On hard-packed ice highways across the backcountry of the Susitna Valley, cyclists in the Susitna 100 and Little Su 50K blitzed the trails of the Alaska courses this weekend in what appears to be record-setting style.
The husband-and-wife duo of Jamie and Amber Stull won the 50-kilometer (31-mile) race. Jamie was first in just 1 hour, 50 minutes, 57 seconds, while Amber Stull chased him across the finish less than 10 minutes later, in 2 hours flat.
In the 100-mile race, Carey Grumelot, 43, of Eagle River, prevailed in 8 hours, 27 minutes on a new, light 907 carbon-frame fatbike, followed by fellow biker Kevin Murphy in 8 hours, 54 minutes.
Grumelot averaged nearly 12 mph over the 100-mile course, with rest stops included. The dog teams in next month's Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race will be lucky to top that over the course of the first 100 miles.
All of the times appear to be records based on previous races detailed on the organizers' website, but there is debate about how to compare these times to the past because of changes to the trail.
That said, there is generally agreement that Grumelot, thanks to trail conditions, put down a record likely to stand for a long time. The Susitna 100 trails this year were almost as solid as pavement where they've often been snowmachine-packed snow. The latter will slow even a fat-tired bike. The best winning times in the past have hovered around 11 hours.
Racers travel by bike, ski or on foot across wild lands about 50 miles north of Anchorage. The races start at Big Lake. The 100-mile racers travel to Alexander Lake before returning, while the 50K racers head to Flathorn Lake and then back. Conditions this year -- which are expected to make for rough sledding for both Iron Dog snowmachine racers Sunday and Iditarod mushers in a couple of weeks -- were ideal for fat-tire cyclists, some on studded tires to help deal with a lot of ice along the trail.
It isn't always this easy.
"A frustrating case-in-point was the Iditabike in 1990," according to the race's website. "That event had to be canceled while it was in progress because bikers were reduced to carrying their bikes through knee-high snow drifts."
In contrast, the race this year was more like a road ride. Of the 118 racers registered for the 100-miler, 31 finished in less than 24 hours.
Contact Mike Campbell at mike(at)alaskadispatch.com