When Sarah Max and Heather Jackson begin their 100-mile mountain bike race 5:30 a.m. Saturday at the Athletic Club of Bend, neither could have imagined how close the race would be between the two Bend residents.

The 48-year-old Max and the 39-year-old Jackson were separated by just 30 seconds after 80 of the 100 miles in the High Cascade 100 mountain bike race. For the next 20 miles, 30 seconds was about as far apart as the two would get.

Then came the agreement between the leaders of the pack.

“I said, ‘I don’t want to sprint against you,’” Max said. “And she said, ‘I don’t want to sprint against you either.’”

So Max (competing for team Ibis/Argonaut) and Jackson (competing for team Canyon Bikes) both crossed the finish line together, winning the women’s open in 8 hours and 27.40 minutes.

It was the first time that either of them had competed in the High Cascades 100. The duo pushed each other to finish 22 minutes ahead of the rest of the women’s field.

“Distance and endurance-wise I felt fine,” Jackson said. “It was good to have someone to battle because then it made you push the whole day.”

Saturday was the 15th running of the High Cascade 100 — a race that was officially measured at 98.4 miles, with 9,400 vertical feet of elevation gained. The race started and ended at the Athletic Club of Bend. The course followed mountain biking trails in the Deschutes National Forest.

Nearly 350 riders, ranging in age from 14 to 61, took on the challenging course with temperatures above 90 degrees by the early afternoon.

The course slightly changes from year to year.

“This one was pretty tough,” said competitor Kyle Trudeau, 30, from Tucson, Arizona. “The ground seemed like it was a little more soft and it was harder to pedal through. Plus, there were more technical features this year than in years past. But it is always a super fun course.”

Trudeau was the overall winner of Cascade 100 for the third year in a row. He finished the race in 6:43.01 hours.

Trudeau, whose average speed during the race was 14.6 miles per hour, finished nearly 25 minutes ahead of the second-place finisher, Patrick Collins. Six riders were together through the first quarter of the race, and it was around that time that Trudeau began to separate from the pack.

“Around mile 25, I didn’t have someone on my wheel,” Trudeau said. “But I was probably within eye-sight of a couple guys until like mile 30-35 or so.”

Three Central Oregon mountain bikers finished in the top-five overall. Redmond’s Landon Farnworth (7:08.39) finished third, Bend’s Eric Lagerstrom (7:14.57) and Colin Kelly (7:25.11) finished fourth and fifth. Joining Max and Jackson in the top five of the women’s open was Laurie Langford (9:36.40), who finished fifth.