Former Leadville 100 champion Hannah Otto (Scott Sports activities) would not simply search lengthy rides to problem her health and increase her definition of what’s onerous, she makes it her job to knock out FKTs, quickest identified occasions, and nonetheless have gasoline within the tank to compete at Mountain Bike World Championships and end excessive within the standings of the Life Time Grand Prix.
Forward of the fourth race within the Grand Prix collection at Chequamegon on September 13, Otto will signify Workforce USA on the UCI Marathon MTB World Championships in Switzerland this Saturday. Final yr on house soil in West Virginia, Otto was sixteenth in her first Marathon Worlds look.
The reigning US Marathon mountain bike nationwide champion this time, Otto will compete alongside Kate Courtney (She Sends Racing) in a 125km (78-mile) route from Verbier to Grimentz with 5,025 metres (16,486 toes) of elevation achieve. That is extra climbing than Leadville compacted right into a shorter distance. The boys’s group will characteristic three-time Grand Prix champion Keegan Swenson (Santa Cruz) and males’s US marathon MTB winner Cole Paton (Big Bicycles).
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“I am very impressed with the course they’ve arrange. It is about 80 miles with as much as 17,000 toes of climbing. Will probably be significantly brutal, which I am fairly enthusiastic about. I really like competing on the world stage,” Otto informed Cyclingnews.
After a day within the Swiss Alps, she’ll fly again to the US for Chequamegon MTB in Wisconsin, trying to enhance her placement within the Grand Prix from tenth after three occasions. Otto is without doubt one of the handful of athletes, ladies and men, who’ve competed in all 4 years of the LTGP and completed within the high 10 every of the previous three seasons.
“I am undoubtedly trying to preserve that streak alive,” she stated about focusing on a fourth high 10, the place riders cut up a $180,000 season-ending money purse.
“This yr does provide somewhat little bit of a special situation. [The series] began with two gravel races in a row, which put extra of the mountain bikers on the again foot. Having reached the midway level after Leadville, realizing that the following two races are mountain bike races, I believe it units as much as have some fairly good shifts. It creates a reasonably irritating dynamic for all the opposite occasions.”
Off the overwhelmed path occasions go well with Otto and he or she considers herself a mountain biker somewhat than only a gravel racer. From the Mediterranean Epic mountain bike stage race (fourth total) to high 20 at Unbound Gravel 200 and a second consecutive podium on the 50-mile Whiskey Offroad, she switches between mountain bike and gravel disciplines simply. And now she has accomplished the Moab Triple Crown, a set of non-race efforts for FKT achievements – Complete Enchilada, Kokopelli and White Rim trails within the excessive desert terrain of Utah.
Otto developed the Triple Crown after she moved from faculty in Missouri to Salt Lake Metropolis space of Utah in 2018 to check her all-around mountain biking expertise on three very completely different trails. She now has set FKT’s for all three trails – the 55-mile Complete Enchilada in 2022, 140-mile Kokopelli in 2024 on her second try, and 100-mile White Rim. The 100-mile White Rim path finest time had been 6 hours and 51 minutes and he or she beat that by 13 minutes on Could 2, 2025.
“I would not say that these FKTs are preparation for any of the races. In actual fact, since we race such lengthy occasions [in the Grand Prix] now we have to be actually clever about how we use these matches. As a result of regardless that folks see us racing these occasions weekend after weekend, the truth of the state of affairs is we’re racing the time period of Ironman [triathlon].
“These are very lengthy, onerous occasions and onerous on our our bodies, and so now we have to be actually clever about when and the way we do these efforts. And so these actions are one thing that I’ve undoubtedly fallen in love with.”
A former collegiate champion in cyclocross in addition to cross-country and brief monitor cross-country in mountain biking, she’s now hooked on performances of 5 to 10 hours. Otto twice received the XTERRA Beginner World Championship in triathlon, so a return to these lengthy efforts was acquainted territory.
No race or journey is ever the identical twice, even should you reverse the course or return a number of occasions to the identical path. And that’s in full distinction to her first and final identify, a palindrome in each cases. There isn’t any repeatable sample to her schedule, each effort a brand new problem.
“The actual problem for me is determining the place I can place FKTs within the calendar. And for me, Could was a good time, as a result of I used to be giving off a very huge block to coach for Unbound, and I additionally had a while to get well after it.
“The objective that I’ve on this sport is to show to those who they’re able to a lot greater than they think about. And so I believe providing that visible element so folks see my struggles, not simply my triumphs,” she stated about her sponsor Aggressive Bike owner providing a 20-minute movie on their YouTube channel about her achievement.
“Like the primary time doing Kokopelli, once I fell brief, I believe that is actually necessary for folks to see and perceive that even execs, even the individuals who put all the pieces into this, nonetheless fall brief typically. That is OK, you simply preserve going.
“That first try on the Kokopelli, it fully modified me. It is the toughest factor I’ve ever performed, and it fully modified my perspective of what onerous is, whether or not it is life hardship or if it is on the race course,” she stated about falling wanting the very best time by quarter-hour, enduring snow and chilly temperatures on the primary try. The second try she crushed the outdated mark by greater than an hour, in 11 hours 53 minutes.
“I’ve a brand new barometre that I get to check to, and it feels somewhat bit like an excellent energy.”
