Arizona Trail 300 Update Thread

[Chad B]

fred from Moab was also with max last night. I assume he also went in on the hotel. I talked to Max last night, he has some high hopes and is having a blast out there now.

Great spectator race this year, I am watching from my phone at the San Diego airport.

[ScottM]

Yep, I just saw on Tucson MTB that Max, Rob and Fred were nice and warm at the Hilton last night -- my SPOT speculation was correct there.

Awesome!  Stefan has also bypassed Oracle and is setting a fast pace into the Black Hills.  He should be already on the gasline perhaps only a few hours behind Kurt!!  It's very cool to see some different strategies in this race.  Oracle is hard to bypass (even with water from Kannally Ranch) with its restaurants, circle K's and the like.  But Stefan apparently planned ahead well and resisted the temptation.  Go Stefan GO!!!

Can't tell you how excited I am to see these guys pushing hard out there.

[Chad B]

good move on the hotel guys. I suspect they can climb up and over Lemmon today now that they are rested and warm. We may have some more fast finishers late Monday if they can keep up their pace and motivation to finisH.

That is bold to skip Oracle, no other food stop until the finish line. They must have really stocked up in Tucson. I am curious to see how the rain will play into this section, especially down in the sandy parts near the Gila.   

[ScottM]

That is bold to skip Oracle, no other food stop until the finish line. They must have really stocked up in Tucson. I am curious to see how the rain will play into this section, especially down in the sandy parts near the Gila.  

Good point, that sandy stuff should be more firm and perhaps rideable.

According to my rough calculations, Stefan is no more than 2 hours behind Kurt.  It looks like Kurt spent ~20 minutes at Camp Grant wash.  Could have been resting, could have been eating, or it could have been flats!  That spot is the bottom of a long section of fast descending.  After a dozen or so agonizing ups and downs the gasline finally blasts downhill for 3 or 4 miles straight.  In my experience high speed descending can sometimes cause slime tubes to stop sealing, especially if they were recently punctured.

All speculation, but that'd be my best guess.  Hope he's got plenty of inflation now and is avoiding the plentiful cholla and other sharpies out there!



That's a pic of Lee Blackwell carrying his bike over a cholla minefield, out on the section of AZT these guys will be riding in an hour or so.

[Chad B]

cholla minefield hahahah nice. This is the section that you have to pay attention to where you are riding. Any slip can cause you to speed into one of those minefields, especially onnsome of those descents and steep switchbacks. This is where the stans tubeless comes in handy.
There were just a few sections near antelope peak that had some huge cholla fields.

There should also be some ATVers out at box canyon, I know some human contact can sometimes be a booster evennif it is sunburned, bud light drinking ATVers. Keep it up guys! 

[AZTtripper]

I've definitely experienced the slime won't hold scenario too many holes and the stuff just can't take the pounding.

I had a mysterious flat yesterday when I got off of 83 at the lakes road no thorns anywhere in the tire and no sign of any one hole just a tire full of tru goo and none left in the tube.

[AZTtripper]

Kurt's around the Peak and making good time again looks like he just hit Freeman road. I should think that average speed will go up in the Boulders I know it did for Zach and I.

[ScottM]

It's getting interesting out there.

Kurt is about an hour ahead of record pace right now.  He lost some time on the Antelope Peak segment of the Arizona Trail, for sure.  Stefan's split is looking about an hour faster, by comparison.  I'm still guessing flat issues, but who knows.

He's got about an hour of fast singletrack with high cactus/flat potential in front of him.  It's a wonderful piece of trail called the Boulders segment.  Even with 250 miles in the legs it's no problem to average 10 mph throughout.  It's nearly all downhill and has some great flow.  After the Boulders segment the danger for flats is greatly reduced, pretty much until the very last miles of the race.

I still think that the race winner will break the course record, but it's looking tighter now.

Stefan, Chris and Jefe are in close pursuit.  Stefan nearing to within an hour of Kurt, with Chris perhaps only an hour back from Stefan.  Jefe's in there somewhere, we won't know until it's all said and done -- no civilization or phones until after the finish in Superior.

Rob and Max have reached the high point of the AZT 300 route, Palisades.  The bulk of the climbing is done.  They should have enough time to tackle most of Oracle Ridge before sunset.

[Chad B]

Great to see all the riders now on one map, great job with some nifty programming Scott.

I am guessing we will start to see Stefan and Kurt pull away from Chris on the Kelvin/Florence dirt highway, a super flat section that forces singlespeeders to spin out pretty badly. Also, there is one big, rocky hike-a-bike section near Mineral Mountain that is before the last descent on singletrack into Picketpost. It will be interesting to see who can make up time on this climb.

The climb out of Box Canyon is not the easiest way to finish a race, the racers need to attack it with everything they have in their arsenal, especially if Kurt wants to stay in the lead. Here is a picture of said climb, the mesa/large hill in the background is near the Gila River. This shot was taken while exiting Box and Martinez Canyon.



Finishing in the dark is the other wild card here.



Based on the last point, it looks like Stefan has made even more ground on Kurt. The Ripsey Segment of the course detours onto some doubletrack before dropping on the highway. Not too many rocky sections, just some long washed out sections of the doubletrack. There is potential to go fast during these sections, especially the dirt road section. As I mentioned earlier, the highway is pretty flat, so I expect Chris to take a few minutes longer during this section. Either way, Chris is clearly going to be the new, fastest singlespeed finisher for the AZT 300. Keep it up man! 

Max is in the heart of Oracle Ridge now, I hope they can get down to Dan's Saddle before dark. If he is still riding with Fred, I'd think they would get a room at the Chalet in Oracle and dine on pizza tonight! Mmmmmmm! Rob might join in on that fun too, but he seems about 1hour behind Max.

Marshal is also nearing Molino Basin today, I'd venture to guess he is going to camp out in Molino tonight.

We should all lift a beer in honor of these mtbers today! Not even rain/snow can impede their goal to finish. Well done guys!

[Pivvay]

Wow, they are flying! 

I'm REALLY surprised that Stefan didn't go into Oracle -- Chris mentioned Stefan was almost out of food and that Stefan said he planned to go into Oracle to restock "unless he's trying to pull a fast one"... which is funny because that's about as un-Stefan-like as it gets  

I wish everyone the best of luck riding to the finish.  Thanks, Scott and Chad for such awesome pictures, commentary, and of course the SPOT site.  It sure makes it easier to be a wife of one of these guys when I at least can stalk him over the internet.

[AZTtripper]

Here's some pics Janine took yesterday about the time Marshal went through.

[Chad B]

I think that Stefan is going to catch Kurt within the next two-three updated points (15-45 minutes). Both are on the Florence-Kelvin Highway right now, looks like around 3 miles apart. The other wild card is where is Jefe in all this SPOT watching? Is he riding solo or with Stefan or Chris?

[krefs]

Just talked to Kurt - he's had four flats, he's at the Gila River, and he was just stopping for a bite to eat and to change his lenses. He sounded very upbeat. He hasn't seen Stefan (or Jefe) yet, but I imagine he will soon - this race will be close!

-Maggie

[PirateGirl]

Who knew it would be such a nail-biter between racers to the end?!?! How awesome is that!

[AZTtripper]

They are deffinetly moving fast it will be interesting to see who prevails when things get crazy steep on Orphan Boy. That little blip at the end of the profile may not look like much compared to the hight of Mt. Lemon but it has to be the steepest part of the course.

Here's some pics from my two days on course.

[ChampSB3233]

Great rally by Stefan. This looks like it's going down to the wire.

[AZTtripper]

Did Stefan just take the lead?

[Chad B]

It looks like Marshal decided to do Prison Camp instead of Molino Basin. That point looks fairly close to the end of the trail, which is where the camp host is at. Max and Rob are almost in Oracle. The question is, does the Chalet in Oracle have another room to offer our arriving bike guests?

20 minutes between Kurt and Stefan when they crossed Gila River. It is going to be real close! If they do not see each other in Box Canyon, I guarantee they will see each other (or their lights) during the ascent out of Martinez Canyon. It give both of them an extra push to the end, after seeing each other (the point I am talking about is where I took that Picketpost picture above, see previous post with pictures). You can see Florence from the top of that ridge, along with the 1-2 miles down the trail. Great spot for them to glance at each other.

Make sure to click on the time stamps to see when they came in, Kurt is still in the lead, but we have not received an updated point from him since the last one more than 30 minutes ago.

[ScottM]

First, a technical note: there has always been a google map on the main tracker page that shows everyone's current position.  Those using Internet Explorer v6 were not seeing it for some reason (just a blank area).  I've fixed it now, so everyone should see the latest 'snapshot' of the race.

Definitely a great rally by Stefan.  4 flats for Kurt!  Ouch.  

They've only got ~30 miles to go, but as others have alluded to, they are some of the hardest in the race.  You may have to stay up late to see their dots reach the finish.  I'm pulling for a pre-midnight finish, taking a nice clean 2 hours off the record (they have until 2am to finish in record time).

I'm already biting my nails here.  No nails left...

[DaveC]

Damn, I come home form a 12 hour day at work to this!  What a nail biter!