At The Finish

This morning, I drove over to Driggs, Victor, and Jackson to distribute posters for the Cube and to talk up the event at the local bike shops. I timed my trip to arrive at Teton Village in time for the end of Lotoja. Weather conditions were ideal today with mild temperatures and favorable winds. As a result, lots of people posted outstanding finishing times. For the most part, the people I talked to finished pretty happy. I tried to get a picture of all the local finishers and friends. I saw Jeff’s cousin Dan among the early finishers, but I was not able to talk to him or get a photo.

Every finisher has a story to tell. If any of you would like to tell us about your day at Lotoja in more detail or send additional photos, you know that nothing makes me happier than content for the blog. Congratulations to all of today’s finishers. Competing in Lotoja at an elite level is phenomenal and finishing at any speed is a huge accomplishment. It is pretty tough for non-cyclists to put Lotoja in context. For many people, their closest point of comparison is a marathon. But, this is really not a great comparison, the old apples to oranges thing. There is nothing easy about running a marathon, but as someone who has finished a few Lotoja’s and run a fair number of marathons, my opinion is that Lotoja is significantly harder.

There was a lot of pressure on Clinton today as the reigning champion. Sadly, he picked up a thumb tack in his tire between Salt River Pass and Afton. No one in the race is better than Clinton at chasing back after a mechanical. Last year, he had a flat in the final kilometers and came back for the win. This time, he spent almost five minutes waiting for the wheel car. At that point, the lead group was long gone and the only thing left to do was to ride a 100 mile time trial to the finish.

The incident with the tacks concerns me quite a bit because I do not believe it was an accident for several reasons. One of the other Cat I riders picked up a thumb tack in the same area. How many times have you run over a thumb tack riding out on the open road? Additionally, there is precedent for this thing happening at Lotoja. There is some speculation that this is an act of vandalism perpetrated by locals who do not like the race.