Bike For Bender - Hell Ride 2010 is in the books...

Over 50 riders came out this year to participate in our annual SART Hell Ride. This was round #2 of the Bike For Bender series. Round #3 is Nov 13th at the 12hrs of Temecula. Here's a quick recap of what happened.

Be sure to check out the rest of the photos here and on facebook.


Special thanks to Ellsworth for jumping on board to support our event. They brought some super cool demo bikes which people snatched up quickly in the parking lot. They also had a trailer and rig to help shuttle up the hill.


Ellsworth had some cool new bikes in the 2010 lineup, so I decided to try out one of their 29er Evolution trail bikes. I was behind at the beginning (no names mentioned) and I was supposed to be leading the first group, so I had to sprint the first two sections of the SART to catch up. All I can say is that I put that thing through it's paces and it came out shining. It was super light and a blast to ride all day.

This year the conditions were the best ever. The rain made the single track tacky and super fast. The entire group were flying the whole way. Here's our first break at Angeles Oaks where we had food, water and snacks set up.

Every year we always have an interesting bike and/or rider that shows up. This year's winner was veteran rider who came out with a bike that he had apparently pulled out of a trash bin and built himself. It had fluorescent forks, a spray bottle (to cool off), flat DH pedals and a kick-stand. He wore military trousers and a MX helmet the whole way. We simply couldn't believe our eyes! He ended up bailing at the half-way point, but hats off for riding that beast that far.

Here's a shot after some pretty hairy single track after Thomas Hunting Grounds.

Here's another shot of the lead group on the backside of Morton's peak.

By mid-afternoon, everyone made it back to Uncle Howeys safe and sound for beer, pizza and the raffle.

We also had a few "Super" Hell Ride folks that showed up as well. These guys actually road their bikes from the top of Sugarloaf Mountain in Big Bear all the way down to Redlands. I did this ride last year and it's appropriately named "El Grande". You can read about it here. Good job!

Huge thanks to all of our sponsors (Don's, Ellsworth, Bear Valley Bikes, VSI and the Path) for donating the raffle prizes. We had everything from tires, helmets and handle bars to gift certificates and tee-shirts. And special thanks to all of the riders for their generous donations.

All of the funds will go to Rob and his family.

At the end of the day, there were lots of stories and big smiles and that's what makes this ride worth coming out for every year. We missed Rob big time and hope to see him back in action next year.

The last Bike For Bender round is Nov 13th at the 12hrs of Temecula. Here we'll have the draw for the Tazer frame and the Ellsworth wheels. You can enter this class for $50 solo and $100 for teams. Every person who enters the "Bike For Bender" category will also get a free ticket for the Tazer and wheels draw. All proceeds go to Rob and his family.

Don't forget, you can only sign-up on site for the Bike For Bender category!

See you at the 12hr.

AL

Bike For Bender - Hell Ride 2010

Well folks, it's time for round 2 of the Bike For Bender series - Hell ride 2010, Oct 23rd 8:00 AM.

If you haven't been on this ride before, here's a quick overview:

1. We shuttle from Redlands up the 38 to South Fork bright and early.
2. And then we follow the SART 36 miles back to Redlands.

The SART is one of the most fun and challenging single tracks in SoCal. Although there's thousands of feet of descending, there's also a few thousand feet of climbing, and there are some seriously dicy sections, so don't think that this is an easy ride! We'll group everyone into a fast and an intermediate group just like last time.

We highly recommend tubeless tires. There are stream crossings, rocks and 30+ mph descents, so you will get a flat!

Last year we had about 50 riders (many of them STR folks) and this year we are predicting we'll have over 60 riders. That means this will be the largest Hell Ride ever! And with the recent rain, the conditions will be epic.

As always, we'll meet at Uncle Howeys afterwards for beer, pizza and the raffle. We already have great prizes lined up from VSI, Intense Tires, Don's Bikes, Bear Valley Bikes and Ellsworth.

Speaking of Ellsworth, there's talk they will be coming out to support the ride by bringing demo bikes, trucks and trailers! Stay tuned for updates on this.

All proceeds from the raffle go directly to Rob for his fight against cancer.

For more details about the ride and to sign up, visit the ride page. Don't forget to sign up for a shuttle or plan to get dropped off up the hill!

So if you are up for a good ride, with good people and for a great cause, come on out and join us!

AL

SOCAL FAT TIRE EPIC 50 – Part I: Race Report

Huge thanks to Jason Ranoa for putting on a great event!

We don’t have many 50 millers in SoCal so we all appreciated seeing this on the calendar once again this year. If you were wondering what this race was like, or if you’ve been contemplating trying a marathon, here’s a quick review that might help you decide.

Part I covers the course and Part II covers what happened.

Getting out there
If you haven’t tried a marathon before, all I can say is that you get your money’s worth out of these races! It takes a little more nutrition planning and strategizing (write-up coming soon), but any of you XC or weekend warriors that like to crank out a few extra miles can surely get it done! If you are unsure about doing it solo, then one option is to sign up for the two-person category and just knock out 25 miles each.

Weather
The forecast leading up to the race was dismal. Thunderstorms were eminent and the humidity was high. Sure enough, the day of the race it was hot, humid and it even sprinkling at times. You could practically cut the air with a knife.

Course
On the flip side, the rain made for awesome riding conditions. The sand was tacky and the course was in the best shape ever. The ridge lines were fast and the tight single tracks were like downhill slalom courses.

The course was split in two: The 12hr loop and the Vail Lake (east) loop.


The Old
The marathon started out by following most of the 12hr course with a few modifications. All I can say is that it was fast! It started up the “damn” climb and followed mostly double track across to the ridges. From there it zig-zagged through the canyons as usual and then back to the campground. There was one sandy g-out that you had to just power through, but it was totally doable.

In the campground they had a main water station set-up so if you planned for it, you could swap water bottles here and save a little weight for the next section. Support folks were handing-off here as we climbed out of the park. Nice touch.

The New
The second part of the course went out to a brand new area that I’d never seen before. I heard horror stories from last year’s race, but the whole section changed and was greatly improved. That part extended Eastward out of the park across a number of tight ridges with a few short, tough climbs. Most of us had to get off a few times to clear everything, but it wasn’t bad at all. Actually, I think I could have cleared everything if I would have pre-road it. Nonetheless, at that point, it felt good to dismount and stretch the legs a little, so it wasn’t a big deal at all.

After the ridges, there were some super fast (and fun) fireroads and some descents. The course then went into some fast “jedi-like” singletrack as it approached Vail Lake. This was actually my favorite part. A few times I looked over and could see boats and wakeboarders down on the lake and I wished that was me! From there it lead us back past a water station and back through the other campgrounds back to the start mostly on wide double-track and paved roads.

Rough Stats
The east and the west sections combined were roughly 12 miles a piece, so one full loop was 23-24 miles. All of the solo folks ended up doing two loops for a total of about 48 miles. And yes, there was a little bit of climbing and I logged about 5,800 ft when it was all said and done, This is really quite reasonable for a 50 mile race when you compare it to other ones like Vision Quest!

The fastest guys finished in roughly 3:20hrs and the rest of us finished closer to 4:00hrs.

Aid Stations
Jason had a ton of water and aid stations sprinkled around the course. Each station was stocked with water, Heed and electrolytes if needed them. You actually couldn’t go more than 8 miles without running into one. This takes a lot of work and manpower to set-up, but it’s very important to the riders in endurance racing.

This also meant that you could actually carry one bottle if you wanted to and just fill it up at every station around the course (that is if you didn’t mind stopping). Or more importantly, just use the water to cool off every ½ hour as you heated up out there.

What I ended up doing was carrying one bottle for the 12hr loop and swapping it out at the aid station in the campground before heading out the 2nd section. That worked out perfectly.

The course markings were pretty good as well, although I did have a hard time seeing a few of them when we came out onto the pavements sections. I think this is mostly because we hit these sections at pretty high speeds.

Summary
Overall, I was impressed with the new extension to the course and all the work Jason did to make it a safe and fun race. I give it a solid 9/10.

1. The distance, climbing and elevation are all reasonable.
2. You can easily pre-ride the whole course and plan your race strategy beforehand.
3. Use your 12hr knowledge to save energy through those sections.
4. Numerous water stations (well stocked) all around the course.
5. Three pools to choose from and showers for riders after the event.

If you haven’t attempted a marathon before, then if any of these things make sense, then this actually might be a good one to start with.

Think about putting this one on your calendar for next year!

AL

Big Bear Single Track Epic - Thank you!

On a crisp and clear Saturday morning up in Big Bear, about 40 riders gathered to take on the first ever Big Bear Single Track Epic. Nobody really knew what was really in store, but in the end, everyone manged to survive the challenge.

Bike For Bender
This was the first ride of the Bike For Bender series: a set of fundraiser events we are hosting to help our teammate with his fight against cancer. You can learn more here. To our surprise, Rob and his whole family actually showed up to help support the event. They even offered to manage the aid station half-way through the ride, which each and everyone of us appreciated more than gold as we rolled in later in the day!

So at 9:00 AM, we lined up and we were ready to go! Here are some of the highlights of the day.

The Goal
Regardless of the course, 25 miles of up-and-down single track at 7000-8000ft is challenging for any rider. Our goal was to get everyone around the course and back in one piece. The short loop was lead by my fearless wife Katrina along with Russell and Margaret from the Don's team. Jimmy Johnson and the other boys were also lending a helping hand. I lead the more advanced riders on a longer loop, and to face the ultimate challenge - "Bender Mountain".

Section "Unknown"
Both groups started out together and formed a giant peloton as we headed eastward. This area had some of the most challenging and least traveled trails in the area.

It consisted of a short fireroad climb and then transitioned in a tight single track that was a ton of fun. At the top, the short loop riders road down a killer single track towards Bear Mountain and the advanced group went on to take on the mountain.

Bender Mountain
Every good ride has something everyone remembers for one reason or another. For this one, if you were an advanced rider, it was "Bender Mountain". Even though I spent hours raking and preping this part of the course, this proved to be one of the toughest hill climbs in the area.

Keep in mind that these were some of the best riders in SoCal and every single one them had to push or carry their bikes up the hill climb. We all suffered for a short time, but the top offered one of the most spectacular views in the area. We took a quick snapshot by the "B" and descended off the back through a secret canyon trail. Everyone was smiling.


After a unanimous vote, we started the climb across Bear Mountain. This section included a painful set of granny gear climbs or simply pushing your bike up the hills.

By the end, most of the "men", including me, were reduced to "mice". After that, we managed regroup and powered up fireroads to next single track. Our goal was to catch the other group by the water station.

Half-way, well sort of...
When we hit the water station both groups merged. Despite a few flat tires and a few crashes, everyone in the first group was still smiling when we rolled in.


Rob and his family set up the pits in a great spot with lots of shade. They had water, gatorade, oranges and thanks to my wife, an assortment of cookies for everyone to munch on. As usual, Rob was walking around (still smiling) and helping people fix their bikes. Right Cy?

At this point, I could see that everyone was pretty much spent, and it was getting late in the day, so we brainstormed and decided to shorten the course. We came up with a plan that allowed us to get some of the best trails in but still get back at a reasonable hour. So in just a few minutes, we got everyone together and were off.

Here's a quick snapshot of us coming off some more secret trails on way back to Town Trail. Only a couple of riders actually cleared the whole decent.

The Raffle
So after over 4.5hrs of slugging it out, everybody made it back to the restaurant just fine. Our volunteers had everything set up and we gathered under the patio at the back of La Montanas.

It was time for the raffle!

Thanks to our sponsors, we had over $1000 of prizes to give away including everything from a set of 29er American Classic rims, helmets to $25 and $50 gift certificates. So between a barage of beer drinking and burrito eating, we managed to get our tickets sorted and the raffle began.
In the end, almost everyone walked away with something. It was awesome!





A great ride, for a great cause...
At the end of the day, the whole event was huge success. Like we said at the beginning, the course would definitely be challenging, and it was, but everybody made it back in one piece and everyone seemed to have a great time. That was the whole plan. The interesting thing is that nobody actually finished the whole course, so the good news is that there's still miles of untapped single track out there for next year...

The Challenge
Although we all faced a challenge today, it's nothing like the real challenge Rob and his family are facing right now. Through every one's support and generosity, we were able to raise over $1400 at this event. That was totally awesome and we thank everyone. Rob's dad also thanked us (and everyone that came out) over and over again. At the end of the day, it brought tears to every one's eyes.

So on behalf of the entire Don's Team, we'd like to extend a huge thanks to the whole mountain biking community for making this such a success. Big thanks go out to all of the sponsors, volunteers, and special thanks to Rob and his family for coming out and supporting us.

AL

If you missed this one, be sure to mark your calendar for the other Bike For Bender events coming up! The next big one is the SART Hell Ride - 30+ miles of single track from South Fork to Redlands!

1. Big Bear Single Track Epic
2. Orange County Adventure (TBA)
3. SART Hell Ride - Oct 23
4. 12hrs of Temecula - Nov 13 (sign-up in the "Bike For Bender" category at the race)

PS - If you are wondering what happened to the Intense Tazer frame, we decided to give people more time to buy tickets and extend the raffle across all events. The final draw will take place Nov 13th at the 12hrs of Temecula. If you can't make the event, the winning ticket number will be posted online and valid for 7 days.

8hrs Solo at the 24hrs of Adrenalin

Well, all I can say is this was one of the toughest races I've done in a while. Even though I'm no newcomer to endurance races, I always seem to learn something new. Here's what I learned this time.

Pre-race Tire Issues
Since Kenda just happened to have the tire I use on my 29er, I decided to swap my rear and go tubeless. Naively, I agreed to try Jimmy's secret concoction of Slime and Stans mix. The tire beaded easily but after 3 tries airing to 40 lbs, it just wouldn't hold air for more that a few minutes. 10 min before the race I decided to swap everything back and go with a tube in the rear. Not things you should be doing before a race!

Minutes before the race, we though we heard a starting gun and I thought the race started. When I looked over, Jimmy was holding his rim in one hand and his tire in the other. His tire had essentially exploded off his rim and stans/slime were everywhere. Nice! He ran back to the pits where Rob and his dad dialed him in with a tube. Not sure what happened there, but nonetheless, he had a major tire problem too just minutes before the race.

Lesson 1: Don't touch your tire configuration the day of the race.

Lesson 2: Don't trust someone else's voodoo recommendations without testing them first!

Start
After all that, I barely arrived in time for the start and had a terrible gate pick for the run. After a 20th place start, I pushed hard on the first lap to get into 3rd overall. 3/4 of the way through I blew my rear tire - yes, the one I was messing with earlier!

Lesson 3: Lesson 1.

Tire Swap
In an avalanche of sweat and panting like a race horse, I managed to get the tube swapped and I was off again. At this point I had waisted tones of energy and lost a tone of time. Dozens of riders passed me, so I was back to square one again. Oh ya, I also used the only two CO2 canisters I had, so I had to ride the rest of the race with a big old manual pump in my pocket.

Lesson 4: Don't be a cheap ass; bring an extra Big Air!

Pacing
At this point I was riding at more of a XC pace than an endurance pace. Not good as it was blistering hot and everyone was suffering badly. Either way, by the third lap I had caught back up and was in first place again. The problem was I was pretty much spent and I had 5 more hours to go!

Lesson 5: It's an 8hr endurance race idiot. It's better to pace yourself and make up time over 8 laps instead of 3!

Nutrition
As the race went on, racers were dropping like flies due to the high temperatures and relentless climbs on the course. I started to cramp up badly behind the knees and in the inside of my hams. I managed to keep turning the pedals and spin through it, but I was in serious pain. If you've ever pedaled through a cramp, you know what I'm talking about!

At that point, I knew I was seriously dehydrated, so I totally ditched the nutrition drinks and switched to electrolytes. From lap 5-8, I basically drank nothing but electrolytes to try to replenish what I lost earlier in the day; something I've never tried before. I also grabbed a few orange slices to get some fast sugar energy. It took about an hour, but my muscles finally started to un-cramp and I was back in action. Plus, the temperature dropped 30 degrees so everyone was feeling better at this point.

Lesson 6: Nutrition drinks are essential, but without electrolytes, your body will still cramp!

Beer Lap
On my last lap, I was about 30 min ahead of the next guy, so I decided to have some fun. I stopped at this spot on the course where some spectators (more like hard core partiers) had been cheering for us all day. These guys had a couch, ez-up and a full bar. You had to see it to believe it. They offered me a beer and I gladly accepted. We shot the shit for a few minutes, I thanked them for their hard-core fan support, chugged my beer, and headed off in to the finish.

I can honestly say that was the first time I've ever done something like that during a race, but after surviving that brutal day, I thought I deserved it.

Lesson 7: As Paul Romero would say, "Ride Fast, Take Chances...". So I did.

In the end, it was a great race, and with every event, I learn something new.

Huge kudos to Jimmy Johnson for finishing his second endurance event ever. He was seriously going to throw the towel in after lap 3, but pulled through, knocked out 4 more laps and finished 5th . Good work buddy!

And lastly, huge thanks to Rob and his dad for coming out and pitting the whole race. I couldn't have done it without them.

Until next time!
AL

PS - See you guys next week at the Big Bear Single Track Epic!

US Cup Bonelli Final / State Championship

Gerry Cody - 2nd place, cat 1 30-34
Jeff Stanners - 7th place, cat 2 singlespeed

Course was short (4 mile), but very challenging (short, but very steep ups and downs). Lots of fun out at Bonelli. Gerry held the wheel of Ty Kady for a good 3 1/2 laps but slowly fell behind on the 5th lap. Still put up the 2nd fastest cat 1 time of the day.

Complete Results

Bike For Bender - Big Bear Single Track Epic

Our first Ride for Bender is scheduled Sept 25th and is called the Big Bear Single Track Epic. It's a fundraising event and it's free for everyone to sign-up. You can RSVP on Facebook or just show up. The format isn't any different than other group rides we've put on in the past e.g. SART Hell Ride, except all proceeds from the party/raffle afterwards will go to Rob and his family.

See full details here.

The Ride: We've spent a lot of time stitching the course together so I guarantee you it will be fun. I've basically ridden over 50 miles of best single tracks in the area and put together a nice continuous (but challenging) day of riding. There are definitely some hard sections and there are a number of bailout options, but my goal is to have everyone finish the whole ride. There will be a 25 and ~40 mile option.

My wife will be leading a group as well so all women riders are welcome to join in!

Here's a sneak peak of the course and "NO" you can't have the track!

So I would like to extend this invitation to the entire Socal community to come out and show our support for a fellow rider. Plus, you'll get a chance to ride some of the best single track trails that Big Bear has to offer! You can't go wrong.

Spread the word.

See you there!
AL

PS - Feel free to hit me with any questions.