Every year during the Iditarod Invitational there comes a time of Pure Suspense. Is Peter going to catch up? The suspense doesn't last more than half a day but here it is.......

Peter and bike at Start

Published on Alaska Dispatch (http://www.alaskadispatch.com)

Craig Medred [1]

February 24, 2014

Finger Lake on the morning of Feb. 24, 2014.

SKWENTNA -- As the nighttime temperature dropped toward minus-20 and tentacles of cold sneaked along the floor to warn of the world outside every time someone opened the door, the leaders in the Iditarod Trail Invitational [3] shared one concern: "Where's Pete?"
The Pete in question was six-time champion Peter Basinger, a now 33-year-old cyclist who grew up in Anchorage to become a long-distance endurance racer of some note. He held the record for the 350-mile Invitational race to McGrath until it fell to Jay Petervary of Idaho last year.
Petervary isn't back, but Basinger, now a school teacher in Moab, Utah, is. He came into the roadhouse almost two hours behind already departed race leader Tim Berntson from Anchorage, but left only half an hour behind as others relaxed in front of the big-screen TV in the lounge -- watching motocross races, soaking up the warmth and regularly slipping around the wall hiding the staircase to the dining area to try to remedy their calorie deficits.
"I always wondered why people stayed so long in this checkpoint," said Charly Tri, a rookie competitor from Rochester, Minn. A solidly built man whose athletic appearance said more "football player'' than "endurance cyclist," Tri was one of a half-dozen savoring the food and warmth.
Like most them, he also struggled to muster the motivation to leave the comfort of the warm checkpoint for a cold, hard trail. A veteran of these races back almost to the days of his youth, Basinger had his own idea of the meaning of a cold, hard trail.
Rock and roll, baby. Rock and roll.
"This is the best I've ever seen it," Basinger said later when he reached the Winterlake Lodge [4], another 35 miles along the trail. He put a strong emphasis on the word "is."

White sidewalk of hard snow

For 130 miles from the race start back in Knik on Sunday, the cyclists and runners have been on a white sidewalk of rock-hard snow. On soft trail two years ago, Tim Hewitt, a Pennsylvania lawyer in love with the Iditarod Invitational, walked away from the cyclists to lead the Invitational over the Alaska Range.
With the range bold, beckoning and bright only miles north of the Finger Lake checkpoint on Monday morning, Hewitt was nowhere in sight. He was somewhere far back along the trail with the other runners and walkers moving at a pedestrian 3 to 5 mph. Cyclists on fat tire bikes are rolling at 10 mph or more.
Heather Best of Fairbanks, the eighth cyclist into the classy Winterlake Lodge beside a pretty lake, was all smiles as she wolfed down a breakfast burrito of fresh eggs, beans and burritos. Best is in her second Invitational.
Her first was an unmitigated disaster in 2012. She dropped out of the race in Skwentna after days of pushing her bike through fresh snow that was up to thigh deep.
"I never really practiced pushing my bike,'' she said.

Women's course record in offing?

Best was not alone in her suffering. From the beginning of that race, cyclists were lined out in a push-a-thon. The smartest ones quit at Yentna Station, the first Invitational checkpoint. The toughest ones pushed on for Skwentna, only to abandon the race there.
Only the slightly demented kept going. Of the more than 30 cyclists who started the race, which is limited to 50 "invitees,'' only eight finished. Basinger led them in followed by Phil Hofstetter from Nome, another rugged cyclist with a growing reputation in Alaska. He paced everyone to the Nome end of the Iditarod Trail in the 1,000-mile version of this race last year.
Best was not there. She took a year off to contemplate the crazy adventure she had been lured into by husband Jeff Oatley, a past winner of the Invitational to McGrath. She is back this year, pushing Oatley to keep pace and looking like she could be toying with a women's course record.
This is what everyone expected in 2012. A 5-foot-11-inch basketball and volleyball player at Bradley University in the late 1990s and a member Bradley's Athletic Hall of Fame, Best has spent her Alaska years transforming herself into a cyclist and winter triathlete.
When it comes to the bike, she might not be the best pusher, but she's a first-class pedaler. Pushing, it took her three days to do 95 miles to Skwentna. Pedaling, she hit the 130-mile mark this year in 21 hours. Mother Nature has delivery the conditions she needs.
Invitational 2014 is the polar opposite of Invitational 2012, or maybe the anti-polar opposite. When the "polar vortex" slipped south across Canada into the eastern United States in January, a tropical troublemaker known in Alaska as the "Hawaiian Express" came screaming north.
Rain fell. Previous snows turned to slush and mush. Then conditions went back to normal, and winter returned to make ice of everything. The result was rock-hard snow. The kind you can walk on instead of sinking into.
For some Invitational competitors, like Best and Berntson, this is proving an advantage.

Favoring the road cyclist

"He's a road cyclist," Basinger said of the latter, not by way of criticizing Berntson's fat-tire cycling skills but as a way of noting Berntson’s ability to turn up the cadence. By contrast, Basinger is a notorious grinder with a special gift for riding gnarly snow. He can ride a straight line through soft crud while other cyclists are snaking all over the place.
Soft crud, however, is nowhere to be found this year. Where normally fat-tire cyclists are letting air of out of their tires to get more float on soft snow, this year they are pumping them up to get better roll.
When Basinger rode into Finger Lake, he said there is no way he can catch race leaders Berntson and Kevin Breitenbach from Fairbanks if the trail continues like this, as expected. Oatley, who is planning to ride to Nome this year and thus has a reason to ride conservatively at the start of a 1,000-mile journey, confessed he can't keep up with Best in these conditions.
Her natural cadence is just too high, he said. Oatley has to work harder than he wants to stay on her wheel.
"She definitely rides fast," added Coloradan Tim Stern, "Faster than I want to go."
Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com [5]

Source URL: http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20140224/iditarod-invitational-bikers-barrel-down-hard-packed-alaska-trail

The Suspense Ended Quickly

Because the race ended quickly. Kevin Breitenbach broke the biking record to McGrath and Dave Johnston broke the runners' record to McGrath. Peter Basinger wore himself out trying to catch up and finally rested at Nicolai, 50 miles from the finish. He knows the family who hosts the racers in Nicolai and was ready stop pretending he was in shape. Peter did come in 6th and delivered his bike which he sold to a friend in McGrath. He flies back to Moab, Utah from Anchorage on Sunday where his 5th grade class and fixer upper house is waiting.
Fun Video of this year's race by Francis Lambert

Iditarod Invitational bikers shatter records on hard, fast trail

Craig Medred

February 26, 2014

HAPPY RIVER -- As Iditarod Trail Invitational 350 winner Kevin Breitenbach from Fairbanks was rolling his fat-bike into McGrath at record-setting speed that would shame the dog team of 2013 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race champion Mitch Seavey, a man on foot back high in the Alaska Range was hard on the trail of another record.

Nearing halfway in his own journey along the fabled Iditarod Trail, runner Dave Johnston from Willow was ahead of pace to beat a record many thought might stand forever. In 2004, Steve Reifenstuhl, a fisheries biologist from Sitka, covered the 350-miles of trail between Knik in 4 days, 15 hours.

On a trail so primitive it is a stretch to call it a "trail'' in places, Reifenstuhl covered almost 80 miles per day. He finished the race less than 18 hours behind his brother Rocky, a legendary Alaska cyclist who died just this year, and only 33 hours behind 350 winner Mike Curiak, a Colorado wheelman and pioneer of fat-tired bike racing.

The fastest runners usually finish at least two days behind the fastest cyclists. First in the Invitational foot race last year in a time of 4 days, 19 hours and 13 minutes, Johnston was about 48 hours behind winning cyclist Jay Petervary from Idaho. Johnston is this year benefiting from the same assist that aided Breitenbach -- a trail of dirt, rocks, roots, ice and not much snow.

As Johnston shuffled toward Rainy Pass Tuesday afternoon in a style somewhere between speed-walking and running, his footprints only occasionally dented the white surface of the trail. When he paused momentarily to chat, he said softer snow had slowed him a little on the climb up out of the timber surrounding Puntilla Lake to a high, barren moraine that points the way north across the Happy River Valley toward a 3,160-foot pass through the tallest mountain range in the Far North.

But he was still on record pace.

Johnston did not talk long. Though the skies were blue, and the sun warm and welcoming, the wind blew a nasty breeze of 10-degree air along the trail. Lightly dressed to minimize sweating, but with his head and face fully covered to protect against the wind, Johnston pulled a sled with his survival gear and fluids.

Invitational competitors are on their own along the little-traveled wilderness trail. They carry or pull along with them whatever they think they will need to survive. How much or how little varies greatly by individual.

"You pack your insecurities,'' Roman Dial, a wilderness training professor at Alaska Pacific University once observed.

Some of the best Invitational competitors seem to have few insecurities. It is usually the opposite for rookies. Alec Petro, the third-place finisher this year, said that when he first tried the Invitational in 2009 his bike and gear combined weighed 70 pounds. The bike itself was heavy, but a lot of the weight was equipment.

Petro was back this year with a lot less gear and a new, high-tech much lighter bike. Total weight of bike and gear? 45 pounds.

The 43-year-old Johnston -- semi-famous in the Alaska running community for his waist-length ponytail and his special checkpoint treat,Budweiser beer -- usually runs with about 35 pounds of gear in tow in a cheap plastic sled. It seems to slide as easily over dirt, rocks and frozen ground as snow, he said.

All of which is a good thing, given the dirt, rocks, tree roots and frozen ground he is soon to encounter as the Iditarod Trail drops from Rainy Pass into the Dalzell Gorge on the way to the isolated checkpoint of Rohn.

No one can quite remember a February like this in any recent year past. From the crest of the Alaska Range south down the Tatina River to the East Fork Kuskokwim and past the Post River out into the old Farewell Burn, barely a skiff of snow covers the ground.

It made the Invitational a biker's dream. Breitenbach's time from Knik to McGrath was 2 days, 4 hours and 43 minutes. He took more than 14 hours off a record set by Petervary just last year.

Tim Berntson of Anchorage, who paced the race to the halfway point, was about 15 minutes behind Breitenbach and also well under the old record. Alec Petro took third in 2 days, 7 hours, 10 minutes and Todd McFadden was less than four hours behind behind Petro. Fairbanks racer Jeff Oatley was the first racer who intends to race all the way to Nome to reach McGrath, clocking 2 days, 19 hours and 30 minutes.

Both Breitenback and Bernston were significantly faster than the lead teams in last year's Iditarod dog race. Seavey, the winner of that race, made McGrath in 2 days, 4 hours and 25 minutes, but only because he was given a 17-mile head start.

The Iditarod dog race now starts in Willow and runs 42 miles to Yentna Station. The Invitational starts in Knik, once a port on the historic trail, and runs 59 miles to Yentna. Add to Seavey's time the extra hour and a half or more it would have taken his dog team to go the extra distance 17 miles, and he would be at least an hour behind Breitenbach in McGrath, and behind Berntson as well.

Humans roll. Dogs, like Johnston, run.

Lacking a mechanical assist, Johnston has no hope of ever outrunning the canines. But then they have four legs, and he has only two.

Contact Craig Medred at craig@alaskadispatch.com