Issue Date: October 2008 Chicago Marathon Issue, Posted On: 9/22/2008
Steve Johnson & Rebecca Much
Steve Johnson
Heading
into August’s Accenture Chicago Triathlon, Steve Johnson’s primary goal
was to win the Triple Challenge, which combines results from the
sprint, supersprint and international individual races. His secondary
goal was to do it by winning each race individually. Mission(s)
accomplished.
The 32-year-old Chicagoan claimed victory in the
supersprint on the morning of Aug. 23. The next day, he won the sprint
which is twice as long and then came back a couple of hours later and
won his third race, which was at Olympic distance. Final tally: two
days, three races and three titles. “It’s not for the light of light,”
Johnson says of the Triple Challenge.
Johnson, who will compete
in October’s Hawaii Ironman, said the Triple Challenge actually was not
the hardest competition he’s endured. That honor goes to the American
Triple-T in Ohio, which features four races over three days on a hilly
course, culminating in a half ironman. “Having done that, I was sure I
could do (the Triple Challenge) without too much difficulty,” Johnson
says.
Rebecca Much
At
the end of the 2005 season, Rebecca Much didn’t just quit cycling, she
tried to purge the sport completely from her life. “I sold all my bikes
and I was pretty excited about it,” she says. “I was determined to
never touch one again.”
Much started her career with XXX
Racing-AthletiCo when she was 16. She won a national junior
championship and took the silver medal in the junior world
championships in 2004 before moving on to the bigger T-Mobile team.
Although she won the under-23 time trial national championship in 2005,
the pressure had taken some of the fun out of cycling. So she quit.
But
last spring, Much went riding with friends, and the itch to compete
returned. She spent the second half of 2007 with the Target training
team. This year, the 22-year-old Chicagoan joined Webcor Builders and
on Aug. 6, won her second under-23 national title. This time, she’s
having fun. “I thought there was something better to do out there, but
racing is as good as it gets for me,” Much says.
