Eugene Roubaix and Bear Springs Trap

It is a known fact that I am not a big fan of road racing these days. My heart fell away from it a few years ago. Regardless with the Eugene Roubaix right here is town, I thought that I should go out and represent especially in my new Tensegrity PT Cycling skinsuit.

Now I haven't been riding as much as I would like for this time of year, but I thought hey I am racing in Cat 4 and I have rarely had trouble staying in the peloton. I mean this is a flat race, almost pancake flat except a 200 ft climb each lap. So the race got going and it was your usual cat 4 race, with people being squirrely and doing dumb things left and right.

Now the old road me would have been attacking and trying to make a break stick. But the older more out of shape me knew better and sat in the top 3rd for the first lap, never pulling and just avoiding the bad handling. So coming into the less than scary climb at the start of lap 2, I thought I would be fine, but felt myself drift all the way back of the group. Then one, two, three bike lengths behind the group. Sad to say but I knew I was done right then with still roughly 25 miles left to race.

So dropped from the peloton I kept riding hard hoping the group would slow down. That never happened but I found some other unlucky fellows who popped out the back and we rode as hard as we could the rest of the race.

So coming into the finish I looked back at my group and decided that I atleast needed to beat them. So coming off the gravel with about 300 meters to go I gave it my all sprinting like a mutant cheetah/tortoise combo and triumphed with my victory in the back. Hey I paid for the race and need to work on my lack of sprinting skills. So in the end 21st out of 30.


Here is the fun stuff. Finished the road race, stuffed the face with lots of food, jumped in a car and drove 4 hours up by ski bowl near Mount Hood for the Bear Springs Trap MTB XC race. Now mountain bike racing in May in Oregon in the mountains most definitely can have adverse weather. But for the most part the weather was perfect 65 Deg and sunny by race time.

The course was shortened due to too much snow at the top of the course. So the Pro/Cat 1/Singlespeed was shortend from 30+ miles to 23 miles. Now I had never raced this race and had no idea what to expect. It was a perfect mountain bike race with a little bit of everything. Some spots of the trail still had 2 feet of snow but was nicely shoveled off to expose a narrow singletrack. Then the trail dropped down into some of the coolest rooty and rocky technical sections that I have seen in a race anywhere in the country. Burms were to be had on many high speed turns as well as two creek crossings on logs by holding onto a rope.

This race was also a single lap race so every turn was foreign and kept you on your toes, and twice on my head through a beautiful boulder field trail that Mike Wissell(from Boston) would have loved to ride. This race was not good for the road racing converts, no this was a real mountain bike race that favored technical skills at threshold. So in the end even with my lacking fitness I finished 7th in Cat 1 in 2hr 26 min.

Dave Bisers raced singlespeed but gave himself an unfortunate handicap as he missed the start by a minute or so while warming up. He also took a wrong turn adding on a little bonus milage but still rode as hard as he could.

Ryan Garner had his best mountain bike finish ever and won the Cat 2 mens race soloing from the start. Not bad for his first podium finish. He now has a good chance for the River City series overall as he has two 5th place finishes as well. I imagine Ryan will add to this report as he should.

So in the end I think Bear Springs Trap is my new favorite mountain bike race. Next up is Pickets Charge in Bend, OR 37 miles, then Spring Thaw in Ashland, OR 26 miles.