Ryan Eisele reports on his 2010 Season!

It’s January 2011 already and the 2010 season went by in the blink of an eye. Previous season’s had marked racing the mountain bike in cross country and short track events. At the beginning of the year I decided I was going to race as much as possible. I started the year off racing my first two road races in the month of February, and then started the cross country series in March which lasted until late June. I then started the PIR short track series racing singlespeed and the cat 1 classes for six weeks until the Salem short track series started and continued racing two classes there as well. Cyclocross started in late September and I had planned on racing the entire season through the Nationals at Bend, but by late November my legs seemed the hard efforts that cross requires was just to much. I decided to pull the plug on the season and start getting ready for a big year in 2011.

My first two road races were fun and a great learning experience. The weather was sunny and beautiful for the month of February in Oregon. Over the last few year’s I have logged many hour’s watching the Tour, so I thought I had road racing all figured out. Looks like I didn’t. Starting at the back of the pack is not a good spot. Dropped on the first climb. I thought the pace would be a little slower since this was only the second race of the early season, but the cat four and fives were off and sprinting from the parking lot. Every time the pace picked up hard or there was an attack i was caught not paying attention or trapped in a bad spot and couldn’t go. Oh well, maybe this year I will start at the front and be ready to actually race in the first few miles.

The mountain bike season started off with a bang at the Echo Red to Red race were I improved on my previous season’s time by about half an hour in warm sunny weather. Then it was off to Horning’s Hustle were I missed the podium by one spot on yet another warm and sunny Oregon spring day. Next up was the Mudslinger were I had maybe the best day on the bike I have ever had. I climbed my way to the podium in third place. The month of May brought warm weather to Bend were I placed sixth at the Cascade Chainbreaker and at a new race on the schedule, Sister’s Stampede. After a terrible result at the Spring Thaw I finished fourth at Return on the Jedi. It was the first time I raced either of those two events.

The Test of Endurace race is one that I don’t look forward to each year. This race is held in late June, so you think it would be warm and sunny. Wrong! Every year it is fifty degree’s if your lucky and raining for the entire 50 miles and 8,000 feet of climbing. My big goal for the year was to finally beat the five hour mark at this race. I spent most of the race riding with teammate Dave Hill who always finishes under the five hour mark. We were setting a good tempo and I felt pretty strong despite the cold and rainy weather. The five hour mark was going down in 2010. Not to be had this year. I crossed the line at 5:07 on what seemed to be a harder course then year’s past. I finished the Oregon XC series in 3rd place in the cat 1 category.

The short track season was in full swing on Monday night’s at PIR. I look forward to these races every year. The weather is always hot and sunny and each class is filled with lots of racers and good action. I had a great season finishing no worse then eighth place in a stacked singlespeed class and then most evening’s doubling up racing the singlespeed in the cat 1 class as well. On an almost 100 degree day I finished third at the Short Track State Championships on a brutally hard course. Next up was the Salem short track series were I finished second overall in the singlespeed class and had some great battle’s with teammate Jeremy Warnicke on the geared bike in the cat 1 class. I thought for sure all these hard effort short track races would be great training for the upcoming cross season.

For the 2010 cross season I made the move up to the B class. I had a great start to the season finishing in the top seven at all the pre-crusade races. A 14th place finish at Alpenerose Dairy out of nearly 100 riders was a great start to the Cross Crusade season. Then the wheels started to fall off. Out of control fool’s crashing into me at Rainier sent me to the very back on the first lap. I stuck with it to finish in the top 26. The next week saw the same action, more crashes and bad luck sent me to a hard earned 34th place finish at Sherwood.

I was now out of the points chase in the B class so I decided to have some fun and race singlespeed. After a super fun and muddy race and good result at PIR the singlespeed experiment took a turn for the worse. PIR would be the last race I finished until late November. The chain simply wouldn’t stay on the bike and my body was telling me it’s time to quit putting out hard efforts. I DNF’d the next three or four races. Next up was the State Championship race were I decided to race gears in the B class again. There simply was not a gear low enough for my tired legs to pedal that day and I finished way behind a lot of people I was beating earlier in the year. So I decided to pull the plug on what had been a great year of racing bikes.

The 2010 season was a very fun year to race bikes in Oregon and I’m really excited about the new year. It’s only Janurary and I already have more miles and hours on the bike then last year. Special thanks to Evan Plews for all his training advice and team support and to all my friends and teammates for helping make training and racing so much fun!

Ryan Eisele