Catalina Gran Fondo

The Catalina Gran Fondo really is a cool event.  50 miles of awesome Pacific Ocean views with 650 mountain biking friends.  The harbor town of Avalon is a great place to hang out and relax, and the ride is one of the only ways to see the more remote parts of the island (including the buffalo herd).  8,000 feet of climbing and triple digit temperatures on the inland part of the route also make it a really tough event.  Tinker was riding amazing and pulled away from the rest of us early on, never to be seen again.  I was feeling totally comfortable in the chase group racing for 2nd until about 45 minutes to go when the heat pretty quickly got the better of me and I had to back way off.  I still rolled across the finish line to Descanso Beach in a solid place, but was pretty frustrated after rolling through with the win there last year.  After a quick leg soak in the ocean, amazing Muscle Milk smoothy and seeing some friends come across the line - life was back to good!  

 Getting on the ferry in Long Beach

 Nice spot for registration

 Tim enjoying the views

 Overlooking Avalon

 A little ways up the first climb

 And the tiny trees at the top is where the first climb goes

 The harbor

The finish on the sand at Descanso Beach

The rest of these are by Johnny Muller of Sho-Air / US Cup

Man mountain bike racing is a tough sport!

Mountain bike racing is such a tough sport!  To get anywhere close to the fitness needed to be competitive takes years of hard work, then you need some skills handling the bike and experience with pacing and strategy.  So a winter and spring of great training is only gets you part way to some good race results...

This year I've been riding as well as ever, but don't feel like I've put it together for a great result on race day yet. Vision Quest went really well, but since then the Whiskey 50 and Idyllwild Challenge were tough days on the bike.  Whiskey was a great weekend with my girls and friends, but things fell apart early in the race when I got a flat on the first singletrack while in about 20th place.  I was right where I needed to be early in the race with such a competitive field.  I rode well for a while after getting it fixed but there was no way to get up into the placings I was hoping for.

Idyllwild on the other hand is my favorite race in SoCal and one that I really want to win.  Going into last weekend I had been 2nd or 3rd there 5 times...  This year I rode my best race there yet, beat last years time by a couple full minutes, but other guys were just going faster and I just made the podium in 5th.  I let my focus on the result get the better of me and had a pretty frustrating day when I should have been totally thankful to be fit and healthy riding awesome trails on a beautiful day.  After getting past the frustration it really is cool to stand on the podium with guys like Sid and Tinker.

Thanks to Kathy Burchman for the photo

lots of sweat and tears on that top tube

This week has just been a balance of work and trying to rest up for the Catalina Gran Fondo - a very cool and fun event with 500 mountain biking friends out on Catalina Island.  If you're not going this year, you should definitely CHECK IT OUT for next year...