Summit Shorty #3

[Philip Mooney]

Spring in Marin is a happy time of year. Good weather. Green landscape. Great trail conditions. More daylight to ride. And to bump it off the charts on the good living scale, I can race the local Summit Shortys every Wednesday! Have I mentioned I love these events?

I was lucky enough to have a special cheering section come watch me at the race. My wife, Mandy, and our 8 month old daughter, Matilda, came out to cheer on daddy and enjoy the beautiful day. Normally I'd try to ride around and warmup before a race like this, but it was hot out and the grass beside my two girls looked quite inviting. I chose to sit with them and watch my girl giggle as a gaggle middle school riders ripped up the course during their race. It was very cool to see the huge number of #morekidsonbikes. Then we walked around and cheered loudly for our friends Simon and Henry in the C race alongside their parents (Lauren, Rachel & Sam) and Tom Lyons. The social aspect of cheering is really great at these events. Tillie was thrilled when Simon won his C class race!

As it got closer and closer to the 6:30 start time, all the A racers began to arrive. Otis, yeah that Otis, arrived first. I made sure to introduce him to Tillie so he knew I was a dad and had a built-in excuse if he were to drop me. He rolled up with a friend that is a girl (girlfriend? "just friends"? soon-to-be-girlfriend? who knows?) named Elise. I can't speak to their relationship status, but either way, she was very nice and proved to be a good role model for my daughter. I think it's likely Tillie will be a racer in the NorCal League when she gets bigger, and I'm glad she'll have some good role models that have gone before her. Tillie, Mandy, and Elise were fast friends by the end of the evening.

As we chatted with Otis and Elise (oooo, if they're dating we can call them "Otise", and if they're not dating I probably made things really weird between them with this blog post and I'm sorry in advance), my enemies continued to amass. We had Sebastian back from last week. Turns out he's still really skinny and still really fast. We had a new guy, Pearson, join us this week. He's another hotshot NorCal racer for Tam High. We had Kaveh there, Otis' arch nemesis in the JV category and a mechanic at Mike's Bikes in Sausalito. We had the one and only Teddy Hayden riding like a maniac. Among all these enemies, there were plenty of friendlies too. Acme was well represented with the Marks and Greg (and Otis, but he's a high school racer so he falls in the enemy category). It was fun to get to chat with them and get to know them a bit better. We bonded over our mutual disdain for the young whippersnappers that punish us on this course!

On to the race itself! On the first lap we didn't go too hard. Except for Teddy. He wasted a bunch of energy moving up at stupid times on the singletrack. Then on the pavement I used very little energy to slot in right in front of him and talk some trash because I like giving him a hard time. On the second lap, Pearson lit it up on the climb. Oooof, that was hard. He shed a bunch of people. 6 of us were in reach at the top of the climb, and Teddy was slowly dropping off so I talked more trash. Then I felt bad about talking trash because he actually got dropped which is weird because he's usually hella fast. Teddy, pedal uphill more often! On the third lap, we went slower because everyone was tired from Pearson hitting it so hard the lap before. They let me get to the front and slow it down even more because I was tired. On the 4th lap, I was artfully managing the course in first wheel (aka riding a line so no one could come around me on the inside before the descent) at the top of the climb when Sebastian cut the course by diving inside the cone to get by. Tsk tsk Seabastian! On the 5th lap we played some more cat and mouse. On the 6th and final lap I came out of the descent in 5th place, we went up the first part of the climb pretty hard, and I went into the dirt singletrack in first wheel. On the final paved sprint to the top of the climb, Sebastian, Otis, and Pearson lit it up as I continued going the same speed. We crossed the finish line in that order, with Kaveh coming in right behind me.

Soooooo, I was 4th again. Beat by a bunch of fast high school kids. I'm sensing a pattern here. Time to ride my bike a bunch and get ready for next week!