These are the game faces of cyclocross, the new kid on the block in bicycle racing. It combines the technical skills of mountain biking with the speed of road racing and puts them on a course filled with transitions and the occasional obstacle.
The third race of this year's series was held Wednesday night at Russian Jack Springs Park. Termination dust capped the nearby Chugach Mountains, darkness settled in around the same time the last racer finished, and geese grazed the grassy softball fields, fueling up for the long trip south.
It's transition time in Alaska -- summer quickly turning into fall, winter not far behind -- so what better way to mark it than a race defined by transitions?
"Every minute you're doing something different," Novakovich said.
Sometimes you're riding on grass, sometimes on pavement, sometimes on mud. Sometimes you're on a stretch of single track. Sometimes you're hopping off your bike to carry it over a barrier. You can never settle into a pace, because the terrain changes too often.
"It's such a random, haphazard thing," said Matt Novakovich, winner of Wednesday's men race. "It's crazy. Anything can happen and that makes it really fun. With road racing, there's so much drafting. With this, you've gotta be on your game the whole time. There's never a comfort zone where you can get into a mode and cruise."
Races have a time limit -- men get a bell lap near the 50-minute mark and women get one at 40 minutes -- but an hour of cyclocrossing somehow lasts longer than an hour of mountain biking or road biking, racers say.
"I know I can go hard for 40 minutes," said woman's winner Tiffanie Novakovich, one of the city's best bikers, "but doing all those different things makes it hard."
Wednesday's race featured a 1.5-mile course with two obstacles -- a pair of shin-high barriers about 10 feet apart. Racers had to dismount, carry their bikes over them, then get back on and resume pedaling.
"I didn't have to get on and off my bike except for there, so this was a good race," Klein said. "I'm usually last, but it's a lot of fun."
Last place actually went to Tracie Gardner, a recent transplant from Houston who is looking for something to replace the adventure races she did in Texas. She'd never done a cyclocross race.
It was slick, muddy and demanding -- a long uphill near the end of the course challenged many racers -- and Gardner dropped out before the bell lap, too exhausted to make a final trip around the course.
"I'm trying to work off the cookies," she said, patting her rump. "I've been sedentary for six months."
Cyclocrossing tests equipment almost as much as it tests racers. At least one racer swapped bikes midway through because mud was mucking up his tires and brakes. Another swapped out a tire.
Matt Novakovich had to do a mid-race adjustment when he clipped one of the neon orange flags marking the course and the fabric wrapped around his rear tire and brought him to a halt. He freed the flag, then put the tire on crooked and had to stop again later for another adjustment. That made for a fine photo finish with Jamey Stull, who was able to close the gap and finish one second behind Novakovich, who completed eight laps in 1 hour, 33 seconds.
Finishing a few minutes behind them was Stefan Bussey, who rode seven laps in 1:08.34. He placed 26th among 32 men, and couldn't have been happier.
Bussey is from Portland and is in town on business. He does cyclocross races in Oregon and when he heard about Wednesday's event, he called Chain Reaction, the bike shop that sponsors the race series.
One thing led to another and soon Bussey was hooked up with a borrowed bike and all the information he needed to enter the race.
While others looked sleek in racing gear, Bussey wore a pair of gym shorts, a ratty old T-shirt with a sketch of James Joyce and a helmet that looked more like a hockey helmet than a bike helmet. He hadn't planned on entering a bike race when he packed for his week-long trip to Anchorage.
But he'll go home with rave reviews, as much for the help he received from total strangers as for a course that he said was physically tough.
"They were so nice," he said. "This was awesome. This is the best race I've ever done."
Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.
Important warning about e-mails purporting to be from the adn.com staff.