The Second longest distance between two points.

The first being the distance a freighter must travel from Taiwan to the Yeti Factor when you're waiting for your frame.  The second is the back fence line at the Chalk Creek Stampede Race.  This may be also a microcosm of what hell is like and a metaphor for insanity.  

This distance is deceptive in it's simplicity, straight, double-track, and dead flat.  But that's how its elegance hides it's lethality.  Flat, it's not flat. The 14,000' and change Mt. Princeton provided a perfect optical illusion, it is a sinister 2-3% grade. The soil is a mixture of wet sponges and aquarium gravel, but that's not the killer.  There will be a minimum of a 20 mph wind, and that is  a good day. I believe it is a mass of cold air falling off the edge of the 14ners right in to your face.  On a bad day this section will make you rethink you entire purpose for racing.  Tomorrow it will probably be raining. I have a theory the wind will be upslope, thus marking the second time in some 12 rides I've had here that it is a tail wind. Lets hope i'm right.