Loftus takes 24 Hours in the Sage title, outsuffers field

Gunnison Valley defends backyard

It wasn’t the first 24-hour rodeo for Brick Oven/Crested Butte Builders (BO/CBB) rider Dan Loftus. He tested the waters of taintular decimation, i.e. riding for 24 hours straight, back in 2008 coming in third place.

Last year, Loftus rode for 24 hours to come in second place behind teammate and BO/CBB Directeur Sportif Ben Preston.
This time around he came in wanting to complete 18 laps and see how it played out in the end. He soon found out that he had a big adversary in Taylor Lidden, the reigning under-25 24-hour world champion.
Loftus, and everyone else out there, suffered through some heat on the first day of riding as temperature reached the high 80’s with no relief.
As a result, while most 24-hour solo riders may dread the onset of night, Loftus was looking forward to it.
“The hardest part of the race was the heat of the day,” says Loftus. “There was not a cloud in the sky and no wind. On the flip side, the night was perfect. It was cool but not cold. We had a sick moon for most of the night.”
By daybreak of the second day, Loftus was a full lap behind Lidden but kept turning it over and cranking out laps.
“That kid was putting down some scorching times,” says Loftus. “But I was still in a good place for 18 laps.”
As any 24-hour rider will tell you, anything can happen over the course of a race that long and in the early morning of day two, Loftus got his break.
Lidden fell victim to his sustained effort at altitude and, while his legs felt fine, word was he couldn’t breathe and dropped out of the race with 16 laps.
That opened the door for Loftus and he rode straight through it, tacking on two more laps to hit his goal of 18 and take the solo men’s title.
“Sometimes you gotta just out suffer people,” says Loftus.
With the pressure off and the win secured, Loftus took a moment at the top of Rocky Ridge on his final lap to enjoy the view and take in some final nutrition for the home stretch.
“It’s a cool spot,” says Loftus. “I took a couple glugs of beer and ate half of a burger.”
The BO/CBB four-person women’s team of Sydney Fuller, Krista Powers, Heather McDowell and Michele Preston lit up the course for a record 20 laps for the win.
McDowell crushed the 13-mile course repeatedly, posting the fastest women’s lap at one hour, two minutes and the fastest women’s lap time average of one hour, seven minutes.
Her teammates were not far behind in their averages, keeping the pedal to the metal to hit their 20-lap goal.
“I think we were on track the whole time,” says McDowell.
They had one challenge early on with another team hanging on 30 minutes back for the beginning, but that gap grew as the BO/CBB team eventually lapped their closest opponent.
“It was fun,” says McDowell. “Typically, we’re in some pretty stressful races at the end.”
Team Alpine Oven, a mix of Team Alpine Orthopaedics rider Jason Stubbe and BO/CBB rider Aaron Huckstep, easily defended their 2009 duo title.
Last year they rattled off a total of 21 laps over 24 hours. This year, they repeated the effort circling the course 21 times again for the win.
BO/CBB men’s four-person team called on the big guns for the Sage event. Matt Steinwand and Tim Kugler were fresh off the Colorado Trail race to jump back in the saddle with teammates Reed Betz and Dodson Harper, to fire off 24 laps enroute to a second place finish. Harper led that team with an average lap time of 57 minutes. In fact, three of the four riders averaged under an hour per lap earning $40 each from their Directeur Sportif.
As a whole, the BO/CBB team had five solo riders, three four-person teams and two duo teams fueled by Avery Brewing Company among others.
“We had unbelievable support from mechanics, people bringing us food and Dave at the KOA,” says Preston. “We don’t race every weekend so we decided to do it all at once.”