Cyclist honored along with other top athletes
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John Stamstad woke up too tired to wiggle a toe or lift a finger.
Too tired to even open his eyes.
He had pedaled his mountain bike 65 hours without sleep, rode through the snow and 20-below temperatures of an Alaskan February. He finished the 1998 Iditasport Extreme in a record time of 3-1/2 days, slept for 8 hours and woke up conscious but immobile.
"You kind of do a mental inventory," he said. "You think, `OK, I'm awake, so I haven't died yet.' "
It was the second time in Stamstad's life he had exhausted himself into a comalike state the morning after a race. The first time he panicked, worried something had seriously gone haywire with his body. This time he just waited for his body to catch up.
"Basically, your mind wakes up before your body, because the level of fatigue is so great," he said.
Stamstad, a Seattle resident who moved here from Cincinnati 1-1/2 years ago, is the world's reigning champion of ultramarathon mountain biking, a sport you've never heard of. That's OK. You probably haven't heard of the Laureus Awards, which were given out in Monaco last Tuesday. Stamstad was nominated for the Alternative Sportsman of the Year, a culmination of 10 years of full-time racing. The shortest event he entered lasted 24 hours, long hours for little pay and even less sleep.
At the Laureus ceremony, hosted by supermodel Heidi Klum, Stamstad was recognized on a global stage with superstars like Olympians Marion Jones and Cathy Freeman. You weren't able to watch it here, though.
The ceremony was broadcast Sunday by NBC, but not in Seattle. KING-TV instead aired "City Guys" and "Just Deal" which pre-empted the awards in King County. Par for the course in a sport that is a basement addition to an underground sport.
The Laureus award for alternative sports went to an equator circumnavigator, a sport even farther off the sports map than ultramarathon mountain biking. But Stamstad's nomination was a huge step forward for the sport.
A 140-pound cyclist, he holds the record for off-road miles ridden in one day: 352. He completed the Continental Divide trail, pedaling almost 2,500 miles from Northern Montana to Mexico in 18 days, 5 hours.
He won mid-February races for eight straight years in Alaska on a portion of the trail used for the Iditarod dog-sledding race. In 1998, he set a course record in the Iditasport Extreme where competitors use bikes, snowshoes or skis to compete.
The sport is so demanding Stamstad didn't compete in more than six races a year. He seldom made more than $30,000 a year from racing, but has appeared in national print ads for Chevrolet trucks, was sponsored by Microsoft and made a career out of pushing the limits of his body. "Anyone who says they enjoy what we do isn't telling the truth," said Pat Norwil, an ultramarathon mountain biker who finished second to Stamstad in the Iditasport Extreme in 1998.
The races are more than experiments of sleep deprivation. Contestants must be tough. Stamstad once pedaled the final 80 miles of a race with a broken collarbone.
That kind of effort exacts a price. The week after a race in Alaska, Stamstad was at a Madison Park restaurant with Julie Blackwell, who is now his fiancee. He nodded off to sleep as they looked at the menu.
Blackwell works at Microsoft, one of the companies that sponsored Stamstad. He came to Seattle to train a group that was preparing to compete as a relay team in a 24-hour race at Moab.
"We showed up for the race, and I thought John was going to be on our team," she said.
The race is a challenge for a team of four, and it was unheard of for a single person to do it 10 years ago when Stamstad started. He entered 24 hours of Canaan, a race in West Virginia, as a single-rider team. Organizers told him he needed four team members, so he filled out his form: John Stamstad, J. Robert Stamstad, John Robert Stamstad and J.R. Stamstad.
Just the newest test of endurance from Stamstad, who started working after high school by commuting on foot 12 miles to his father's manufacturing plant. He ran 12 miles to work in the morning and back at night, almost a marathon every day.
"He was a very determined fellow from very early on," said his mother, Mary Stamstad.
The racing is over now. Stamstad took two months off last fall, then rode in Alaska one last time. He operates one-week mountain-biking camps, teaching the basics of the sport to casual riders through a company called Single Track Ranch. He will have camps on Mount Hood and in Arizona this summer while he gives his body the kind of rest it hasn't had in years.
"The biggest thing about not racing anymore is that I won't be tired all the time," he said.
Danny O'Neil can be reached at 206-515-5536 or doneil@seattletimes.com.