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Initially, Life Time’s Little Sugar MTB race seemed like it could kick out $25,000 in prizes between 10 Elite class women and men.
Now, that quantity has ballooned to $65,000.
The swollen purse represents the “biggest offering in a single day cycling event” within the U.S., in line with Life Time. For professional riders and everybody else who’ll take the beginning line this fall, registration opens at this time.
Starting at 6 p.m. CT, you’ll be able to register to trip within the mountain bike race, which runs from Bentonville to Bella Vista, Ark. The gun will sound for the 20K, 50K, and 100K males’s and girls’s races on Sunday, Oct. 15.
The 100K is the one race open to Elite class riders, and the highest 5 women and men to complete it’s going to take residence the money. Each winner pockets $12,000.
Little Sugar MTB Registration and Categories
That doesn’t imply you’ll be able to’t trip within the 100K if you happen to’re not professional. Life Time teams newbie riders by gender and age group as much as 70+. Also, there’s a males’s and girls’s “para” class, plus races for nonbinary riders, fats bikes, and anybody loopy sufficient to deal with the course on a single velocity. “Juniors” are additionally welcome, from 16 to 19 years outdated.
The 20K and 50K races function extra aggregated “open” classes, plus nonbinary, para, e-bike, and juniors teams.
The 100K course is a doozy. It works out to 61.7 miles and covers properly over a mile — 6,558 toes — of elevation acquire. It winds and weaves by way of “hollers” and ravines, providing “grinding climbs that alternate with fasting rolling descents,” in line with Life Time.
It’s a giant nation trip that ends with fast-paced semi-urban sending. Racers will minimize their ending strikes at Bentonville’s Slaughter Pen path system on clear movement traces and techy rock — and catch glimpses of the amphibian-like Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
It all goes stay in mid-October. And the get together stays lit at Big Sugar, the grandaddy of gravel races within the area with a 100-mile and 50-mile race, every week afterward Oct. 23.
Pro riders ought to word that new this 12 months, the Little Sugar 100K is a qualifying race for the Leadville Trail MTB 100. Life Time specified that “a minimum” of 40 registration cash are up for grabs, between efficiency and lottery standards.