Haines riders finished near the front and at the very back of the 23rd Kluane Chilkat International Bike Relay Saturday.
Resident Jenn Walsh won her third title in the race’s solo women’s division (8:22:24), and Tour da Haines, a Lende family perennial team of four, bounced back from a jarring wreck in 2014 to place second among mixed-four squads (8:02:33).
The race was won by solo rider Joel Macht of Whitehorse, Y.T. in 7:05:08.
Solo rider Sean Asquith, 55, posted the day’s best time for a Haines entry, finishing the 149-mile course in 8:00:48 and placing ninth among solo men riders.
Asquith, who rides his bike eight miles into town nearly every day of the year, said his previous longest race was 60 miles. He said he felt the additional 89. “I was ready to get off the saddle after that, but it could have been worse. I was riding with other people for the first half.”
But in the race’s second-half, second riders from two-person teams in the pack left Asquith and a Canadian soloist behind at Three Guardsmen peak. “The toughest part was trying to hang with those fresh legs. I really wanted to hang with them. You just don’t want to get dropped,” Asquith said.
Tour da Haines finished two minutes behind Asquith, powered by Justin Dorn’s lead-off ride and a blistering pace set by Heather Lende, who turned in the fourth-fastest time of the day on legs 5 and 6.
Chip Lende, who has crashed twice in the relay and last year suffered a punctured lung, broken pelvis and three broken ribs in a fall, rode legs 3 and 4. “I felt great. I didn’t have any choice. My family wasn’t going to put up with another crash,” Lende said.
Eric Kocher, 67, won the event’s red lantern award in his first solo ride. Kocher said he was late to register and the solo division was the only one still open when he did. His biggest challenge came climbing hills during leg 4. “It just kept going and going and going. It wasn’t hard as much as it was slow.”
Kocher finished in 13:32:19, seven minutes before the race officially closed at 9 p.m. “That was my biggest fear, that they’d come and take my timing stick (away).”
Kocher, whose longest training ride was a round-trip to 33 Mile, said he “felt pains that I’ve never felt before” during the race. “Then I’d forget about it, and they’d disappear.” Besides hundreds of riders passing him, Kocher said he watched volunteers close checkpoints as he went by and saw a brown bear at checkpoint 4.
“I was alone out there. I was a solo bike rider, literally,” he said.
Rob Welton of Juneau, president of the relay’s board of directors, said that other than a spill near Dezadeash that left a rider with a possible concussion, the race went well. “One of the aspects of a semi-competitive event like this is that some people are experienced riding with a group and others aren’t. (Riding) in a pack, accidents can happen in a split second.”
Inexperienced pack riders are a challenge, he said. “You have to try to coach them, give them a wide berth or ditch them by accelerating.”
But riding in the pack with other competitors is also part of the social element of the relay, Welton said. “You’re always kind of shuffling the deck as you go along, so you meet people. One of the best parts of the (relay) experience is linking up with friends you only see once a year.”