Roberts Off Road

Beginner Women's Race
My first mountain bike race of 2008. Since I'm racing the Cross Country race at Sea Otter this year, I figured I'd better get out there and do at least ONE MTB race prior. So, I opted to skip the Santa Cruz Crit and race my favorite little spot: Toro Park in Salinas. Toro Park consists of approximately 2.5 miles of uphill fire road, and 2.5 miles of single-track, some fairly technical, beautiful scenery, sandy spots and cow pies! I was only half "into" this race, as I was tired from the day before! We start and whoosh! 3 women go shooting off. I thought they might kind of falter on the uphill, since it's pretty long and un-relenting, but I was soooo wrong. I never saw them again! I was taking it fairly slowly, since the last time I raced here, I went too hard and washed out in some loose dirt and split my ear open on a piece of wood! I was in no hurry to repeat that, so I plodded along at an almost comfortable clip on the uphills, and pretty slow on the single-track descents. It was more of a "smell the grass" type of race for me, and I was able to gain time with each lap. This was just the mental edge and confidence builder I needed heading into Sea Otter. I rode all 3 switchbacks comfortably, over all the logs in the trail, up the little grunts, and the scariest spot: through the mud, up a grunt of a hill and over a mass of tree roots onto a sweet single-track section! Nary a mishap, misstep or mis-calculation on my part. Well, except for going out too conservatively.Without any major mishaps, I finished the race with all my skin, no dirt stains (except from all the dust that came up off the trails), and with a big boost to my confidence and my fitness! Looking forward to the next CCCX race at Toro in May.

Thanks for reading,
Holly