Mountain: Eatough Does It Again

Start Le Mans style at 10:00 a.m. and don’t think about finishing until after 10:00 a.m. the following day. Those were the instructions for this year’s 24-hour National Mountain Bike Championship. Riders dug deep into the limits of human strength to pedal through the 14-mile loop again and again (and again) in Wausau, WI, to battle it out for the stars-and-stripes jerseys.

Trek/VW’s Chris Eatough, six-time 24-hour World Champion, captured the Men’s Solo Championship title ahead of Subaru Gary Fisher’s Nat Ross. The top two pushed out lap times just over an hour for the first couple of rounds, setting a remarkable pace for an enduro race. Eatough and Ross took turns riding each other’s wheel for the first couple of laps until the endurance factor started to set the gaps. Both set into an endurance pace. Eatough’s was just a bit faster than Ross’s and put about an hour between first and second place at the end of the 24th hour. Eatough finished with a lap count of 20 and a distance of 285 miles—14 miles more than runner-up Nat Ross. Mark Hendershot rounded out the podium.

What carried the endurance legend to yet another national championship you might ask? Trek 69ers. Trek continues to supply some of the best cyclists with the best bikes. It wasn’t enough for the new Madone to capture a yellow jersey, a white jersey and the team classification title at this year’s Tour de France. Trek supplied Eatough with three 69ers—a full-suspension, a hard-tail and a singlspeed. Yes, Eatough rode with one gear for at least one lap at the national championships. In fact, local rider Constantine Peters won the national 24 hour singlespeed title mounted on a Trek 69er. Riding big wheels in the front and small in the back has become quite the title-winning set-up.

Congrats to Chris Eatough for yet another endurance title and all of the other riders and support crews who braved the full 24 hours for the love of the sport. There’s something to say for those who won’t get the recognition deserved for riding a saddle all day long and riding into the sunset and out of the sunrise. It’s a true love that deserves noting.