Flora Duffy has won the Women’s US Xterra National Championships in Utah. Duffy crossed the line in a time of 2:38:18.
Duffy has quickly come to dominate the XTERRA women’s fields as her first XTERRA race was last year’s Beaver Creek contest where she made a modest top 10 finish to qualify for Maui, then shocked the XTERRA veteran women with a 3rd place finish at Worlds. Since then, Duffy has perfected her mountain biking skills and applied them to wins at XTERRA West, XTERRA East and XTERRA Southeast before taking her only loss – a 2nd place at XTERRA Germany which doubled as the ITU Cross Triathlon World championship. She then skipped a few XTERRA races to keep her hand in ITU races which offered Olympic qualifying points which would help her in a quest to make her 3rd Olympic team.
On this day, Duffy came out of the swim first, a few seconds ahead of Barbara Riveros, a comfortable minute ahead of a rehabbed Lesley Paterson and 90 seconds on Chantell Widney and Suzie Snyder. After her short ITU season ended with an 8th place finish at the Commonwealth Games and an 18th place finish at the WTS Grand Final at Edmonton, Duffy dug in in Boulder with three weeks of intense mountain bike training. Well prepared, she took control on the second leg in Ogden and unleashed a race-best 1:34:45 split that was 11 seconds better than Paterson, 1:58 better than Emma Garrard, and 6:15 better than a struggling Riveros. “Once I got on the bike, I didn’t take it out too hard because it is a very tough course at altitude with a ton of climbing,” said Duffy. “I wanted to save something for what is a very demanding and brutal run course.”
Duffy put a lock on the win with a race-best 38:49 run that was 3:39 better than Riveros, 6:31 better than a still-hurting Paterson and 6:26 better than Widney, who won the Beaver Creek round in mid-summer.
“I was happy to mix XTERRA and ITU races this year,” said Duffy. “It keeps things interesting.”
Duffy finished in 2:38:36 with a 5:51 margin on Riveros and 7:48 on 3rd place finisher Paterson. “I don’t want to make excuses because that takes away from better performances,” said Paterson, a 2-time XTERRA World Champion who suffered nerve damage from a complex case of periforma syndrome for most the past year. “But I take some pride in my finish today, my first race back since Maui last year. Eight months ago, I was crying and unable to get out of bed. I wasn't able to run or ride until May and through it all I learned how to manage the pain.”
