Julia Stampedes to the Podium!

Julia stomps the Stampede!

It was a great race, one of my best, both in effort and tactics. I really love the course, it’s perfect for me because it doesn’t start with a big climb. It’s a great equalizing course, not a huge time difference between the fastest and middle/slower riders. There is only so fast you can go on a course with lots of twisty-turny singletrack and rock gardens. A fast climber can climb twice as fast as me, but he isn’t going to ride that singletrack a whole lot faster than I can. I think one of my REALL teammates, Luke, was trying to do that and hit a tree with his face. My time was just under 2:08, pretty close to the same as last year, I thought I was faster and pretty sure the course was the same. But my placing was a lot better, so I guess the competition was just different. But I was 3rd of 17 in the largest women’s field, Cat 2 age 40-49. For the narrowest age group (outside of juniors), it’s a lot of riders, always the largest women’s field.

The start is several miles of double track, no more than 2-3% uphill grade, great warmup climb. I was a little toward the back at the start, but it stayed close as a group and I moved up as slower riders started dropping back. Soon I saw Mary in front of me, a rider from Bend who always beats me and I decided I was going to stay with her. I literally stuck on her wheel until about 6.5 miles. Another gal was with us for a while, but she dropped off. There were a couple of times I could have passed, but I knew she would catch me again, so I just stayed. Once we started hitting the rocky sections we were getting into the back of the Clydes and Cat 2 Men and other riders who were not as good on the technical sections. Most were really good about getting over if they were stopped or walking. There was one little uphill rock that I saw she had walked and I tried to ride it and didn’t quite make it. I fell and hit my knee and hand, nothing serious and I was up quickly, but at that point she was gone for good. But it was a good move for me because I had distanced myself from a lot of the rest of the field, but I had no idea who or how many were ahead or behind although we had passed another strong competitor, Beth, who was stopped with a mechanical.

I continued to ride strong and passed some more riders, a little back and forth. There was a gravel road climb about a half mile, where I passed some more guys and a couple of women passed me. Once we were back on singletrack, I stayed with those two and another woman came up from behind and stayed with me. I asked her several times if she wanted to pass, but she said she was fine and I was picking good lines J She was in 50+ category, so not my competition, we introduced ourselves, she’s Carla and won her category. So the four of us were more or less together for quite a while, the front two would get a little ahead on the little climbs, then we would catch up. I was a little faster on the downhillish sections, but it was going to be VERY difficult to safely pass two riders and I knew they’d catch me again on uphill anyway. Finally hit a half mile straight downhill gravel road and I passed and said “come on ladies” and let it fly. The course was same as last year and I knew (and could see, and it was marshaled) the 90-degree left turn at the bottom back onto singletrack. So then I led as fast as I could for a while, but we hit another little steady uphill and they passed me. I stayed pretty close after that, but never really got back onto a wheel. I was starting to worry about bonking because I hadn’t refueled much. I’d just been riding too hard to risk getting my bottle out again or my ShotBlox from my pocket. So I just stayed aware but rode on, passed a few more guys along the way on little uphills or rocks, then they’d stick with me a little while.

With 1 ½ miles to go, crossed a marshaled road and then it was the same doubletrack as the start back to the finish. I shifted and tried one last time to catch on, then the last guy I passed, a big guy, came around and told me to grab on, and I’d been a big help to him on the singletrack. I tried to stay on his wheel, but I didn’t have the legs left. I thanked him at the finish, I was about 100-150yd behind the three gals, and 100 ft behind him, he said he was going to try to pull me up to them—awesome!! As it turned out, none of them were in my category anyway, Mary finished a couple minutes ahead of me and first place was nearly 15 minutes (!!) ahead of her, I think someone needs to upgrade!

The race has great volunteers (and all wearing the same highlighter yellow shirts) and they serve racers recovery food at the finish, which in a lot of ways is better than a meal/lunch, because you can grab something right away, in my case, a banana and chocolate milk (PERFECT!!) I’d seen my husband, Chris, and our boys at the turn from the parking lot to the final field, so I knew they’d be in shortly. When Chris found me, he said that my pull-tag was third on the finish board! I couldn’t believe it, I had to go see for myself, and sure enough, there it was! So they VERY kindly waited around for a couple of hours for podium ceremony, my first “for real” podium!! No medals, but they had prizes for all podium finishers, I got a 12-oz bag of Sisters Coffee Company coffee J Yay!

I saw a number of REALL teammates before the start and when the Cat 1 and SS riders took off, hope everyone had as much fun as I did! Loving the bike, especially those Kenda Karma tires. They took me from epic Mudslinging to hot dry Chainbreaker and nearly perfect Stampede conditions and never let me down or weighed me down! What’s next? Bring on State Champs and a ton of climbing at Alsea Falls on June 15.

See you there J.