A new course record for Leadville mountain bikers
By Scott Willoughby

Top woman Tonia Ralston speeds to the finish

"Quit," they told him. "Just stop pedaling. Nobody is forcing you to do this."

Nobody, that is, except Russell Worley, the 1995 champion and former course record holder at the Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race. Of course, while Worley was fending off those internal voices encouraging him to throw in the towel, he still laid claim to the fastest time in the brief history of the high-altitude endurance event.

Although he overpowered the urge to drop out of the third running of the Leadville 100 on August 17, Worley can no longer maintain that claim. His 1995 course record of 7:27:55 was shaved by nearly six minutes by Telluride's Mike Volk, who finished the race in 7:22:02. Tonia Ralston of Jackson, Wyoming, was the women's race winner in 9:56:15, 72nd overall.

"It's nice to be stopped now," was all Worley could offer at the finish line. The San Diego resident had finished a respectable 18th (8:36:13), blaming his performance on a cold he picked up two days before defending his title.

"On that first granny-gear part I just couldn't breathe. I think I may have stuff in my lungs or something," he said. "Once I started dying on that first hill, I decided to just try to make it under nine hours. So many times, though, I just wanted to stop."

Volk, on the other hand, was among a rare few who had little difficulty breathing as the route shot up to 12,600 feet at the turn-around at Columbine Mine. He set a blistering pace from start to finish, using superior conditioning and a hometown elevation of 9,500 feet to separate himself from the remainder of the field of 402 riders and set the new standard for the course.

Volk's new record is even more impressive when you consider his wrong turn midway through the race, costing him precious extra minutes--and extra energy.

"I was riding with some guy named Richard for a little bit. I pulled away from him and actually took a wrong turn at the top of the Sugarloaf climb. I went straight through and the course went right," Volk said. "The trail ended at the bottom of a hill and I had to hike back out. That cost me a couple of minutes. I was in the lead at that point, and three guys passed me. I had to work really hard to catch them again."

Richard turned out to be third-place finisher Richard Feldman of Ketchum, Idaho (7:56:49). The other two guys were Boulder's Charlie Hayes, who finished second in 7:46:48, and fourth-place finisher Rick Hunter of Soquel, California (8:04:02).

Rough terrain greeted riders in the early hours

"The only time I knew how far back he was at the turnaround, and I thought I had maybe seven or eight minutes on him there," Volk said. "But it's such a long race, seven or eight minutes is nothing, so I kept looking back the whole time."

Volk, who spends most of his saddle time racing on the NORBA cross-country circuit, has established himself as the premier rider in Leadville, finishing third in the inaugural race before missing the registration deadline last year. Yet, he manages to stay modest.

"I'm really surprised by the record," he said. "I had no idea I was even on course for a record. My goal was just to finish. It pretty much always is in these types of events."

The second half of the lauded Leadville Trail 100 race series takes place August 24. Entering its 14th year, the Leadville 100 foot race promises to live up to its billing as one of the nation's true ultradistance classics. While eight hours of biking rough mountain trails was certainly a challenge for Volk and the other riders, covering the same distance by foot for a full 24 hours is no small task, as 375 runners will soon discover.

Scott Willoughby is a writer from Minturn, Colorado