Race Report: 1987 Skyway Shasta Lemurian

Every race has moments of regret unless you actually pull off the win. If you come in 30th, that can be chalked up to simply having a bad day or poor fitness, and it's easy to move on. As you creep up towards the podium, the "what-ifs" become tougher to deal with. This particular race was one of those tough ones to deal with.

If you have ever been to the Redding area you know it gets very hot, and it doesn't cool down much at night. For whatever reason the start of the race was at 10:30 a.m. In only my third year of racing in this area I knew this was too late in the morning. People were going to die.

The Skyway course was basically a long, difficult climb followed by a rolling middle section and a long, punishing descent back to the finish near the Shasta Dam.

Right off the start I was feeling pretty good. I climbed with a group of sport class leaders for a while. As the climb went on, the heat really cranked up. I could see that it was already affecting some of the guys around me.

Back in those days I loved the heat, and riding in it was no big deal. I was young and rail-thin, a snake in the desert pursuing my suffering prey.

Towards the middle of the climb we started absorbing experts and pros who were having difficulty with the heat and the steep grades. I knew at that point I was doing well and maybe even leading the sport class.

As I neared the top of the climb there were racers stopping to the side of the trail. Some dumped water over their heads while others sought shade. Every time I passed someone suffering I grew stronger.

The middle part of the course was fun but uneventful. I remember riding by myself for the most part and not really gaining or losing places. There's probably a little bit of a dark spot in my recollection because the horrible memories of the coming downhill completely overshadowed them, burned into my psyche like it was only yesterday.

I hit the last downhill relatively sure I was in the lead. With descending arguably being my greatest strength, I really felt like I had this one in the bag. Every race adds to your knowledge base, and in this one I learned that nothing is a sure thing.

The trail was mostly chunky andesite rock from Mount Shasta's volcanic past. In fact, there was very little soil at all for the entire downhill—just miles of rock.

Almost immediately I noticed my hands sliding around inside my gloves. Due to the extreme heat, sweat had been running down my arms right into my gloves for a couple hours. They were soaking wet and the leather was extremely slimy.

Soon my left hand, which was doing the majority of the braking, started bothering me. I was getting a hot spot on the edge of my palm between the thumb and forefinger. This wasn't totally uncommon; the occasional blister was part of the game.

The pounding was intense. The trail was rocky as hell and there was no relief. When the pain became too much, I stopped—a very rare occurrence for me during a race. I flexed my hand for a bit while a couple guys passed me. I told myself not to worry; they were likely experts.

I continued going down, albeit a little bit slower, trying to use the rear brake as much as possible. At this point a little blood was flowing out onto my middle and first finger, making things even more slippery as I desperately tried to brake.

I stopped for a second time and dared to take a peek inside my glove. There was a crescent shaped laceration and it looked deep. I was a little shocked because I thought it was a simple blister. All I can figure was my hands were very wet and pruned up, and the soft skin simply split. Meanwhile, a few more guys passed me. At that point I didn't care much until I saw one of them was Jimmy Deaton.

Listen, I understand that Deaton was a fast downhiller. He won Mammoth five times, won a world championship, and he's a member of the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame. But I had ridden with Jimmy a couple times and I was no slouch on the downhills. On a technical trail on cross country bikes, I believed I was every bit as good.

I took off after him and not only held my own, but caught up to him after a few turns. The pain was intense but I refused to let him go. I stayed right on his wheel for a couple minutes, but ultimately it was the pain that did me in, not his speed.

I stopped for the third and final time. I took off my glove and the wound shocked me. It was now a larger half circle and the flap had folded back. The skin was so thick. Under it was what appeared to be uncovered muscle. I saw stars. My hand itself was white and wrinkled up like I had been in a bathtub for hours. I put the flap back in place and continued down the hill as best I could. A number of riders had flown by.

I eventually crossed the line 33rd overall and took fourth place in the sport class. Jimmy beat the first place sport rider, so if I could have stayed near him I would have been OK. If I hadn't stopped at all I would have cracked the top 20 and easily won the sport class. But I didn't. Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

Steve finished behind me in 52nd due to a pretty nasty crash. Someone dislodged a large rock that rolled right in front of him, taking him out. Crashing on those rocks did some damage, leaving him bloodied and bruised.

After that race I ditched the old-school leather and cotton gloves in favor of the new synthetic leather with a lycra back. This same basic glove design is still in use today.

That spot on my hand eventually healed, although the resulting scar tissue still bothers me on occasion to this day. Luckily suspension forks and disc brakes have helped with the punishment our hands used to take.

It was yet another lost opportunity to score that elusive first win. Still, I knew I had the motor to make it happen even if my hand had failed me. Next up was the Back Country Ridge Romp in Pollock Pines.

Later.

Race Report: 1986 North Tahoe Classic

There are always races that you look back on that make you shake your head, even decades later. This was definitely one of those races that haunts me a bit.

When we were kids the only way to really get real bike racing news for anything but the Tour de France was in the magazines. In the early 1980s, the Tour de France was still virtually unknown in the US until Greg LeMond hit the scene. Known locally to us as the Reno Rocket, we were already aware of his early exploits in our region. But it was his third (1984), second (1985) and first-place (1986) finishes in the Tour de France that made even casual Americans take notice. Still, all we really gained from Greg's Tour de France fame was a brief results list, in tiny print, hidden in the back of the newspaper sports section with the baseball box scores.

To really get any in-depth reporting of a road race, we had to look at the magazines. Even then the news was often months old before we saw it. Still, we would go to Tower Books to flip through the imported large-format European racing magazines to see who won Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège or Milan-San Remo. The beautiful photography captivated me—the vivid colors of the peloton, the idyllic countryside, the drama and the pain etched on the riders' faces, the triumph of victory. Those racers were my heroes, and I dreamed of a day when I myself would be pictured in a magazine. This race would provide that opportunity.

It was only an American mountain bike magazine, a far cry from the big, beautiful color photos in the European racing mags. However, for an aspiring 19-year-old racer, it felt pretty damn cool.

I knew from racing the North Tahoe Classic the previous year that they would probably line us up in a wide, horizontal manner in a field. This unconventional approach was unique to this race in all my years of competing. I suppose it was used to create drama going into the first corner (and boy did it). Armed with this information, I lined up to the very far left, which was the shortest line to the sharp right turn onto the trail.

We took off and I went hard in an effort to get to the first corner near the front. Even if you overextend yourself in the first 20 seconds, it's generally worth it to do this to avoid a bottleneck. You might have to rest a little to recover after the first corner, but it's still a net time savings. Once you hit the singletrack, the tail of the snake is a long way from the head. Be the head.

I raced up the left side and entered the corner in sixth or seventh position. That's me second from the right, coming in hot:

According to the magazine, the first five through the corner were Joe Sloup, Tracy Smith, Max Jones, George Theobald and Mike Jordan. As a young sport class racer, I had no business being at the front with these guys. However, the beginning of the course was pretty technical—a strength of mine in those days—so I hung tough for half a lap before the experts and pros started passing me.

"This is a bike handler's course. If you're a good bike handler, you'll be right up there at the front."

    - Tom Hillard, Specialized

I finished the first four-mile lap feeling pretty good. I knew I was near the top of the sport class, which motivated me to keep pushing. I rode a very clean and fast second lap. As I passed through the start-finish area the second time, I started thinking I could win this thing.

That's me, upper right, in a magazine!

My third lap was smooth and error-free, but I definitely slowed a little. As I passed under the finishing banner for my final lap, the doubt started to creep in.

There was a steep, rocky climb that I cleaned on the first three laps, but on the fourth time up I spun my tire and stalled. As I started walking, a guy came up behind me and asked, "What class?"

"Sport," I replied. 

"Me too," he said as he passed me.

I started running to keep pace with him. When we crested the top I hopped back on the bike and glued myself to his wheel. I stayed there and recovered until the next climb, where I attacked with all I had. I got the gap I wanted and even increased it a little on the following downhill. 

I held him off with a comfortable lead. With a half mile to go, there was a series of slalom turns through some bushes. In my excitement I went into the turns going too fast and overcooked one of the corners, smashing headfirst into a bush. After riding an almost flawless race, this was a very costly mistake.

My pursuer passed me as I looked back in horror from inside the large bush. I frantically tried to extricate myself and the bike from the bush's thorny embrace. When I finally got going again, he was long gone.

If you've ever crashed late in a race, you know what probably happened next. Once your focus is broken, it's tough to recover. The bike has a mind of its own. You can't even steer. The flow is gone.

I lost more time to him in that final half mile by making stupid little mistakes that added up to 86 seconds at the end. I had panicked and let myself become frazzled. A learning moment, for sure.

I would have to settle for second place. It wasn't a big race; there were only 34 finishers in the Sport class. Still, I was stoked to get my first top three finish in Sport, and even more excited that my time would have slotted me in at fourth place in the Expert class. (The fourth place Expert finished in 1:24.)

The Sport names are transposed, but the times are right. I swear I took second.

Fellow ABC rider and friend Bob Edwards won the single speed class. Bob was a single speed pioneer and mentor to us young guys.

Hey, Bob, I won one too.

The North Tahoe Classic was a fun race, one that I competed in four times with varying levels of success. The 1986 version was special, though. It was the first race where I performed really well. After that day I really started to believe that I could be a good racer.

Later.