Seward’s Chaz DiMarzio won the Soggy Bottom 100 mountain bike race for the third time Saturday, Aug. 3, on the Resurrection Pass and Devil’s Creek trail systems.
The event started in 2004. DiMarzio has finished all but five races, racking up wins in 2013 and 2018.
He said it’s stubbornness and pride that keep him coming back in top form every year. He hasn’t been worse than second in the race since 2012, not counting three times he didn’t finish the race.
The race is about 107 miles long, starting and ending in Hope, with 100 miles of continuous singletrack. It has over 10,000 feet of climb and descent.
“There’s nowhere else that I’m aware of that you can get that kind of riding for 100 miles, and see those landscapes,” DiMarzio said. “And then it’s just finishing in a place as dope as Hope.
“Once the Seaview gets up and running again, there’s live music at the finish and everything else that goes with that. And that’s why I keep coming back.”
DiMarzio set his personal best of 8 hours, 52 minutes and 34 seconds in 2021. This year, on a brilliantly sunny day, he finished in 9:22:00 to win a duel with Brian Waldo, who finished at 9:31:00. The course record remains an 8:28:39 by Will Ross in 2022.
The women’s race went to Kinsey Loan in 11:10:00. Loan had the course record until last year, when Najeeby Quinn finished at 9:49:01.
The race starts in Hope and takes the Resurrection Pass trail to Cooper Landing, then turns around. On the Swan Lake portion of the climb out of Cooper Landing, DiMarzio said he made his move on Waldo.
The race then goes down the Devil’s Creek trail. DiMarzio said he had about five minutes on Waldo at the Devil’s Creek trailhead.
The event then goes back up Devil’s Creek and takes a right to Hope. DiMarzio said he put five more minutes on Waldo during that section.
DiMarzio said the weather was good and the trail was in great shape, except for the up and down near Swan Lake and the section from highway construction to Cooper Landing.
The Seward rider said he was stoked with his performance, but said it never would have happened without Karl Mechtenberg at Seward Bike Shop.
DiMarzio was doing a bolt check on his bike Friday when he snapped off a proprietary bolt.
“I had to drive over to Karl’s at 8 o’clock the night before the Soggy and get the keys to his shop,” DiMarzio said. “Fingers crossed that a different bike would have a same bolt, and it did.
“He had a different model of Kona that happened to use the same pivot hardware, and I was able to steal it off there.”
Seward’s Lee Hall, who finished last in the race at 14:18:00, also had a problem with his frame the night before his race and was saved when Mechtenberg gave Hall a loaner.
Also from the peninsula, David Seramur was fifth across the line at 10:50:00 and Eric Thomason was the 15th man at 12:49:00.
Seward’s Collin Atkinson rode on a team with Gene Till and Dave Finocchio. They were the third team across the line at 11:38:00.
