Happy birthday, Phil Zajicek.
The 32-year-old Tucson native and Sahuaro High School graduate won the 25th annual Tucson Bicycle Classic presented by TriSports.com for the second year in a row Sunday, which just happened to be his birthday.
"I feel old," Zajicek joked after locking in his second straight win in the men's pro portion of the event. "It's pretty awesome to win on my birthday.
"There are some really big races in California the next couple weeks, so this is kind of the first step in my preparation to hopefully win those."
Zajicek finished with the lead pack Sunday in the third stage, a 50-mile circuit race, to win the overall general classification title by one second over Cole House of Oneida, Wis., who won Sunday's stage.
For Zajicek, nothing was easy about Sunday's final stage, which included climbs up Anklam and Greasewood roads. And racing without his Monster Media team out of California made it tougher.
People are also reading…
"It was aggressive. Guys were attacking from the start," said Zajicek, who lives in Boulder, Colo. "We were going really hard all day. I had to do a lot of work on my own. I knew it definitely was not over until we crossed the finish."
Zajicek won Friday's first stage, a 3.2-mile time trial on McCain Loop in the Tucson Mountains, by one second.
"It was really fast conditions and there weren't big discrepancies in the time, so to win by one second I was really happy," he said.
Zajicek said Saturday's second stage, an 80-mile road race on Mission and Duval Mine roads, also was aggressive. House won the stage, but Zajicek picked up a two-second bonus in a halfway sprint and finished in the lead pack to keep the overall lead by three seconds.
Zajicek wasn't the only champion Sunday. The Tucson Bicycle Classic had winners in 22 different categories, based on age, skill and gender.
This year, 595 cyclists entered from about 20 states, Canada and Mexico, according to founder and promoter Steve Bohn.
"That's pretty close to a record, if not one," Bohn said about the local event.
In the pro women's overall classification, Cara Bussell of Portland, Ore., won the title for TriSports Cycling/Eclipse Racing in 4 hours 45 minutes 17 seconds. That was 1:52 ahead of everyone else's time.
"You really have to know your body and how hard you can push it for how long," she said.
Bussell, 30, won the 60-mile second stage in 2:44:38. Teammate Marylin McDonald, 33, won the 3.2-mile time trial and finished in third place overall.
Teammate Anna Sanders, 30, won the third stage in 1:51:17 to complete the sweep.
"The team did fantastic," McDonald said. "We worked well together and had some tactics that were in play."
Of the seven team members, only Bussell is not from Arizona. She has been in Tucson for the last few weeks, after training in Australia for four months.
"I'm the oddball," Bussell said with a laugh. "They accept me as one of their own and I couldn't have won without them.
"They worked really hard today and covered all the attacks."
