Bay Area Biker

Bolstered by the fact that I had had the endurance to have been able to finish and even enjoy the Kings Ridge Grasshopper road race/ride, I decided to swing to the opposite side of the racing spectrum and try my hand at a high intensity short track mountain bike event, the Summit Shorty Series.

I heard about this series from Dain Zaffke (WTB), who’d won the A class at the season opener the week prior. It sounded fun, so I loaded the S.I.R. 9 into the car and drove up to McInnis Park in San Rafael.

What a great short course! The start-finish is wide and flat fire road, that veers left onto a 35yard doubletrack climb. At the top of this, you make a sharp left and hit the first quick descent down a narrow singletrack, over a small whoop-de-do before a scrambling uphill that crests a nob and throws you back down another steep, narrow single/doubletrack. This bottoms out into a hard right-hander just behind the start/finish and after a tight left-hand switchback you’re on the backside downhill, a singletrack that runs first through some trees and then out across the open hillside. There’s some texture on this downhill that makes it a little tricky - there was one lefthander in particular that I overcooked on every lap. The downhill spits you out on a paved road, where you make a left and climb back up the hill. After a quarter-mile, the pavement turns back into dirt and there are two kickers to make sure you’re paying for it, then through a flat rocky section, down a dropoff and you’re back at the start/finish.

B class: 21 starters, 6 laps. I’d planned to sit-in the whole race, since I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to respond to the intensity. First lap, wasn’t dropped = good. Second lap, felt fine = even better. Third lap, the pace slowed so much on the paved climb that I made a move despite myself, and the move stuck = great..? I was alone off the front for a couple-few laps, riding my brains out, and… not paying enough attention to what lap I was on. So, a couple-few laps later, when a rider caught me midway up the paved climb and asked me if there was one more lap to go it reinforced my delusion that we were on lap 5 rather than 6. The big difference between me and that guy was that his legs were willing to ride as if it were last lap, whereas mine were not. He started pulling away. Going along the flat rough section just before the finish I “let” two other riders sneak by me, thinking to recover a bit and take the positions back on the “last lap.” However, there was to be no “last lap,” and as I rolled through the finish line, fourth place is what I got.

I think I’ll install a dummy rear shifter on my single for keeping track of the laps. Lap 1(click); lap 2(click)…