12 Hours of Snowmass
Posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008
Cloudveil’s, from Carbondale, Colorado rode with Lance Armstrong, had personal bests and generally kicked ass in the 12 Hours of Snowmass this past weekend. The seven-mile course features over 1,500 feet of climbing and technical singletrack.
Here are some dispatches from the crew:
Len Zanni – who works for Big Agnes and Honey Stinger, represented by Backbone Media who also does PR for Cloudveil – rode on a team with Lance Armstrong. Zanni, Armstrong and Max Taam of Team Aspen pulled of a huge victory at the 12 Hours of Snowmass. At the last minute, Len was forced to ride the race’s final anchor lap and he successfully held off a strong late stage push from world champion Mike Kloser of Team Beaver Creak. Len got a standing ovation when he showed up at the office Monday morning.
Velo News has a great recap of the race, in which Len, “categorized himself as a B-level pro with a couple of kids” (we know better) and Lance brags about eating Honey Stinger.
Ian and Sari Anderson did the race together, racing at their own paces and switching off laps (and babysitting duty). They teamed up with buddy Rob Russell and entered the Co-Ed Trio category.
Ian also had an awesome conversation with Lance. His report:
Lance: Rider Up!
Ian: (gasp) How’s it going? (gasp)
Lance: Passing on your RIGHT!
Ian: (gasp) So, I hear you’re training for the Tour de France again? Don’t you think races like this are more fun? Hey, my wife is an adventure racer, and she’s sponsored by Nike too! You guys should totally do an adventure race together.
Lance: (now 50 yards in front of Ian) grunt.
Ian: Go get em Lance, you da’ man!
Ian reports that Sari, a pro adventure racer on Team Nike, lived up to their lived up to their team name “Chicked” (a term guys use when they’re getting beat by a girl). Sari clocked the both the fastest lap on the team at 47 minutes, as well as the fastest overall female lap for the day, netting her a nice cash prize and a sweet tent from Ground.
The team placed first in the Co-ed Trio Division, finishing a total of 14 laps (5 for Ian and Rob, 4 for Sari).
“Just for fun, we all raced on our singlespeeds,” Ian said. “My favorite part of the day was when Sari showed up at the race after letting Juniper sleep in, and almost killed Lance. Sari was in a hurry, head down, pushing Juniper up the hill in the Chariot. Lance was doing some warm up in the grass and very nearly collided with Sari, Juniper and the Chariot. In a move that was eerily reminiscent of Stage 9 of the 2003 Tour de France, Lance narrowly avoided Sari, et. al.”
