by Carsten
The Dirty Duo: known to a few to be an excellent early season race with some great trails and delicious apres grub, but unknown to far too many. This race is renowned in the trail running community (ideally, it’s completed as a relay with one member galloping through the 25k trail run and then tagging off to a two-wheeled teamie, who completes a 30k mountain bike leg), but should be equally famous to the XC bikers out there. Despite its name, you don’t need to do the race with a partner, you can just attack the 30k mountain bike race portion on its own. For me this is a great option due to the lack of runners I’m acquainted with.
In any case, I’ve been doing this race since 2005 and would hate to miss it. This race. The DD is early enough in the season to help kick my butt into gear for training and to remind me that the winter base miles are almost through and intensity is on its way. Huzzah!
I’ve done very well in this race in the past and was expecting to be among some of the top guys doing the solo mountain bike (provided I didn’t get lost like last year). My plan was to go out hard and stick with the lead rider as long as I could. This is usually a recipe for disaster (for me anyway), but it seems to work for this race. Good friend of Local Ride, Kevin Calhoun was the only elite rider that I noticed at the start, so right away I marked him as my ‘carrot’. In hindsight, this was perhaps a little too ambitious, but hey, ya never know.
Kim Steed and Mike Rauche were the only other two guys there that I knew were going to be quick, and as it turns out, it was the four of us leading the way on the first climb. This was the first big race on my new Giant XTC 29er and I was really eager to see how it compared to my Niner Air 9 that I’d been racing on for two years. The XTC weighs in at around 25 lbs, so it’s not in the super light category, it’s just pretty light. I did notice that it feels very lively on the climbs though, more lively than I expected, not having converted to tubeless yet. The traction was way better than I was used to, I found myself almost giving up on some of the really steep techy climbs, but the wheels stayed glued, so I kept going, and going, and going….
I stayed with Kevin longer than I expected and only lost him once we got into the first trail section. Once we got down to Fisherman’s Trail along the river, I was quickly rejoined by Mike and Kim. At this point, I decided to stick to Kim’s wheel as long as I could and maybe, just maybe, get ahead of him on the big climb up Old Buck. Kim is a local North Shore guy and no slouch when it comes to climbing, I knew he was going to school me on the descent, so I had to give everything I had to make up for his super DH skills. I actually managed to stay with him on the whole climb, right up to the snow at the top of Ned’s. And just as I expected, he ever so gracefully… completely disappeared down the trail.
By that point was in survival mode, just trying to get down Ned’s without embedding myself or my bike in the trail. This was much harder than it sounds, but I managed okay with just a few close calls. At this juncture, and because I was going faster than I expected, I would like to reiterate just how capable my new XTC was. I’ve noodled my way down Ned’s enough times to have a healthy respect for the trail and take it slow. This time around, I found myself hitting little drops and carving a few corners that I’ve never done before. Instead of having a death grip on the handlebars, I was able to relax and enjoy the trail instead of just trying to keep myself and the bike the right way around. I was beginning to think that maybe I would be able to stay in front of Mike, who is a better descender than I am. At the bottom I hadn’t caught Kim, but I hadn’t been passed either, so I put everything I had into the last climb and hoped for the best. I had enough in the legs to finish a solid third and finish for the first time under two hours at 1:49.
I would encourage anyone who hasn’t done this race in the past to give it a try, It’s usually wet but the Seymour area trails shed water really well and is almost never *very* muddy.
Things are going fantastic, The weather has been amazing and the tan lines are looking hot. We’re staying in a beach house right in Capitola which is about 10k down the coast from downtown Santa Cruz. It’s very much a quaint little touristy trap and on the sunny days (about 97%) its packed with tourists. It makes for kind of a cool environment. Especially when you can head into down town SC and see all the local surf bums.
