1st Overall. I was really the only one who needed to make up significant time. Which I knew was probably a long shot on the course we had for the day but I had to give it a shot.
The first bit is singletrack climbing, I just stayed with Dan for most of that, letting him do the pacemaking but never falling off his back wheel. After getting through a lot of the singletrack and a few more technical sections, the trail pitched up a little more and we were in some more doubletrack type trail. I made a little bit of a move, passed Dan and pushed on. I figured if I had any chance of making up time I needed to go early and get over the top before him. I managed to get over the top and down the first descent, which was incredibly smile inducing. However there wasn’t much climbing left after I made the pass and the descent wasn’t terribly challenging so I didn’t feel like I’d have much of a gap.
As it turns out I was right, once we got back out on the road I could see Dan back in the distance and he was making up time. He caught up and we rode together for a while, talking a little bit, still pushing fairly hard. About 3/4 of the way up the climb I looked back to see Dahn rolling up. He’d caught us. At this point the race was basically decided (save for a major issue which nobody really wishes on anyone). We all relaxed just a touch, although not much honestly. As we got to the top there were beer handups, so I obliged, its basically all downhill to the finish from there.
Knowing I wasn’t going to make the GC podium I wanted to try and make the stage podium, so I pushed the descent a little bit. Dan and Dahn didn’t really want to race for it so I was given a little leeway. Once again I managed to find myself following Evelyn Dong down the final descent and once again she was nailing it. After an awesome descent (with one or two more little ups that nobody wanted to mention) we came to the line and capped off the 2017 Breck Epic. As it turns out another single speeder who started a few minutes back actually caught up to us as well, so I ended up 3rd on the day.
Now for Beer.
