Archive for Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Locals thrive at Gunnison mountain bike race

Kris Cannon captures solo women's 24-hour Sage title

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When a 24-hour mountain bike race hits 3 a.m., after starting at noon the day before, it can barely resemble the race from 15 hours earlier.

Riders on teams sleep through their turns, while solo competitors let what were 90-second pit stops turn into five- or 10-minute stays at their staging tents.

However, that kind of fatigue and discord wasn't at all the case during the weekend at the 24 Hours in the Sage race in Gunnison.

A group of Steamboat Springs entrants pedaled through the night, and when the sun rose and the race ended at noon Sunday, they had all carved out high finishes.

Solo woman Kris Cannon added a 24 Hours in the Sage championship to go with her title in the race from last year. The solo men's singlespeed team of Nate Bird, Tadius Huser, Rob Peterson and Ryan Sullivan also won its division.

Jaimie Zelkin was fifth among the solo women.

"We are all pretty stoked about the race," Bird said, celebrating the victory with his team as they camped one final night in Gunnison. "We got here a couple days early, and it was terrible weather, just poured the whole time. But for the whole race, it couldn't have been better."

Even when the temperatures dipped at night, the Steamboat riders stayed hot.

Cannon recorded the fastest lap by a woman on her first go-around, making the loop in 1 hour, 11 minutes and 9 seconds, five minutes faster than her nearest competitor. She didn't relent and actually extended her lead with every additional lap. She had the fastest lap time in each of the first 10 laps, and by the time the sun rose, she had built a lead large enough to allow for an easy-going morning.

She finished with 14 laps, one more than second-place finisher Kerry White.

"I'm really happy about it," Cannon said. "My times were better than they were last year. I started out ahead on the first lap and just kept trying to keep it going and widen the gap."

The four-man singlespeed team wasn't able to establish control until late into the night. Nate Bird's first-round lap time of 56 minutes and 20 seconds was the division's fastest, but it was only good for a 36-second advantage at that point.

The lead changed hands throughout the event, but the Steamboat riders finally surged ahead when one of the riders from the other top singlespeed team was injured.

The Steamboat squad finished with 21 laps, one more than the Gunnison-based Team Tune Up.

"It was super tightly contested until about three quarters of the way through," Bird said. "Everyone on the team had a lot of fun. We were yelling back and forth, and it was super close."

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