True Grit Epic

Surprise! A blog entry! Now that no one is following this, I can keep using it as my activity journal :)  When I look back at my old posts, I'm really glad I kept this blog. It brings back a lot of memories.

The True Grit Epic really got started about the time I was stopping racing, so I have never done it, but it has always seemed like it would be a fun race.

So this year I finally had time. I drove down Friday evening and slept in the back of the truck in the Green Valley area. I would like to have taken some of the kids or Kim, but they all had stuff going on here at home.

About the time I was falling asleep some kids (I suppose) came racing down into the dirt spinning donuts in their little car with a modified-to-be-loud exhaust. It was funny to watch, and would have been annoying but they didn't stick around long.

During the night a big wind storm came through, followed by rain on and off throughout the night. I was glad I wasn't in a tent because it would have gotten all muddy and wet, which would have made drying an packing the tent a big pain.

In the morning I drove over the Santa Clara city center (where the race started) early so I could watch Reed start the 100 mile race, which started about 90 minutes before the 50 (which I did). Actually, they call them 50 and 100, but they are more like 45 and 90, but anyhow...

While I was waiting at the truck for our race, a guy came over and asked if I had a water bottle because his friend has lost his and didn't have one small enough for his full-suspension frame. So I gave him a bottle I have had in my truck for several months. It was even pretty clean since it only had water in it. He came back a bit later and said, "Well, he found his bottle, so you can have this back. Thanks, though!" So he handed me the bottle, and it turned out his friend was Tinker Juarez. He had signed a little thank-you on my bottle - cool! I was thinking about Tinker afterwards. He is 11 years older than I am and still super fast. He has been racing MTB since 1986 - I doubt anyone has raced as many races at his level of fitness as he has. I have raced against him several times, but he has always been much faster than me. I still beat him a couple times though - he seems to get lost a lot. Not so this time - he took 2nd place. Honestly when someone is psyched because they beat a 55 year old for the overall win, it tells you something about the 55 year old!

So my race went fine. I felt a little flat for the first half hour, but still pretty good. We had fun riding the Green Valley course. The next section is pretty technical and really rocky (I think it is called Zen). It was really fun. I expected my knee would be sore, and it was, but my back and hands were super-sore too. I was also struggling to keep up on the technical sections. I guess the years off and riding in Corner Canyon all the time has left me rusty.

The next sections were a climb over to the Bear-claw Poppy area, though Bear-claw, then up to Stucki Springs. I was feeling good in this section, climbing well, and passed a few people including Karen, the woman that won the women's race. The descent from Stucki was super fast and tons of fun.

I don't know the names of the next two loops (I looked them up - Rim Runner and Barrel), but they were fun trails. I followed a guy that was riding well, and I would catch up to him, then lose ground through a techy section, then catch back up. On the last section I caught him even got past briefly, but he passed me on the last steep short climb and kept that lead to the end. Honestly, I was making a lot of technical mistakes at that point. I don't know, just couldn't find the DH groove.
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I finished feeling pretty strong on the road and am happy with the whole thing. I rode my best, had a great time, and have a few things to work on. The course is super-fun, and weather and riding conditions were perfect.

I drove back after the race and was home by 6, which was nice. I took the 3 younger girls to Astro for dinner, and felt great about my day.