Meet Claire Rust: another young and fast MTBer
She finished 6th in women's overall at Mohican MTB 100k race
Remember Alex Liu? The dude who finished the Mohican MTB 100k race at age 11? Well, when that story dropped, someone reached out and enlightened me about another young person who finished the big race on that muddy day.
Her name is Claire Rust. She’s 13.
And not only did the Ohio Mountain Bike Championship series (OMBC) defending junior champ finish the race, she placed 6th overall in the women’s sport class with an impressive time of 9:08:15.
So I caught up with her a couple weeks after the race. She and her dad met up with me over Google Meet in their Houston, Ohio home fresh off a combined camping-racing trip to Brown County, Indiana for the DINO Mountain Bike Series race. (Claire placed 1st in the Sport women category, and passed up to 2nd position in expert women.)
This girl can ride.
I was curious, so I asked her what got her into mountain biking?
“My dad.”
Her dad, Larry, is also a competent rider who told me he’s been riding bikes since he was “wee little.” He also finished 6th overall in the men’s open of the Mohican MTB 100k, clocking in at 5:51:57.
Larry got into racing dirt bikes at age 5. At age 16 or 17, he started cross training by riding mountain bikes and has been riding intermittently for the last 20 years. In 2018, he got into racing them. By 2021, he won OMBC’s sport category for the men. So he moved up to expert in 2022.
He actually finished 6th in the Mohican MTB 100k last year, too. (He beat his last year’s time by 2 minutes. “At least I’m consistent,” he says.)
PROFILE
Name: Claire Rust
Age: 13
Family: Dad. Mom. Three younger sisters.
Occupation: Shredder. Student at Hardin-Houston Local School District.
Road or mountain: All of it. But mountain.
Pre-race routine: “Force down breakfast. And keep positive mind until the start of the race.”
When I asked Claire how it felt to be standing up there with the top women following her performance at Mohican, she said she didn’t expect it.
“I thought I was doing terrible,” she said. “I was going really, really slow.”
The wet conditions during the race made it tough. Race director Ryan O’Dell said it was likely the hardest year of racing out there since its origin 20+ years ago.
But finishing 6th with women double her age after her first attempt?
“It was pretty exciting,” she said.
The aspiration to race it came last May when her dad did it. At the finish line last year, with her dad, she said it was going to be her goal for 2023 to race it.
Her training for the big race began in January. Five days a week. While also going to school, mind you. By the first weekend in March, she made a trip with her dad to Mohican to finish a double loop of the state park’s mountain bike trails. One loop is 24.5 miles.
“When I did that, I was pretty sure I able to finish the 100k,” she said.
But it wasn’t like she just jumped on a mountain bike. She had been part of the Miami Valley MTB Association’s NICA Trailblazers team in years prior. And she’s an athlete. She played volleyball at school last year. She enjoyed it, she said.
“But mountain biking is still better,” Claire reassured us, smiling.
What she likes about riding mountain bikes, she explains, is all the people. The atmosphere at races. Everyone’s smiling and fist bumping. It’s relaxed.
“And the courses,” she said. Her favorite trail? Mohican.
“Or Brown County (State Park). Or Pisgah (National Forest). It’s technical trails there,” she tells me about Pisgah, a system of trails I’ve never ridden. “But it’s fun to drop the post and ride with all that suspension.”
Her dad gives a knowing smile. He tells me the family is about to take a family trip out there for the next two weeks. A vacation — with mountain bikes.
“We might try to hit a race to get points for nationals this year,” Claire said. She’s talking about the 2023 USA Cyclicing Cross-Country Mountain Bike National Championships being held in like three weeks at Bear Creek Mountain Resort in Pennsylvania.
Longer-term, her goals include getting faster on the bike and finishing the 100-mile route of the Mohican MTB.
When I ask her to describe the joys she feels when riding a bike, she says she get’s excited when she’s able to clear a really technical section on a trail and knowing she can ride something she couldn’t in the past.
“Also finishing big events and placing really well among people who are way faster than me,” she said.
Her dad categorized his answer by type of riding. Riding for fun, he said, is about being in the outdoors and seeing new trails.
“New trails and the new people you meet on them is just an awesome part of the experience. You learn from going outside of your riding bubble,” he said.
But racing?
“For me, it’s pretty simple, you know. It’s being happy with your performance regardless of where you finish. That’s a big part for me. I could go out and have a great race, I could win, I could finish 10th. Either way, if I did the best I could do and that’s the way it went, so be it. That’s a good day on the bike.”
Amen, fellow cycopaths.
Thanks for reading today everyone. At the moment, I am pedaling somewhere along the GAP trail in Pennslyvania, bound for D.C. I hope you are also having fun on the bike today at some point.
Peace!