Shannon's story: Gran Fondo National Championships

BaseCamp athlete Shannon Scanlon shared her experience at the 2025 Gran Fondo Maryland and National Championships in Maryland.

While this race was slated to be a "B" race and practice for UCI Worlds, of course I still wanted to defend my title and take top step in my age group. I had an advantage of knowing the course and the ability to recon the new timed segments prior to the race. My plan: focus on my power targets, stay with groups to conserve energy, and fuel properly. I wasable to execute the power targets Jill Gass and I discussed, and I "dug deep" (her words 😉). The best part of the day was meeting up with the Ritmo team from NJ that I had raced with last year. We are able to execute the same plan on T5; the faster climbers held back for 1 minute so we could regroup after the initial climb and have the full group to work together on the ridge. They even had their coach with them this year, so he coached us during the segment to take short pulls, power over the climb, and push on the downhills. It was so fun! Reuben Kline puts on a great race, challenging at 87 miles with 8800 feet of climbing, but the timed segments make it like a big group ride with a race in between. I love the format, and it's a great opportunity to meet people. They offer a full series, and I recommend checking one out next season.