Nicole's story: Cactus Cup

BaseCamp athlete Nicole Gunton shared her experience at the 2025 Cactus Cup race in Arizona.

Last weekend was my first IRL race at the AZ Cactus Cup Mountain bike stage race.

The weekend started with a dreary rainy Friday of the opening Time Trial, which was delayed by an hour and shortened to help prevent damaging the trails. My age group went off first and got a nice short window of no rain. With only 2 of us in my group, I did catch my competition for the win on the day before they shut down the rest of the groups due to the weather worsening.

Day 2 was the 40 mile XC course, and I couldn't have asked for better conditions. The rain created "hero dirt," and there was a nice big crowd of ladies in my start corral, which always makes for a fun day of competition. There was all sorts of back and forth between about 6-7 of us, and I didn't know who was in my age category and who wasn't, so I just assumed everyone was, which helped keep the fire lit. I managed to stay on the podium for the day in 3rd, just 2 minutes off 1st (for the day) and keep the lead for the overall in the weekend competition.

Day 3 was "enduro" day, a very easy XC type of enduro where the timed downhill was not very technical and very fast. The toughest part of the day was sitting in line waiting for my start and reapplying extra sunscreen to my sunburn from Saturday. After 3 stages I was just seconds away from the win in 2nd place. I had no idea I was so close or that I had as much competition as I did.

I got the overall for the weekend quite unexpectedly, but the best of all was being able to meet BaseCamper Gayl Loutzenheiser, who did her first gravel race that weekend. How exciting!!!