WANOGA SNO-PARK — Adam Bucklin said he had been eyeing a win at Pickett’s Charge! for at least a year.

Just before noon Sunday the 40-year-old Bend resident raced out from the winding Tiddlywinks trail, pushed up one final switchback to climb up to the paved road at Wanoga Sno-park and rolled through the final 100 feet to the finish line with a three-minute lead on second-place Carl Decker, another 40-year-old Bend resident. Bucklin threw up his fist and yelled in triumph as he completed the 22-mile cross-country mountain bike race in 1 hour, 25 minutes and 25 seconds.

“I was happy that all the training I did made that happen,” Bucklin said. “It’s a local race, it’s in my backyard, but there are some other guys I race against who are really fast and it’s also in their backyard. So the competition’s really good here, and I wanted to come out here and prove myself on this course.”

Pickett’s Charge! is the last stop in the eight-race Mudslinger Oregon cross-country mountain bike series, but with the series title already in hand, Bucklin said he was free to push himself as hard as necessary to win at Wanoga.

“I threw my normal pacing strategy away for this race and just rode hard, and it paid off,” he said. “I loved the course — it was all climbing up to the finish, and I enjoy climbing, so it was good for me. I had a lot of fun pre-riding the course two days ago, and it was even more fun racing it.”

That is just what race promoter Don Leet wanted to hear. Leet, who also competed in the race and finished second in the men’s 60+ sport category, designed a new course for this year’s race by choosing the most enjoyable of the nearby trails created by the National Forest Service and the Central Oregon Trail Alliance.

“What I’m looking for is when someone finishes the course I want them to tell me it’s the funnest course they race, not the hardest,” Leet said. “I try to incorporate a lot of fun, and so the trail I used today is one of the funnest downhills around. Unfortunately, when you go that far down you have to come back up.”

For Kaitlyn Wolfe, a 14-year-old from Vancouver, Washington, that trade-off was more than worth it.

“I love racing here — this is my favorite race to go to,” Wolfe said. “I love the technicality, how it goes from lava rock to swooping downhills and then a really hard uphill. You just kind of smile and grit your teeth and get through it.”

Wolfe finished the 15-mile course for novices and juniors in 1:55:17, making her the first (and only) finisher in her age group.

Since there are usually few girls her own age to race against, she said she has gotten used to competing against kids in other categories.

“I really try and aim for going after the boys, like these two,” she said, pointing at two junior cyclists she was chatting with at the finish line. “I try not to get passed by them, but usually I do. Today I got to ride behind some of the little juniors and talk to them, and they were telling me all about how they started racing, which was really cool.”

Wolfe will find a little bit more competition if she continues to race as an adult. Serena Bishop Gordon, 36 and from Bend, won the women’s elite race in 1:43:04. Kaydee Raths, a 28-year-old living in Arcata, California, finished in second place 12 minutes later but clinched the Mudslinger series individual title.

“I wasn’t necessarily expecting to win — I never really expect to win. I take every race as a new opportunity to see how well I can do as an individual,” Raths explained. “It’s like going to school: At the beginning of the semester you do all your hard work, and then once you hit the final you’re like, I’ve done all my hard work, I have it in the bag.”

Raths’ series got off to an inauspicious start at the Mudslinger race staged in Blodgett, near Corvallis, this April. Hit by a bad case of nerves in her first race as a professional, Raths said she misread a sign and finished the short course intended for novices and juniors, arriving at the finish line in tears. Series organizer Mike Ripley drove her back to the turnoff so she could finish the correct race (which she did, finishing third for the elite women).

“That’s how racing goes,” Raths said. “You never know what’s going to happen, so that’s why you’ve got to be positive, even if you crash or get a flat. You’ve got to stay positive.”

—Reporter: 541-383-0305, vjacobsen@bendbulletin.com