Leadville Trail Qualifiers Announced

The six qualifying events for the 2012 Leadville Trail mountain bike race have been announced. Last year was the first time the race was built on a qualifier system, rather than the previous lottery system, and this year will require racers once again to prove their mettle to get into the elite event.

We're hoping to see Suunto superstar Rebecca Rusch in the scrum, defending her women's champion title at the tough, high-altitude race, which happens August 11th in Colorado.

Cycling News has a great story about the qualifying events, including the list of locations. Read it here.

And if you want to relive Rebecca's awesome domination of the race in 2011 - including setting a new course record - here's Cycling News' coverage of that too! Of course, you'll also want to check out Reba's recap of the day, as well.

Hooray for The Queen of Pain!

La Ruta Loves the Queen of Pain

La Ruta de Los Conquistadores kicked off on Wednesday, and runs for four total days over 240 miles and five mountain ranges as it takes racers across the continent from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea.

photo: Cycling News

Suunto athlete, Rebecca Rusch is taking on La Ruta and keeping us informed on her blog. Here's a bit from her Day 1 update:

Day 1 of La Ruta is in the books. I had a great day and it felt so good to be racing and working hard again. I’ve sort of had a couple months of really unstructured training, so I had no idea if my legs would remember how to race. I was pleasantly surprised with how I felt today on what they call the hardest day of La Ruta. There was over 10,000 ft of climbing in about 110 km. The jungle hike a bike portion is a bit of a slip and slide event, but it went OK.

Make sure you take a look at this photo gallery from Cycling News!