I won the Solo Championship of 12 Hours of Humboldt

Saturday I did my first ever 12 hour solo endurance race. My first race ever was a endurance race, the 24 hours of Moab, but as a 4 man team and it was the infamous flash flood year where they cancelled the race in the middle of the night. I had some friends who were going to do it but cancelled about a week before the race, but I was already too excited to bail so I signed up for the race just two days before it anyway. So my first long race had less than ideal situations. I had no support crew. It's a 5 hour drive, and I had to work the day before. Lastly I had no idea what I was doing. Ever the optimist I didn't care, I was excited, and looked forward to it being a learning experience.

I bought a bunch of random food and packed the car Thursday night and went to work Friday morning. I left Sacramento at 5pm and arrived in Arcata, Ca about 11pm. I found the race site then parked down the street and slept in the back of the car. I slept horribly and had mosquitoes visit in the night.

I woke up around 6am and went to the race site. Started talking to other early risers and made some friends who in the end saved my day. Deanna, whose husband, Jason, was racing on a two person team with his buddy Gavin, volunteered to help feed and water me throughout the race. I was also helped by the wife of another rider. The two of them are the reason I won. Another example of how amazing the mountain bike community is. So I set up my EZup, bike stand and tools, then laid out my food. What do you eat during a 12 hour race? I have no idea so I brought everything. Of course I had Gu, Clif Blocks, Nectar bars. But I also brought chocolate donuts, bagels, PB&J, turkey, bananas, clementines, and trail mix. I knew I needed to eat about every 45 minutes, no more then 300 calories but no less then 150. I also put down a bottle of water every lap. Some bottles were Perpetuem or HEED. I also took endurolyte capsules every hour or so. Nutrition is super important and I knew I had to keep eating and drinking even when chewing seemed a chore.

The race is 8am to 8pm and you have to finish your last lap by 8pm. The course is 7.6 miles with 1,600 feet of climbing. We rolled out the start with the race organizer Vic. He bailed as soon as we hit a head wall of a climb. I stayed out front and just rode fast. I didn't ride very conservatively. I rode my first three laps at about a 40 minute pace, then slowed down to about a 50 minute pace for the next 4 or 5 laps. The course was beautiful, nothing really technical. The trails were smooth, but a lot of quick turns and switchbacks. There was a lot of climbing, most of it on fire roads, but always followed by amazing single track though redwood forests. Tinker Juarez talks about this as one of his favorite courses.

After about 6 hours of riding this amazing course I came by my tent and actually stopped. Deanna gave me some food and told me I was in 4th place overall. I was like cool! I asked her if anyone in my class was ahead of me. She said no, only teams were ahead of me, I was in first place overall the solo riders!!! I was stoked, and immediately got on my bike to defend my lead. I did have a couple of slow laps, and it became hard to eat real food. I did realize that clementines tasted like magic! It was awesome.

My climbing definitely slowed as the day went by, but the other riders out there were encouraging. There was a guy on a unicycle doing it solo and it was awesome. He was definitely the races most popular guy. All the riders were very supportive, every time I rode through the pits people cheered, it was a great time. I thought I might be able to get in 14 laps but came up a little short and did 13 laps, 99 miles, 21,000 feet of climbing in 11 hours 18 minutes. This put me as the fastest solo rider at the race by about 30 minutes and I was only beat by 4 teams!

Overall it was awesome experience, I have tons of stories from this race. It was also a great realization that I'm apparently good at these endurance races. This win caught me by surprise and is the one I'm most proud of so far this year.

GT Demo Tour in California

Stop by and try out one of GT's 2010 Zaskar, Marathon or Force carbon bikes. Everyone who tries a bike gets some SWAG. That's right, we are giving you stuff just to ride our bikes! Don't forget to bring a helmet, shoes, pedals and some ID. Anyone under 18 needs to bring a parent as well so they can sign your life away.

August 30
Consumer Demo Day
Nisene Marks Parking lot (Behind the Aptos Post Office)
500 Cathedral Dr
Aptos, CA 95003

This is just annouced so isn't on the calendar on the GT Demo Team website, but info and other dates are at this site- http://www.experiencegt.com/index.html

First Place at Howell Mountain Challenge Mountain Bike Race!!

I woke up early this morning to make the two hour drive to Napa Valley. I drove past a lot of the wineries I visited with my Mom a couple months ago. Took a right after St Helena and headed up the mountains on the east side of the Valley. I got to the course early, turns out Dean Meyer, another GT rider was also there to race. We set up both our tents and I went to warm up on the course. I had just enough time to get in a lap, which is 10 miles. This could have turned out to be a mistake because the course had a lot more climbing than I thought and was forced to work a little too hard for a warm up.

I raced in cat2 19-34 class. We did two 10 miles laps. There was a lot of us at the start, and one thing about mountain bike racing is you don't want to get caught behind the pack once the singletrack starts. The start was uphill off the line on pavement and then narrowed into a dirt path. I made sure I was lined up at the front on the start line and then hammered up the hill and reached the singletrack first. I could feel some lactic acid build up from this effort making me nervous about my extra long warm up. I got passed by someone in a different age group but kept my own pace. The group stayed behind me till we hit some uphill singletrack switchbacks in the first 1/3 of the first lap and then I left them and never saw anyone from my class again. (Podium pic taken a little late, no worries Rachel)

The course was amazing. Lots of singletrack with switchbacks both uphill and down and some double track flats or slight downhills to motor down. Cool little tech sections were scattered about too. The course threw about half a dozen tough climbs at you that were just long enough to hate them... a lot, glad I'm not Cat 1 like Dean who had to race three laps. One of which had to be walked it was so steep and loose. Also at the end of the laps was a huge set of rocky rollers with the crest and trough of all three of them being about a story and half tall deep and both sides being super steep. It was a course that changed terrain quickly and you had to look ahead to make sure you were in the right gear. The other plus was it was on a college campus and they opened the showers for us, which was nice after the dusty hot ride we had, thankfully most of the course was shaded!

Riding the last half of the first lap and beginning of second lap was lonely and its tough to push yourself and stay focused sometimes when your riding alone. It was nice to start catching some of the slower Cat 1 guys it makes you ride faster when you have someone to catch. On the last long climb before the end of the last lap there was a young kid laying on the side of the trail with a bunch of other riders. He didn't look like he crashed but instead heat exhaustion or heat stroke. We could hear emergency services coming up the fire road, one of which almost got stuck on those rocky rollers I described.

I took the turn off for the finish line and rode around the track through the finish line arms up in the air. I have been working on my climbing and this race tested both that and my endurance. I have a lot more work still but I know I can get better. Overall it was one of the best courses I've ever ridden, it was a great course for the carbon hardtail climbing machine that is the Zaskar.

In the picture below is Dean, in his GT shirt, Chris, in green who took second in his class, and I've done some road races with, and Justin, a young kid racing his first race. Justin picked a tough course to make his first race. He was worried about walking parts of the course and riding with the other riders. But he finished! which was a great feat for him. He was tired but enjoyed himself, who knows this kids may get addicted like the rest of us and come back three or four years from now and destroy us all on the race course. Keep riding Justin, cause mountain bike racing is fun!

Auburn Trifecta - Make sure you're prepared when you divert down a mystery trail

I got out for a nice long ride yesterday. I had the day off and I packed my jersey with food and carried three water bottles. It's nice to do one extra long ride a week. I parked at the trail head of the Stagecoach trail. I rode that down to the confluence and then I started the Clementine Loop and climbed up. Once at the top, instead of finishing the Clementine Loop, I got on the connector trail and hooked up with the Forresthill Divide Loop. Once I finished that entire loop, which is one of my favorite rides by itself, I went down the rest of the Clementine Loop. This would be a lot more fun on a big travel bike with all the jumps that have been built there. Once at the bottom of the confluence again I climbed up stagecoach but went up the super steep section just under the Forresthill Bridge. It was so steep I had to kiss my handlebars to keep from doing a wheelie and falling over backwards. then I hooked up with the Mossy Oak trail which brought me back to Stagecoach. Then I got on the Manzanita trail and I must have missed a turn and ended up further away from my car at some ranger station and had to ride up the road to get back to my car. So my extra long ride full of climbs become even longer with more climbing. But I made it back to my car before I was too delirious. All these trails can be found on motionbased.com or most NorCal mountain bike guide books.

So lesson learned, don't take mystery trail unless you have time & water for a possible adventure. Also make sure Burt Reynolds is around with a bow just in case you hear some banjo pickin'

Timpani Crit- Let's Keep the Rubber Side Down

Today I woke up and drove two hours to Santa Clara for my first Cat 4 crit. It was definitely a learning experience. Cat 5 crits are usually limited to 50 riders, Cat 4 is usually 100 and I would say there was about 70ish there. So it was a big group that would stay together through this non-technical course of four corners. I was going to hang back and see how things went. It was horrible, the group was going into turns on the inside and pushing way outside on the exit instead of a outside-inside-outside line. This was causing major slow downs and pressing people way outside at every turn so crashes were inevitable. The first crash came on the outside of the first turn I heard it behind me. After three or four laps and they had to neutralized the race, basically make us cruise slowly around the course, while the biggest fire truck ever responded to one of the down riders from that first crash. It was so bad they actually stopped us entirely after 4 or 5 neutral laps. After the paramedics left with the rider they were able to re-open the course and start the race with the "9" lap to go card up.

After one lap around they rang the prime bell, I bridged up to the front easily and thought I'd go for it, but nobody was really acting like it was a prime lap. I found myself all the way in the front at the last turn with nobody being aggressive at all so I thought maybe the bell was from a fan on the side of the road and this wasn't a prime lap, that is when two guys sprinted by and I felt like an idiot.

Then half way though the second to last lap and tire blew up two or three riders behind me and you could hear somebody go down hard. With only one lap to go they couldn't stop the race. I got up into the front 15 and was looking good when on the backside straightway I mis-shifted and lost my position. Also where people were sketchy in Cat 5 due to inexperience it seemed like people in Cat 4 are sketchy with overconfidence. When I was trying to bridge back to the front people were shoving themselves into places where there wasn't room. I guess I'm going to have to get used to more shoulder bumping in the final turns that didn't happen in Cat 5. Sitting in an OK position before the final turn leading into the finish line two riders went down right in front of me. I slammed my brakes, went left, missing them and waited for someone to crash into me but it didn't come. But at almost a complete stop people went by around me and any chance of a decent finish was gone.

It was a success to stay rubber side down at this race. I am proud at how comfortable I was with the large group, and could easily bridge back up if I wanted. But I will have to get used to a fast and crowded finishing lap if i want to place. I am excited to be racing on dirt next week at Howell Mountain Challenge, if you crash mountain biking it's usually your own fault and pavement is not involved and mountain bike racing is way more fun!