Leadville 100

Good luck to Don's Team rider Gerry Cody at Leadville. The Leadville 100 is a 100 mile mountain bike race in Leadville, CO. It starts at an elevation of 10,000 feet and reaches a high point of over 12,000 feet. Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis, and Dave Weins are notable racers who have been at Leadville in the past.

This year Weins returns looking for his 7th win. Also scheduled to compete are top pros Tinker Juarez, Manny Prado, Todd Wells, Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, Jeremiah Bishop, and Levi Leipheimer. The ageless legend Ned Overend is also entered as are many of the other top finishers from last year.

Gerry returns for his 2nd Leadville after finishing 25th overall last year (out of over 1200 riders). You can follow Gerry's blog for more in-depth coverage of how he's doing.

http://bikeblood.com/

Fontana Backwards

It was a Wednesday in early March and we went out for our weekly night ride. This particular day was a little longer than usual and I ended up going 30 miles and about 3 hours. Well, at 4am the next morning I woke up with a shortness of breath. I get in with the doctor that afternoon and have some tests done and get an inhaler and some medicine. A few hours later the doctor calls me and says I need to go to the Emergency Room right away. My white blood cell count was more than twice the normal rate. Fast Forward 7 weeks (another ER trip, dozen other doctor trips, and more tests than I've had in my lifetime before now) and it turns out I am allergic to nearly every weed and grass out there and I have some kind of allergy induced asthma.
The last 2 weeks I've finally started to feel much better and have been able to breath almost normally. I started riding 2-3 times a week, but kept things pretty easy. This weekend I thought I'd challenge myself and race at Fontana. The May race typically has a very small turnout so I figured it be a good low-key race. I also decided, just to do something different, I'd race my singlespeed.

So I show up Saturday morning. Everything is setup like it always is and I'm ready for a typical Southridge race (they host a lot of races). Then at registration they announce they're running the course backwards. Backwards??? It took a little while to wrap my head around the idea. I've done well over 10 races there of 3 to 4 laps each, and the course has always gone in the same direction.

Things started off easy enough. Going backwards there's no real climb until you get around to the backside. Things got pretty difficult at this point. Riding up some of that singletrack that is always downhill was a major challenge, especially on a SS. But I have to say that coming down some of the sections we usually have to climb was a nice treat. Here I was racing at Fontana for the 5th time this year and it was like a whole new experience.

One small change.....when we hit the pavement, we quickly turned off and did the big National Climb backwards as well. All classes did this section. This climb was a great addition to the course. It was a very technically challenging. The only disappointment there was coming down the steep fireroad (ordinarily the climb). There was quite a bit of elevation gained there to be wasted on a steep fireroad.

This is a little downhill section of the National Hill

The bottom line - this definitely felt like a tougher course, but with a few possible changes/additions, it could be just as good or even better than running the course the regular way.

The GPS of my first lap - http://connect.garmin.com/activity/33408204

Super D
I didn't do any of the Winter Series Super D races, but I decided to give this one a try. They started at about the highest point on the hill above the DH start, and then mostly followed the backwards XC course. I somehow got entered as a beginner instead of an expert so I was stuck starting towards the end. I was told they'd just put me in the right class after I finished. Wouldn't have been a problem but I was starting behind the beginning women. With only a 30 second gap I caught both of them pretty quick. One was able to let me right by, but I caught the other in a bad section and there was no easy way for me to get around so I had to ride behind her for a bit. My best guess is that cost me 10-15 seconds and I ended up losing the race by only .36 of a second. Oh well.

My SD run - http://connect.garmin.com/activity/33408197


Other Things I heard

Mammoth - Last year the Golden State Final was in Mammoth. So far the schedule this year has said location tbd. They said they're looking to have it at Mammoth again this year, but there's so much snow up there they don't know if it'll all be melted by August!

New Course - Last week there was a fire that burned right up to the backside of the cross country course. Donny said that due to all the clearing of the brush from the fire he plans to cut a new section of trail.

Night Race - I also heard there are plans to possibly have a night race sometime in the fall. I wasn't sure if this was DH and XC or just one and not the other. But it could make for some fun times.

Sea Otter 2010

2010 Sea Otter Results

Gerry Cody
1st - road race, cat 4
1st - crit, cat 4
1st - circuit race, cat 4
3rd - Super D, open 30-39
10th - XC, cat 1 30-34

Lisa Crowe
1st - Super D, open 30+
3rd - XC, cat 1 30-39

US Cup #2 - Bonelli Park

by AL Laframboise

Last weekend was the 2nd round of the US Cup series. Bonelli always offers something for everyone. It's a great venue with lots of grass and a big pit area for vendors, and the course is always awesome. This year the course included relatively short hill climbs, bridge crossings, all-out paved sections and some fast rocky single track decents. It was good fun, even on the single speed.

This year the race attracted some of the best riders in the nation. On Saturday, Max Plaxton (from B.C.) won the Men's Pro XC, and Kelly Emmitt won the Women's Pro XC. See results here...

As for the team, we all had a successful weekend as well. Here's the stats:

Lisa - 2nd XC
Jeff - 2nd SuperD, 14th XC
AL - 2nd XC
Gerry - 4th XC

Team photos here...

See you at Fontana Mar 27!

Sagebrush Safari - US Cup #1

(posted by Jeff Stanners)

This weekend was the opening race of the US Cup West Coast series. Sagebrush Safari, about 45 minutes east of San Diego is one of the best courses around. Only trouble is the course doesn't hold rain real well. And it rained almost non-stop on Saturday, the day before the race. Race day it was beautiful out though. The dirt wasn't actually too bad, just a little slushy, but with lots and lots of puddles to cross.

We had just 3 riders from Don's out for this one. Gerry, Lisa, and I all made the trip to race.

Full Results - http://teambigbear.com/results.php



Gerry - picture in cyclingnews.com
2nd place, cat 1 30-34
Gerry opened his season up in a strong fashion. Finished 2nd in a very strong field, just a minute and a half behind Ty Kady, who has numerous semipro wins on his resume. For more on Gerry's race check out his blog at http://bikeblood.com.


Jeff
12th place, cat 2 35-39
My race didn't go quite like I had planned. It started off well enough. I got out with the front of the pack on the flat road section, then hung in the top 8 through the climb while a few broke away. I was sitting in 7th when we hit the fast fireroad descent on the back and I flatted. It was my first race with a tubeless setup and the sidewalls on my tires must have been too thin and a sidewall ripped open. I put a tube in and kept the tire pressure real low to try to keep the tube from blowing through the hole in the sidewall. I made up a little ground that I lost but not much. Ended up finishing 12th in a field of 21.



Lisa
1st place, cat 1 30-39
Lisa's first race in her new age group. It's always disappointing when there's only 2 competitors in your class, but Lisa made the most of the situation and got the win.

The next US Cup race will be at Bonelli. It's part of the Pro Triple Crown series so there will be some top talent out for it. Pros race XC on Saturday. Everyone else races Sunday, with the pros also racing short track and super D on Sunday.

For more info: http://uscup.net/

12hrs of Temecula: Heaven after Hell

After six days of torrential downpouring across California, none of us could believe how the awesome this race was.

Weather

Everyone on the team was preparing for the worst: multiple pairs of gear each, mud guards, wash clothes, tarps, warm clothes, rain ponchos... We all thought it was going to be a disaster. But low and behold, when we arrived, sure, it was cold (35 ish in the morning), but the sun was shining and it was an awesome day. I road half the day with short sleeves and the other with a long sleeve jersey and I was fine. That's how nice it was!

Course

As for the course itself, I'm not sure how he did it, but "magic" Jason managed to navigate us around all of the washouts and river flows to put together one of the best courses we've raced on yet. The course was little soft at first but very soon after, it turned into a set of very fast and tacky single tracks. It was fun.

Bike Set-up

I did take some time to set-up my bike for this type of race, but I admit, not as much as I should have. I managed to install a front mud deflector, heavy duty chain, extra thick lube on all moving parts etc..., but I was running old tires and a few other things needed to be replaced.

Race

On the starting line, Tinker I and were talking about how many time we went back and forth on whether or not we should do this race, but we were both glad we stuck with it and showed up.

My race was uncharacteristically full of mechanicals and drama. On the start line I couldn't get my bike in the big ring so I road just in the middle ring. I also had two flats on the first lap and my derailleur kept acting up from that point on. I spent most of the race trying to make up the lost time.

Special thanks to the other Don's guys on team (and the couple beside us) for helping me out as I didn't have any formal support this race.

Bike Swap

Late in the in race I got the green light from Cannondale to use their test bike. It was only my second real ride on the Scalpel, but I couldn't believe how awesome this bike was. It was a few pounds lighter than the FRO and it was like pedalling air. I couldn't believe how well the single fork handled. This was a great way to finish the race; I only wish I would have been on it earlier.

I'm hoping to finish the rest of the season on one of their new Flash 29ers! Check them out here.
Final Results

The 3-person Don's team had a great day as well. They finished 1st and managed to crank out 14 hard earned laps.

As for me, I managed 10 laps, 2nd in the Pro Solo class, but I definitely feel like I should have got a few more laps in. The good thing is that there's always next time (although, we don't know exactly where that will be)... :)

Oh ya, and congrats to the little guy beside us (14yrs old) that won his first 12hr solo race! He did awesome.

So cudos for everyone who persevered and came out to race. And special thanks to Jason and his staff for staying up to 12AM the night before getting the course ready. So contrary to what we were all thinking, it turned out to be a great day.

Feel free to share any thoughts or photos!

See you next time.
AL

Featured Rider - Margaret Gregory

As a new Don's Team member, Margaret won almost all of her races in 2009 as a Cat 1 Downhill Racer. Here is a little more about her:

Name: Margaret Gregory
Age: 27
From: Redlands, CA
Started Racing: November 2008

1. When did you start xc and dh riding? I started riding around 3 years ago. I got on a DH bike for the first time in June 2008 in Whistler. Fell in love.
2. What is your favorite thing about racing? Progression. Races push me to try things that I would not normally try. In a race, if it’s on the course, you have to do it, there’s no getting off and walking around features.
3. Favorite race? Blast the Mass in Snowmass CO. This was my second ‘true downhill’ course; rough and fast and with some tough features that pushed my riding skills.
4. Any suggestions for other women trying to get into the sport? Don’t be intimidated by the guys. In downhill racing, where the ratio of men to women is about 50:1, it’s easy to get scared off by the hoards of men on the race courses. Don’t be! Most men just think it’s awesome that you’re riding.
6. What is the secret to your success? My success has been an utter surprise to me, so I’m not really sure what the secret is! I think it just comes down to the fact that I really love riding my bike.
7. How do you train? This fall I started really training for the first time. My plan for this year involves a lot of anaerobic work and upper body strengthening. In the past I’ve always just ridden my bike, but I’m trying to be more focused and structured with my training this year.


8. Who is your idol or role model? Right now I’m really into learning to jump, so my current idols are gals who fly like Clair Buchar, Stephanie Nychka, Katie Hayes and Tammy Donahugh, to name only a few.
9. Where do you want to go with the sport? My current goal is to get approved to race pro. Racing against the top girls would be amazing. My goal for 2010 if I can manage it financially is to hit all the races on the Gravity Calendar.

10. Favorite place to ride? I’ve ridden in too many awesome places over the past year to decide… but I do have a special place in my heart for the Santa Ana River trail on my XC bike since that is where I learned to ride and it never ceases to put a smile on my face.

Read more about Margaret's adventures on her own blog.