Aug 25 A cold night made for great sleep. Heel blisters felt find this morning. Quads did not. With another big climb, it was Bryce’s day to lead. We motored along well until we reached the steep section – 1,000 ft in about a mile. The pace became a walking trudge, but Bryce’s trudge was better than mine. We reached the 6 mile checkpoint close to our goal. On the trip down my quads wouldn’t lift enough for me to roll along. Though it seemed like I was moving, Bryce was flying. He was having a blast bombing down the mountain and I was ticked I couldn’t keep up. He was very kind about stopping to wait for me.

As bad as it was there was no option of giving up. This is a team effort and I didn’t want to let my teammates down any more than I already was. After a foot-numbing section through a rock strewn stream we reached the 11.5 mile checkpoint. From there it was just 2.5 gently downhill miles on a smooth gravel road. The mixed team we’ve been back and forth with each day was just ahead and we were not going to beat Marshall and Kyle’s time. As silly as it sounds, I was on the verge of tears. I hate to lose and here were two significant losses staring me in the face. Bryce calmed  me down as we rolled along. Determined to salvage something, I focused on getting my knees up and hitting the tangents. I found some rhythm and dug in for the rest of the way. Amazingly we dropped our rivals and averaged sub 8 minute pace for the final 2.5 miles. Our time of 2:48:01 was almost 5 minutes slower than Marchall and Kyle and dropped us back to ninth.

We were both very pleased with how the stage ended and enjoyed a post run soak in the icy stream in Red Cliff.