South Africa’s Conrad Stoltz and Canada’s Melanie McQuaid won the XTERRA East Championship in Richmond, Virginia Sunday.
The Men
Stoltz finished in 2:18:24 with a 2 minutes 42 seconds margin of victory over runner-up Josiah Middaugh of the U.S. and 3:03 over fellow American Craig Evans.
Stoltz took his 7th win in eight years contesting the twisty, challenging Richmond course.
Stoltz posted a 1:21:00 bike split for the 32 kilometer course, by far the fastest in the field despite taking an extra out and back excursion on the first of two 10-mile loops through the trees and creeks.
“On the first lap I caught Craig (Evans) and then five minutes later I caught him again,” Stoltz explained to XTERRA media. “Turns out a section had changed since when I went pre-riding and I wasn’t looking at the arrows.”
“He did the old course out-and-back,” Evans recounted to XTERRA media. “The rest of us followed the correct route. It was funny because a few minutes later I hear this loud chain slap behind me and thought, ‘Oh man Josiah or somebody is riding great,’ and then Conrad comes by and says ‘Where’d you go?’ and I said ‘I went straight, where’d you go?’”
Josiah Middaugh, the last man other than Stoltz to win in Richmond – back on Father’s Day in 2008 – overcame problems on the bike leg to catch Evans in the final mile of the run.
“My chain was popping off the top part of the derailleur, and at one point it tied in two knots and pulled outside the derailleur and it took me forever to figure out how to get it fixed,” Middaugh told XTERRA media after finishing in the runner-up slot for the second time this season. “That dropped me back into sixth place and I was way out of touch by the run transition.”
Will Kelsay scored his first top-five finish in the U.S. Pro Series in a decade of XTERRA racing. Kelsay overcame a three-minute deficit out of the swim by posting the 3rd-fastest splits in the bike and run to take 4th.
“It's such a wonderful feeling to have finally put all the pieces together and I am now racing at the level that I have wanted for so long,” Kelsay told XTERRA media. Kelsay was sixth at the recent ITU Cross Tri World Champs last month.
The Women
McQuaid finished in 2:36:10 with a 1:56 margin over Switzerland’s Renata Bucher and 4:14 over ITU Cross Triathlon World Champion Lesley Paterson of Scotland. McQuaid’s victory marks her 12th consecutive year on the podium at Richmond in its 14th annual race.
“I’m so excited,” McQuaid told XTERRA media. “I voted myself least likely to succeed here and had extremely low expectations.”
McQuaid raced in the Honu 70.3 road triathlon in tough, windy conditions in Hawaii last Saturday.
“The last two months since getting sick in Vegas were disappointing, and I just didn’t have the same kind of confidence," she told XTERRA media.”
McQuaid said the Richmond summer heat and humidity made simply finishing challenging. “Usually I’m going this hard and it’s just whether or not I can get to the finish line,” she told XTERRA media. “Between the bike and the run the heat went up about 7,000 degrees.”
Bucher was equally grateful to have a strong race after her crash in Alabama a few weeks ago.
“The last two races I couldn’t run well because of the crash,” Bucher told XTERRA media. “Today I ran for feeling, listened to my body, not focused on anybody and it was great.”
Paterson, the current XTERRA World Champion, managed to finish 3rd and post the day’s fastest run despite crashing a few times on the bike. “This is too much of a mountain biker’s course for me,” she told XTERRA media. “But to come out with third despite crashing all over the place is pretty good.”
After the third of four U.S. Pro Regional Championships, Conrad Stoltz leads the men with a perfect 300 point total. Josiah Middaugh is 2nd with 255 points and Craig Evans is 3rd with 230 points. In the women’s standings, Lesley Paterson leads with 272 points, followed by Melanie McQuaid with 259 and Renata Bucher with 235.
Xterra East Championship
Richmond, Virginia
June 10, 2012
S 1k / MTB 32k / Trail Run 10k
Men
1. Conrad Stoltz (RSA) 2:18:24
2. Josiah Middaugh (USA) 2:21:06
3. Craig Evans (USA) 2:21:27
4. Will Kelsay (USA) 2:23:35
5. Branden Rakita (USA) 2:24:54
6. David Henestrosa-Roca (USA) 2:26:31
7. Bradley Weiss (RSA) 2:27:45
8. Cody Waite (USA) 2:29:21
9. Adam Wirth (USA) 2:31:16
10. Ryan DeCook (USA) 2:33:25
Women
1. Melanie McQuaid (CAN) 2:36:10
2. Renata Bucher (SUI) 2:38:06
3. Lesley Paterson (SCO) 2:40:24
4. Shonny Vanlandingham (USA) 2:40:49
5. Danelle Kabush (CAN) 2:43:32
6. Suzie Snyder (USA) 2:46:38
7. Heather Holmes (USA) 2:52:25
8. Katie Button (CAN) 2:57:13
9. Kristen Tamburrino (CAN) * F35-39
10. Caroline Colonna (USA) 3:02:16
