Grand Mesa Classic 10K

Bottom line from the collegiate race weekend on Grand Mesa: Mitch Hollman is amazing! Representing the US Air Force Academy, Mitch outgunned everybody in Saturday’s 1K Sprint Race and then came back Sunday to very handily win the Classic 10K. He knows how to establish a gap and humble the competition! The women’s side was much tighter. Rya Berrigan, skiing for Western Colorado Univ., eked out the 10K win by just 2 seconds over CMU’s Hannah Brown. They were followed not far behind by Anna Johnson from Western who was the previous day’s Sprint winner.

All in all, it was a fun day of competition with battles going on throughout the standings as 5 collegiate teams and a great group of feisty citizens duked it out on the excellent Skyway course. The teams from Air force Academy, Western Colorado Univ., Univ. of Wyoming, Colorado College and host Colorado Mesa Univ. bring a wonderful energy to Grand Mesa! The weather was much warmer and calmer than it had been for this season’s early races. That plus hot tomato rice soup and big molasses cookies made it a fantastic day of racing.

As always, volunteers and sponsors made it all functional and rewarding. Everybody got to try Crunchsters, a new and very tasty sprouted mung bean snack, and had a chance at winning one of the great door prizes from REI, Ela Family Farms and Cimarron Coffee Roasters. Soup servers Bob Majors, Kristi Siman and Shannon Koch were kept hopping by the crowd while Kyle Stone and Ernie Langelier handled the timing duties. Thanks for your great help!