Ol Caz hopper

[Danny Kelly McNaughton]

The grasshopper races are awesome. Really tough, but a great atmosphere, nice people, beautiful roads, etc..

I thought I had a great bike setup, trek/fisher paragon 29er alum hartail w/ salsa cromoto rigid fork on stans crests w/ 1.9's. And it was, the start climb went well and the descent down Willow was fun until I hit a drainage rut that I didn't see AT ALL and dented my rear wheel and it turns out cracked a rail on my saddle and broke the plastic body in half.

That rattled me pretty good for the rest of the descent, and I felt like a real ninny as I got passsed back by a few guys on cx bikes though I was on a 29er.

I ended up having an ok race but fell apart pretty good approaching the Willow creek climb and lost contact w/ the 2nd group (maybe I shouldn'ta tried to stay w/ them in the first place, as I got pretty worked on the flats and couldn't keep up that well..)

I want to finish a grasshopper race strong and in a place I'm happy with but that just hasn't happened yet (once, kinda in 2010)

Anyway, hats off to Jim and Greg who raced at least partly sick. Gnarly.

And Carson Benjamin killed it on a TopFuel mtb, so that was inspiring.

SoNoMas is next for me