GLENWOOD SPRINGS – For some people cycling in the summer isn’t enough. For others, just taking the mountain bike out doesn’t fill the day.

The Glenwood Springs Winter Triathlon is for those athletes who want to ride, glide and shoe – all on one winter day.

Twenty winter triathletes brought their mountain bikes out from the mothballs to compete in the second annual Winter Triathlon Saturday at Sunlight.

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It was on basically the same course, but a bit different than its inaugural year.

The soft snow – and, in places, lack of snow – forced competitors to treat the course differently this season.

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“The downhill mountain bike was much harder,” said Helen Carlsen of Basalt, who was the first woman racer to finish the mountain biking, cross country skiing and snowshoeing circuit. “Last year it was hard-packed,” she added. “This year I was wobbling all over the place.”

Of course, it was also the first time on her bike in a few months.

“I’ve done a couple of spinning classes, but I haven’t actually been outside on a bike since October,” she said.

Although the speedy hardpack wasn’t present this year, Carlsen managed to cut nearly 2 minutes off last year’s time when she won the women’s division of the event. Carlsen finished with a time of 1 hour, 13 minutes, 20 seconds on the course that includes four miles of mountain biking followed by two miles each of cross country skiing and snowshoeing.

On the men’s side, Julian Underwood of Aspen built up a small lead after the mountain bike leg and led by nearly 11 minutes after the cross country leg. It was enough to hold off Silt’s Bernie Boettcher, who made up a big chunk of time on the snowshoe section, but ran out of course.

“I thought (Boettcher) was going to catch me for sure,” Underwood said. “I was running for my life.”

“I was set up on the bike and the snowshoes,” Boettcher said. “The ski stuff was a bit defective. I was trying to go forward, and I was going backward.”

Underwood finished with a time of 55:20, while Boettcher came in under an hour with a time of 58:40. Aspen’s Bill Boughton was third in 1:02:00.

Results

Julian Underwood 55:20

Bernie Boettcher 58:40

Bill Boughton 1:02:00

Dennis Webb 1:05:00

Mark Feinsinger 1:09:15

Randy Johnson 1:09:18

Brian Bruggerman 1:09:45

Noah Hoffman 1:10:15

Joel Scott 1:13:30

Helen Carlsen (1st woman) 1:13:50

Mick Ireland 1:16:50

Greg Mueller 1:20:14

Amy Capron(2nd woman) 1:20:57

Cheryl Pearce (3rd woman) 1:27:55

Maureen O’Brien 1:32:00

Kathy McGowan 1:37:30

Susan McEvoy 1:38:50

Margaret Hesse 1:38:56

Heidi Hoffmann 1:39:30

Kristine Stinson 2:04:30