2012 Marathon Mountain Bike National Championship

For the second year in a row, the Marathon Mountain Bike National Championship came to town and again we were treated with down to the wire racing. A trio of Bend locals were out to try and repeat last year's 1-2 performance, but instead swept the 2-4 spots on the podium, only to be outdone by a flying Todd Wells. He did just come off of finishing 10th in the Olympic XC race though, so his fitness prevailed over some local trail knowledge. I saw them with about 5 miles (out of 53) of mostly climbing to go and everyone from top to bottom looked absolutely wasted. Bravo to the course designers for making this a memorable race.