I am just coming down off my cyclist's high from the weekend here in Nevada County. Anyone else feeling this way? First of all, kudos to all that helped put on one of the numerous bike events this weekend. Of course the Tour was a huge deal, but our county was brimming over with cyclists, both road and mountain.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to forego the Ashland Spring Thaw in favor of doing the local Loma Rica race to help benefit YBONC. Let me put it this way...it is like Pittsburgh Mine road (steep), an NID ditch (smooth), and a dual slalom course had some bizarre love triangle and VOILA!, the Loma Rica course was born.
The course goes something like this...flat start, right turn (ball bearing rocks) onto first climb (a little choppy and fairly steep ≈15%), twisty turny banked fun single-track downhill, slight climb, twisty turny fun single-track through the trees, longer very steep climb (up to 36% I've heard), NID ditch, twisty turny banked kinda-technical fun single-track through the trees, onto the old horse track, past the ranch, and back to the start-finish...yeah baby! Holy-pick-the-bugs-and-dirt-outa-my-teeth Batman! 5 miles of pure pain/fun. It is one of those courses that your heart-rate never comes down because you pedal out of each corner...gotta go fast. ;)
The race went something like this...start, right turn into climb 1, Alex Smith (cat 1) and Katerina Nash (uber-amazing World Cup Pro woman) go flying by me on the first climb. I close the gap on the downhill, but they still pull away. Then Chris Convis (one of my former Union Hill mountain bike club members) passes me on the long steep climb..."cotton pickin whipper snapper"! But then I close the gap on the downhill and he crashes in front of me and I pass..."oh, I guess he is a good kid after all". By that time, I had had so much fun on the downhill, that all I wanted to do was get to the top again! The rest of the race saw no more passes for me...Katerina and Alex slowly put time on me each lap, but I was ok with that.
The bottom line was this, I felt ok, won my class, and had so much fricken fun! So much fun, in fact, that I talked Chris Thibodeau into riding the course a couple more times with me after the race. Then I put in another hour spinning on the way home. All in all, about 41/2 hours worth...beautiful.
I see a long and loving relationship with them thar trails. ; )
Cheers,
Chuck
