Summit Shorty #5

[Philip Mooney]

It's the last week of classes here at SSU (where I work in the geology department) and I want to take my spare hour to go for a bike ride this afternoon, so this blog post will be short and straightforward (editor's note: the post ended up being long anyway).

Week 5 of the series. 6 laps on tap. Some new faces on the start line with the notable addition of young stud roadie Ben Cook joining us just off of his 9th place finish in the varsity category at the MTB State Champs while riding for Redwood. He's been out racing mainly the road scene in NorCal this season, and I've noticed him bumping elbows with the guys on the road team I run (www.h24cycling.com). I think it was in the Berkeley Crit that he ripped a breakaway in the pro/1 race that stuck it to the line a few months ago. Fact check me on that one because I may have the race wrong. Anyway, I knew that he'd be strong.

Time to digress. I guess this post won't be that short. Ben is a junior racing with Team Swift. They're the CA team that all the young road studs want to ride for. Much like Bear Dev on the MTB side of things. He's the star of the team, an 18 year old kid racing with the big boys in the highest category on the road. It's very rare to get such a young guy racing at the level on the road, much more rare than a young kid racing at a high level on the mountain bike. Young riders often have the anaerobic bursts needed to race in a high category on the MTB. It takes a long time to build an aerobic engine big enough to hang in road races, so road racers tend to be older by the time they're good enough to race in the Pro/1/2 category. This is getting long. My point is twofold: 1) Ben is strong and 2) that it's really cool to see a young guy battling in these big road races, and when they're there I think it's the duty of everyone in the race to be supportive and extra nice to them.

Sooooooo, it was extra shitty last year when Ben was intentionally taken out in the top corner of the San Rafael crit last year. A rider on the Cylance Pro Cycling team based out of SoCal had been hassling him for a couple laps. Basically they didn't want a young kid to be riding amongst them at the pointy end of the race in the last 20 minutes. Keep in mind Ben was riding safely and was clearly strong enough and good enough at gaining position to get there by himself in the first place! Finally one of the riders saw Ben next to him, yelled at him, and then intentionally swiped his front wheel. Ben crashed hard and was out of the race. That was crap, and I was happy to see many members of the peloton stand up for Ben and offer him words of support and encouragement after that. The rider that took him out eventually won the race. He was not a fan favorite, and I think he got fined as punishment after a bunch of complaining and yelling. I think you should get a 6 month ban for intentionally taking someone out....but no one asked for my opinion. Alas.

You'd think after all of that explanation up above I would have some sympathy for Ben and want to be nice to him in the race and in my race report. Wrong. Of course not. I wanted to crush him. Mountain bikers should always try to smash roadies and make sure they know their bike handling skills are inferior (editor's note: Phil no longer considers himself a roadie).

On to the race itself. Wilson started very fast. I started not quite as fast. Ben slotted in behind me and in front of Greg. I didn't see where everyone else was positioned. Will and I went faster than Ben on the descent and had a small gap. I went faster than Will on the climb and was alone. I saw Ben chasing, and I made sure to go hard enough to not let him catch me the rest of the race. I won and Ben was 30 seconds back. Behind that Wilson and Greg had a great battle for 3rd. The last minute of their race was fun to watch.

I will end by noting the the middle school races earlier in the evening were very well attended and I'm super impressed by those little rippers!