The Back Country Ridge Romp was a race put on by our friend Don McEnhill in the Sly Park area. This was the venue for not only our first race back in 1985, but for many of our mountain bike training rides since then. Steve and I met Don at Back Country Bicycles, a shop in Pollock Pines where he worked. We rode with Don a number of times in the months leading up to this race as he finalized the course. We knew it well by the time race day came.
This was only two weeks after messing up my hand at the Lemurian, and it wasn't healed yet. Fortunately I knew the course wasn't terribly rocky, so I taped up my palm and I don't remember it bothering me that much.
I had a "Rule of 100" for judging how hilly races were, meaning the breakeven point for a "hilly" race was about 100 feet of elevation for each mile. Anything less I considered flat. This course had 3500 feet in 25 miles, so I considered this a climber's (and descender's) course.
Even with all the climbing, this was a very fast course on mostly fire roads. We took off from the start and it felt more like a road race than anything. We just put our heads down and pedaled. Joe Murray won averaging over 16 miles per hour, which was pretty fast at the time. Steve and I were never more than a few seconds apart the whole race. It's one of the few races when we were very evenly matched.
I honestly don't remember much from the middle of the race, but the last third of the race is still pretty clear. There was a group of five or six of us riding wheel to wheel and absolutely pinning it on the final long, rolling downhill. It's so fun when you get into a group up front and everybody trusts each other enough to paceline on a downhill. I was inches from Steve's rear wheel with 100 percent confidence that he would pick the right lines.
We finished up the downhill and all that was left was the flat road leading back to the campground. Steve put in a short effort at the end to gap me by three seconds at the finish.
We took 18th and 19th overall.
That netted Steve 7th in Expert while I was 4th in Sport. Handmade trophies and plaques were definitely a thing back then.
A number of our ABC mentors and teammates finished behind us.
It was pretty cool for us to slip inside the top 20 and only be a couple minutes outside the top 10 with the big boys. Still, I wasn't satisfied with another fourth place.
Off to the Rockhopper next week where I hoped to keep improving.
Later.
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