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- Conrad Stoltz and Shonny Vanlandingham broke out their 29’er mountain bikes and won the XTERRA Southeast Championship at Oak Mountain State Park on a smoking hot day in Pelham, Alabama this afternoon.
It was the hottest weekend of the year here in the South with temps in the mid-90’s and humidity that made it feel even hotter.  It was so warm that Stoltz, who won his third straight on the 2010 XTERRA America Tour and fourth in a row here in Shelby County, put ice cubes under his swim cap before the race got started.
“And they melted before I got to the first buoy,” he explained.   The real story of the day, however, was about the mountain bikes with big wheels.
“I’m real proud of my 29’er,” said Stoltz.  “It’s the first time I’ve used it in an XTERRA and it worked brilliantly.  On a bumpy course like this the bigger tires ride better.  They have a bigger contact patch with the ground that gives you better traction.  You don’t have to brake as much so you can keep your momentum rolling.  It’s like an extra suspension, and because it’s so smooth you don’t get as tired.”
Stoltz’ success isn’t all about the bike, however, as all of the top five men were riding 29’ers.  It’s more about the rider, and the mad skills the “Caveman” has to handle technical mountain bike courses like this epic trail created by BUMP (Birmingham Urban Mountain Pedalers).
“I really have to thank BUMP for designing such an excellent bike course.  This course suits me better than any course ever made,” said Stoltz.
The day started out, as it has for the past several years, with Craig Evans getting an early jump on the bike and holding off Stoltz until somewhere around the 9-mile mark.
“I was having a hard time concentrating and couldn’t focus in the beginning, just thinking about all the wrong things, and didn’t catch Craig until the top of the big climb,” said Stoltz.
 When the course started going down, it was all over.  Josiah Middaugh, who was in third place behind Evans, said he was riding well and about two minutes behind Stoltz before the start of the downhill near the famous “Blood Rock” section.  By the time Stoltz got to the bike-to-run transition, he was three minutes up on Evans and four minutes ahead of Middaugh.   His 1:21:18 bike split was more than two-and-a-half minutes faster than the second-best time, Middaugh’s 1:23:52.
“He’s a great technical rider, and can go really fast in the twisty stuff,” said Middaugh.  To make things worse for everyone else, BUMP rolled out a new three-mile section of tree-lined switchbacks to this year’s course, giving Stoltz’ even more time in his element.   That said, there was still a run to deal with, a grueling, hilly “death march” type of run that Middaugh excels at.
“The run is probably the hardest I’ve ever done,” said Stoltz. “I think I had a four minute lead on Josiah, and in the beginning I thought it’ll be pretty easy, I’ll just keep going and take it, but by halfway through I was thinking ‘I don’t care if Josiah catches me, I just don’t want to die.”
Middaugh did make up about a minute-thirty on Stoltz with the fastest run of the day (40:02), and was able to catch Evans to move into 3rd by about mile three, but ultimately fell two-minutes 27 seconds behind the winning time of Stoltz (2:21:27).
Evans stayed strong for 3rd, duplicating his best career finish had here in ‘Bama in 2008 (not bad for a guy with two kids who spends 50-to-60 hours a week in a “real world” job).
Seth Wealing (pictured at Blood Rock) was solid all around for fourth, and Cody Waite posted his best performance of the season to finish fifth.  Also of note, Will Kelsay came in 6th, his best championship race result in eight years with XTERRA, plus Scott Gall was 7th, Kevin Carter 8th, and Damian Gonzalez 9th – also personal bests.