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Biking, Fall

Rebecca’s Private Idaho or Enter the Pain Cave, We’ll Feed You Beers Later

Sun Valley is a mountain bike paradise with over 400 miles of singletrack spun like a spider web in all directions.  However, what many don't realize is the abundance of jaw dropping scenic and leg crushing dirt roads that beg to be pedaled weaving through the region connecting remote corners with main arteries.  Local endurance sadomasochist, 24 hour and Leadville suffer queen, Rebecca Rusch, hatched an idea to bring her legions to the valley and show them what a good time was.  She called named it in the apropos style, Rebecca's Private Idaho , which sounds deceptively quaint.  This quaint little tour is a 50 or 100 mile grind over hill and dale from Sun Valley and back again covering some spectacular country and just hard enough to make on find religion yet shy of questioning life. They charged out the gate like eager rabbits but the road would decide who hopped and who crawled home.   In the Old World of cycling, another name for Europe, one of the most popular riding event formats is the Grand Fondo.  This is a bit like a massive group ride that is timed but is more about the camaraderie than it is the result.  Sure some …

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Biking, Summer

Ride Sun Valley: More Fun Than a Monkey on a Unicycle

Ride Sun Valley has become a major staple of both the Sun Valley’s summer event offering and the bike festival world as recognized by Outside Magazine.  Spanning two weekends with events ranging from the Shimano Super Enduro to kids racing to pumptrack racing to free guided rides to the US National Championships and all parts in between this is a week which celebrates the area’s 400+ miles of mountain bike trails and the thriving local bike scene.  

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Biking, Summer

SHEEPTOWN DRAG RACES: FLAMING LOGS, SINGED NOSTRILS

Every good drag race has a Christmas Tree. Sheeptown is a good drag race.     It didn’t seem likely that this event could ever have happened.  The idea was in actuality a creative ruse, nothing was really supposed to come of it.  But minutes after posting a photo of a drawing scrawled on wrinkled paper showing riders towing logs behind bikes in front of hundreds of screaming fans that had flames added to the logs in an attempt to garner more attention, the fire chief had called and demanded more information.  “What was the fire chief doing on my blog during the middle of the day anyway?” I wondered. The Avenue of Sheeptown is littered with charred dreams   Seven years later and the Hailey FD as well as the majority of the Sun Valley area has embraced the Sheeptown Drag Races.  It’s a fairly simple event: fill up a single elimination bracket for head to head drag racing on bikes.  The bikes tow logs.  The logs are soaked in diesel.  It’s free to enter and literally no clear rules exist.  Once you make it to the round of 16 the logs are lit afire and the crowd begins …