See photo album here.
Sean Raborn not only won the GoFAST 24 Hours of ERock, he
wore it. His face was dry and dusty, as if the stunning 264 miles he’d ridden had aged him by 20 years. A mixture of sweat and dust caked on his legs.
But as he stepped off his bike on Sunday at the Greenland Trail Open Space, he managed a thin smile.
The Castle Rock resident had claimed his third-consecutive victory at ERock.
And though his exhausted body had shut down such things as emotion, his dry sense of humor remained intact.
“I’m done riding my bike for today,” he said.
For the first 10 hours, Raborn didn’t know if he would defend his title.
“I had one of the worst races to begin with,” he said. “I just felt tired. Then at around eight or 10 hours I started feeling better and dropped the hammer.”
While Raborn suffered, Andy Wenberg forged a 30-minute lead on a fast course.
“Andy really brought it today,” Raborn said. “But when I caught him it reinvigorated me. I had the feeling his wheels were about to come off.”
How does one rider win such a difficult race three years in a row? Raborn’s formula is simple.
“Suffering is my specialty,” he said.
LaVeta’s Cathy Cramer (left) powered away from the field in the women’s solo race to win for the second-consecutive year.
Cramer completed 25 laps in 2009. This year she set a goal of 29 laps – about 235 miles – and she hit it.
“That was a pretty high goal,” she said. “But I thought 29 was doable.”
It was also more than 10 laps better than the second-place finisher in the women’s race.
Among the Pikes Peak area teams, The Koobi Team from Monument (Steve Clark, Phil Schweizer,
Tom Turney) finished third the three-rider men’s race. And the “We’re not Welsh” team from Colorado Springs
  was second in the 6-8 member coed race.