Lake Sonoma Grasshopper

[Philip Mooney]

Hi All. This will be quick post here because I'm short on time at the moment but still want to tell everyone about the Hopper last weekend.

Lake Sonoma Grasshopper. 23 miles, almost all on single track. The fast guys can finish in 2:15 or so. Perfect course for a hardtail or short travel XC bike. I was on my hardtail with Racing Ralph tires at 27/29psi under my 180 lbs of dad-bod. Course starts with a 10ish minute paved climb before jumping straight into smooth ribbon singletrack for 20 miles. Then the course finishes with a 12ish minute fire road climb. It's fun and hard and up and down and twisty all days. You have to focus the entire time or risk riding off the trail!

I started with 2 bottles of mix, and dropped off 2 more bottles of mix at the start that were waiting for me at the feedzone 13.5 miles (1:15 or so) into the race. That worked well for me with the 80 degree temperatures. I ate one RX bar halfway into the race that was incredible hard to chew.

I drove up with teammates Waily and Nina as well as a new non-teammate buddy, Brian. We had a fun time chatting on the drive up there. Matt Nawrocki and Danny also met us at the course. After a quick warm up, it was race time.

We started slow on the first half of the paved road climb. I went a bit harder at the top of the pavement and entered the singletrack by myself with a few dudes a 100 meters or so behind me. After smashing the descent, I started rolling smoothly as I waited for some company, and after a few minutes Jason King caught me. We rode together, pleasantly and cordially swapping of time on the front, until about the halfway mark. Then he started riding faster than me, likely cause i was slowing down. He ended up beating me by a ton (5+ minutes). I never saw anyone else after he rode away from me and I eventually rolled in for 2nd. 

After the race there were snack and beer and tacos. It was fun to hang out and listen to everyone's stories about the race.