Although neither expert class winner of the VeloNorth Cycling Club’s first Carcross Cut-Off Time Trial last month were present for the second installment on Wednesday, the times were actually faster this time around.
“It’s a lot faster tonight - everyone was going faster,” said expert men winner Jerome McIntyre. “Part of it is we’re shedding the winter gear - you can go faster when you’re not carrying all that stuff.
“And tonight there’s a cross wind, so you’re not getting blasted by wind either out or back. That kind of helps everyone a little bit.”
McIntyre, who finished fifth in last month’s race, narrowly took first with a time of 24 minutes and 46 seconds, just nine seconds up from second place finisher John Berryman.
“I’m really happy because it’s not a course that’s ever agreed with me,” said McIntyre, who had an average speed of 42 kilometres an hour and came second in VeloNorth’s Skagway Hill Climb on Sunday. “I’ve always avoided riding this course because it has a lot of false flats. When you’re coming back, you think you’re on flat (ground), but you start to notice you speedometer slowing down and you’re still pedaling really hard. So it’s obviously a small incline and it just seems to last forever. It wrecks your morale when you’re starting to slow down and you’re working hard.
“We do (the course) so often that a couple years ago I decided to embrace it and train on it.”
Kelsey Kabanak, who was a cyclist on Team Yukon at last year’s Canada Summer Games, won the expert women class, breaking the 30-minute mark for her first time on the 18.5-kilometre course that takes cyclists 9.25 kilometres south down the Alaska Highway from the Carcross Cutoff and back.
Kabanak, who finished second out of a field of two expert women riders at Sunday’s Skagway Hill Climb coming in behind Whitehorse’s Tamara Goeppel, who set a new course record, took the win Wednesday with a time of 29:07.
“The race went surprisingly well - compared to the Skagway Hill Climb,” said Kabanak. “I wasn’t expecting to do what I just did.
“I’ve been two seconds off of breaking 30 minutes, but I’ve never been under 30. The course was really fast today.”
The winners of the expert classes for the first Carcross Cut-Off Time Trial were Jonah Clark for the men and Kerrie Paterson - who won the first three events in the expert women’s class - for the women. Paterson finished in 30:07 and Clark in 25:30.
Results
Expert Women
1st Kelsey Kabanak - 0:29:07
2nd Nadele Flynn - 0:29:10
3rd Trena Irving - 0:30:01
Expert men
1st Jerome McIntryre - 0:24:46
2nd John Berryman - 0:24:55
3rd Steve Ball - 0:25:13
4th Derrick Hynes - 0:25:34
5th Glenn Iceton - 0:26:58
6th Jamie Bissel - 0:28:19
Sport women
1st Jennifer Curtis - 0:31:47
2nd Shannon Meekins -
0:32:21
Sport men
1st Bill Curtis - 0:29:07
Contact Tom Patrick at
tomp@yukon-news.com