Hampshire 100K

2011 Hampshire 100k - USA Cycling Pro MTB Ultra Endurance Tour Finale

Written by: Karen Potter

Sunday's fifth annual Hampshire 100K also served as the final stop of the USA Cycling Pro Mtb Ultra Endurance Tour. There were many elite men on hand to duke out the race, including series leader, Manny Prado, last years 100k winner, Justin Spinelli and Tinker Juarez - Tinker came in 2nd in Saturday's Mount Washington Hill Climb - among many strong local pros. 

The 62.3-mile lap entailed a good mix of everything including dirt road, jeep road, powerline climbing, swoopy tight singletrack, rooty, rocky rough singletrack.  The first 20 miles were fast and fairly rolling, but more downhill than up.  After mile 20, it was lots of climbing with almost 7,000 feet in total.  The overall of flavor of the course was 'punchy' - lots of steep, mostly short climbs followed by equally steep short descents.  It allowed for a fast pace, pushing the climbs with reasonably recovery but the continuous nature of the steep climbs, including a couple (or many depending on race fitness) hike a bike sections, eventually take their toll.  Several of the singletrack sections slowed down the pace but flowed nicely.  Race promoters added a prank in the middle of the course with a sign "warning, baby heads ahead" and scattered about the top of the hill were several dolls scattered about which was a nice comic relief mid course.  It was followed with some real baby heads a 100 yards up. 

The elite men started fast and stayed together through the first third of the race.  The exception being local cyclocross phenom Roger Aspholm who took a season ending crash about 10 miles in coming down a fast, loose ski slope descent and crashed hard on a water bar.  At the front of the race Tinker was matching Justin Spinelli's pace until he flatted half-way through and couldn't close the gap back to the race winner.  He road in with Manny Prado with Manny taking 2nd and the USA Pro UET title and Tinker taking 3rd.  Justin Spinelli finished in 4:47 roughly 8 minutes faster than his winning time last year.  Manny and Tinker finished in 5:00.

The women's race saw local endurance rider, Karen Potter, take off from the start and never looked back. She had a comfortable gap and continued to ride strong throughout and finishing in a impressive 6:06 after taking a win in a 6 hour race in Vermont the day before.

Paul Simoes took the singlespeed class in 5:25 which put him in 9th place overall. 

 Results

Open Pro/Elite Women

1, Karen Potter (MTBRaceNews.com/zaboo29) 6:06

2, Anna Milkowski 8:54

Open Pro/Elite Men

1, Justin Spinelli

2, Manual Prado (Sho-Air)

3, David Tinker Juarez (Cannondale)

4, Aaron Snyder

5, John Foley

6, Andrew Freye

7, Brian Wilichoski

8, Brian Lariviere

9, Kevin Hines

10, Gregory Jancaitis

11, Alby King

12, Andy Gould

13, Aaron Oakes

14, Chris Gagnon