MOAB, Utah — When it was all over, the wind, the sand, the snow, the punishment — when the 24 Hours of Moab had finally, mercifully ended last weekend, someone thrust a microphone in front of Josh Tostado’s face.

It was time for the winner to speak.

He thanked the people who helped make it happen — the biggest victory of his endurance mountain-biking career — but otherwise kept it short, unlike the 253-mile race he’d just completed.

Before he finished, though, there was something he felt he had to say.

“I don’t really think of this as a real, legit win,” Tostado told the crowd. “Because Chris had to drop out.”

He was talking about six-time world champion Chris Eatough, the face of the sport itself and Moab’s defending champ. Ten hours into the race, Eatough had relented to the vomiting and diarrhea that left him without any fuel to continue. He did something he almost never does: He abandoned the race.

Tostado, for his part, had spent three years chasing Eatough as he progressed from small-town Colorado legend — a reputation he earned by winning the feared Montezuma’s Revenge 24-hour race in 2004 and 2005, each in record-setting fashion — to a national contender.

Earlier this summer, Tostado lost a 15-minute lead at the 24-hour national championships in Wisconsin when his light malfunctioned in the dark. Eatough passed him in the pit, and Tostado eventually settled for second, knowing he should’ve been first. It was there that onlookers began referring to him as “the next Chris Eatough.”

To now win the most prestigious 24-hour race on the planet, against one of the premier fields in endurance racing history, well, it felt a little hollow without Eatough still in it at the end.

Eatough, however, wasn’t having any of it. He rushed toward Tostado from the crowd.

“No way, man,” Eatough blurted out in response to Tostado’s concession. “You pressured me right from the start. That had a lot to do with why I blew up.”

Only then did the moment materialize for Tostado, a former Breckenridge Brewery cook who lived in his van for three years before ditching a professional skiing career to race his bike. This was it. The signature win he’d been seeking.

“It was kind of like, finally,” Tostado said Thursday, reflecting back in Breckenridge. “I didn’t need to prove it to myself. It was more to prove it to everyone else. Everyone looks at Chris as the top of the heap. I proved a little bit at nationals, but there’s such a big difference between first and second. This was what I’ve been working toward for a long time.”

Fast start

As much as the 14th annual Moab race was billed as a three-way battle between Eatough, Tostado and 2003 champ Tinker Juarez, it didn’t take long for Tostado to turn it into his own personal 24-hour time trial.

He attacked from the traditional Le Mans start, building an unusually large gap between himself and the elite field on the first lap alone.

“I could see a group of four or five behind me, but I didn’t want to be in their group working for other people,” he said. “I figured if I could stay ahead and work for myself, I’d be OK. Because I could tell they weren’t working well together. If they were, they would’ve caught me.”

Maybe. But Tostado didn’t care. Instead, he rode his bike at such an untouchable pace for the first 15 hours of the race that he built a lead of an hour — putting him 12 miles ahead of his closest competition, the two-time Olympian and Hall of Fame member Juarez.

Only then, at 3 in the morning, did Tostado bother to find out where his rivals stood in relation to him.

“I didn’t ask anyone what my lead was, and nobody told me until then,” he said. “I just went.”

To combat the swirling sand on course, Tostado rotated two bikes — including a brand-new, 25.4-pound Santa Cruz Superlight that one of his mechanics, Ryan Gaul, built up the day before Tostado left for Moab — and never stopped in the pits for longer than a minute or two.

He ate only a piece of pepperoni pizza and a fried-egg sandwich, as well as more than 50 energy gels, over the course of the 24-hour race.

Tostado’s grueling training regimen carried him through, though not without angst. He spends about 25-30 hours a week in the saddle, most of it churning up unmarked singletrack, alone. With six hours to go in Moab, however, he began to feel weak.

“I was suffering hard, and I started thinking: ‘Am I going to lose it here?’ Just because of the pace I put in early,” he said.

Knowing Juarez was chasing him only made the sensation more nerve-racking.

“I felt threatened because you can never tell with Tinker,” Tostado said. “The guy is super strong. But it turned out that he was suffering as much as I was.”

In the end, Tostado finished with 17 laps on the 15-mile course — one lap better than Juarez, South African pro Roan Exelby and California’s Ben Bostrom — and climbed 23,120 feet.

Tostado’s performance was matched on the women’s side by Jari Kirkland, a former Breckenridge resident who moved to Crested Butte and has since made a name for herself as a member of that town’s world-class adventure racing team. She recently returned to Summit but still races for the Crested Butte squad.

Kirkland dominated the women’s race for her third Moab title in four years. She completed 13 laps, two better than any other woman, and rode 193.83 miles while climbing 17,680 vertical feet. Steamboat’s Kris Cannon finished a distant second.

History bucked

As for Tostado, one of the reasons his win was so significant was because of his history in Moab. Two years ago, while leading on the final lap of the monsoon-shortened race, he took a wrong turn down a washed-out gully in the black night and had to hike out. As he hiked, Nat Ross passed him for the win.

Last year, Tostado tried to compete only 20 days after finishing another 24-hour race, and he never had a chance. He pulled out after eight hours, feeling like he’d already ridden 24, and ended up dead last in the field of 50.

All of which led him to place a premium on this year’s race. Leading the USA Cycling ultra-endurance series standings, Tostado opted to forgo the final race in that series and concentrate on Moab instead.

It worked out financially, as he took home $3,500 for winning, in addition to a $1,000 bonus from one of his sponsors, Boulder-based Bach Builders.

The cash, however, was not nearly as important as what the season-ending victory represented. In Eatough and Juarez, Tostado must contend with Trek- and Cannondale-sponsored professionals, respectively, who enjoy factory support.

Eatough, in particular, benefits from a substantial support crew that flies to his races and handles every detail.

Tostado, in comparison, relied on two old Breckenridge ski buddies who drove out to provide technical support — longtime mechanics Dan Monaco and Gaul — as well as five other friends who manned his tent. As compensation, Tostado said he is going to treat them all to a night of sushi.

And then he will begin to focus on next year, when he will enter with an updated mindset and goal, thanks to the defining performance he left behind in Utah.

“To win one big race is great, but to be a champion like Chris,” he said of Eatough, “you’ve got to do it year after year.”

He smiled.

“That’s kind of my new motivation.”