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After three consecutive years of finishing second to Harlow Robinson, the master mountain man of the Matanuska Peak Challenge, Matias Saari on Saturday finally took the measure of his friend and rival in the wickedly taxing race near Palmer.
Saari not only halted Robinson's six-year winning streak, but he snatched Robinson's course record too. Saari clocked 3 hours, 3 minutes, 8 seconds, for the torturous 14-miler on Lazy Mountain and Matanuska Peak -- that journey requires three grinding ascents and three harrowing descents for about 9,100 feet of climbing and an equal amount of downhilling. Saari, 39, topped Robinson's 2008 course standard (3:04:06) by 58 seconds and improved his personal best in the race by 3:41. "I wanted this pretty badly, especially after finishing second to the same guy three years in a row, even if he is a good guy,'' Saari said by cell phone. "So, I was pretty determined.'' In the women's division, Abby Rideout, 30, completed a remarkable double in her Mat Peak debut. One week after she won the Crow Pass backcountry marathon, Rideout busted a 3:50:11 to win the race Southcentral mountain runners generally consider the most punishing on the circuit and complete a feat Saari called "astounding.'' Saari, who a few months ago moved from Fairbanks to Anchorage, has now won the state's most prestigious mountain race -- he captured Mount Marathon in 2009 -- and its most difficult. And given some slippery conditions on Lazy Mountain, Robinson, 43, said Saari's record-setting, wire-to-wire win proved an impressive performance that left rivals running for second place. "Oh, man, he won that race the second he left the parking lot,'' Robinson reported. "He sprinted out of the parking lot. You could tell he was hungry. "He was hammering, and he continued to put a gap on us. At some point, you lose your will when he's disappearing in the clouds, and it's hard to reel him in. He's earned it -- he worked so hard for it. If someone was going to beat me, he was the guy, and he deserved it.'' Robinson finished second in 3:11:17, and two-time Mount Marathon champion Trond Flagstad took third in 3:12:31. Saari said he figured he was likely to enjoy a strong day when he made it to the top of Lazy Mountain in 39:30, about a minute or two faster than he usually summits the first climb. "I had a couple splits from previous years that told me I was on record pace, so that was encouraging,'' he said. After climbing Lazy, runners pour down the backside of that mountain, climb Mat Peak, descend Mat Peak, climb the backside of Lazy and then finish by descending the frontside of Lazy. Despite recent heavy rain, Saari said conditions weren't too bad Saturday -- he didn't get rained on, he said -- and certainly much better than three years ago. That race was run in pounding rain that left runners flailing and falling, and shivering. "It wasn't a total luge run like 2007,'' Saari said. Rideout said she took it easy in the week following Crow Pass -- she climbed Flattop Mountain and played a couple soccer matches -- and felt decent Saturday in a race where "you're always even going straight up or straight down.'' "I felt OK -- I didn't feel super strong,'' Rideout said. "But when you do a 9,000-foot climb, it's hard to feel like you have fresh legs.'' Rideout said she was the first woman to summit Matanuska Peak before race runner-up Gyongyver Schilling passed her descending Mat Peak. "She flew by me on the downhill -- I felt like I was standing still -- but I caught her going up the backside of Lazy,'' Rideout said. Schilling, 37, finished second for the sixth straight year, but her 3:53:36 lopped 3:04 off her previous best time in the race. Christie Marvin, 29, finished third in 4:07:29.