newsminer.com

In the end, the pain was too much for Fairbanks cyclist Rocky Reifenstuhl to handle, so he did something he has never done before — he scratched from a race.

“It was very agonizing,” the 55-year-old patriarch of winter cycling in Alaska said of his decision to pull out of the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Invitational Race on March 9. “I let myself down and a lot of people down.”

Reifenstuhl scratched from the race in Galena at the 616-mile mark.

A nerve problem that arose in his lower back about a week before the race was magnified by having to push his mountain bike through soft trail conditions for 200 miles after leaving McGrath.

By the time he reached the Yukon River village of Ruby, Reifenstuhl had resorted to pain medication to keep going.

“I was taking half a Percoset every night just so I could sleep,” he said. “I could hardly lift my right arm.”

The 215-mile section of trail between McGrath and Ruby was miserable, Reifenstuhl said. In addition to being ugly country dominated by scrubby black spruce and old burn areas, most of the final 170 miles was too soft to ride on, so cyclists had to push their bikes almost the entire way.

“We walked 95 percent of it probably,” said Reifenstuhl, who was traveling with fellow cyclists Peter Basinger, Carl Hutchings and Jay Petervary.

Even when they reached the Yukon River, which is usually the equivalent of a paved road, warm temperatures conspired to make for a soft trail. It took the four riders two days to cover the 52 miles from Ruby to Galena, most of which was unridable.

Basinger, from Anchorage, and Hutchings, from Britain, continued to Nome while Reifenstuhl and Petervary, from Wyoming, bailed out in Galena.

“I was concerned about permanent damage,” Reifenstuhl said.

Reifenstuhl regrets not having one of the fat-tired bikes that his competitors rode, but his sponsor, Bianchi, doesn’t make one. While Reifenstuhl uses special winter rims that accommodate 2-inch tires, other cyclists had bikes with 4- and 6-inch-wide tires, which makes it easier to ride on soft trail conditions.

“When those guys were able to ride, I had to really struggle to keep up with them,” Reifenstuhl said. “I was able to ride 90 percent of what they rode, but I had to fight my bike a lot more than those guys.”

As of Wednesday, only three racers had reached Nome. Basinger was first on March 13 with a time of 18 days, 4 hours, 33 minutes. Hutchings arrived the next day with a time of 18:12:30 and Rok Kovac’s time was 18:21:20.

Of the 18 racers who had signed up to go to Nome, only 11 continued on from McGrath, where a shorter 350-mile race was won by Petervary. Four of those racers, including Reifenstuhl, scratched.

The first walker expected to reach Nome was Tim Hewitt of Pennsylvania, who left White Mountain, which is 77 miles from the finish, at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. There were still three other racers on the trail behind Hewitt, two bikers and one walker.

Though disappointed he was forced to scratch, Reifenstuhl doesn’t feel obligated to go back and redeem himself.

“I don’t have any need to go to Nome,” said Reifenstuhl, who added that he’s getting “too damn old” to do that kind of stuff.

If he does return to the trail, it may not be on a bike, either. His brother, Steve, is planning to walk to Nome in two years in an attempt to break the record for the foot division.

“My brother wants me to walk it with him in 2010,” Reifenstuhl said. “We’ll see about that.”

Since returning to Fairbanks, Reifenstuhl has visited with a physical therapist, massage therapist and surgeon Dr. Cary Keller of SportsMedicine Fairbanks, one of his sponsors. He received two cortisone shots to alleviate the pain.

“The last two weeks have been the most painful in my life,” Reifenstuhl said, adding that he is planning to have “a bunch of electrical tests” done on his left quadricep because he has been losing strength in it.