XTERRA Arizona Xtreme Race Report

By Circ Toepel, XTERRA Representative

Just east of Phoenix, tucked up next to thousand foot rhyolite towers, sits Saguaro Lake.  These gorgeous, eye popping, reddish-brown monoliths momentarily took the focus away from the upcoming task of making it through the 6th annual Arizona Xtreme Off Road Triathlon.  Xtreme is the key word here closely followed by wet the night before the race.  The 18 mile bike course went from dry and loose to wet and fast with even a little standing water.  No one complained about the deluge because it cleared up just before race time to make for some very fast results.

Dara Marks Marino won the women’s field in her first race as a pro.  This was also Dara’s very first XTERRA race!  Dara was a pro mountain biker but has made the transition very nicely.  She is a rising star with amazing potential.  Her total time of 2:21:48 was eight and a half minutes ahead of 2nd place even with stopping to fix a slowly leaking tire.  She said she had a better than expected swim at 26:39, a fun bike ride at 1:12:56 and an absolutely beautiful run in a time of 42:12.  She is undoubtedly looking forward to future XTERRA’s.

The race for 1st amateur female was exciting to watch as well.  Sage Grossi, Liz Vollmer and Luisa Bryce battled hard for the top spots.  Luisa exited the water first in 21:07 with Liz in hot pursuit.  Sage’s smoking bike time of 1:20:09 made her too hard to catch on the run.  Less than a minute and a half separated these formidable opponents.  There were rumors of water bottles spiked with Exlax between Sage and Liz but no drug tests have been conducted as of yet.  I am hoping we won’t need WADA’s help with this issue.

On the men’s side Jared Berg (pro) was second out of the water in 18:54.  Brian Grasky caught him on the bike and the two worked together to distance themselves from the rest of the field.  Jared said the course was so fast because of the overnight rain that he rode fully rigid most of the race.  During the run he worked really hard on the uphill sections because he recently had his Achilles tendon reconstructed and still found difficulty running downhill.  His time of 2:01:27 put him in the top spot for the day. 

Brian Grasky was the top amateur only 36 seconds behind Jared at 2:02:03, followed closely by Trevor Glavin at 2:03:13 and Daniel Orada at 2:07:06.  All top finishers got a very cool etched beer glass.  Another spectacular field to watch was the 55-59 year old males. Mike Hicks was 28 seconds ahead of eventual 1st place finisher Bill Sandercock (2:44:59).  The reason Mike didn’t win was because he raced in the challenged division.  Mike has one artificial leg.  WOW!  Another athlete that was hard to believe was Michael Melley.  Being first out of the water is nothing new to him but he went on to ride the bike course on a single speed and finished 1st in his age group with a time of 2:08:16.  Not bad after just competing in Ironman Arizona the week before. 

The Post Race Party put on by DCB Adventures is second to none in the Points Series.  The 2 kegs were a huge hit even though the Arizona desert wasn’t emanating its normal 90 degree heat.  Having Pacifico as a sponsor this year is a beautiful thing!  It may have been the beer but Jared proved he wasn’t quite finished for the day by doing 142 pushups.  He was however, bested by Adam Timon who fired off 188!  My arms hurt just watching.  Lisa Lieb crushed all female opponents with 54.  All 3 received a free entry into a Regional Championship race of their choice for their efforts.   See you next spring outside of Phoenix.

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