SGDC #1

Today was the first race in the summer series out at Mike Hecker’s Stumpgrinder Dirt Club (SGDC).

B-eautiful day. Jos came out with me to do some exploratory runs in the Los Olivos area. Hecker changed up the course, removed one of the tougher climbs and added a few new singletrack trails. It was shorter, more flowing singletrack and slightly less painful.

The only bummer – only 14 people total showed for the XC! My class (the Pro/Open Expert) had two - myself and teammate Pete Sproul. We took off and I gained some time on Pete but we were both just taking it nice and steady – a good solid training race. I was completely alone on the course for the majority of the time. I was just practicing steady pacing, keeping the power on the pedals through the singletrack and attacking the climbs late in the race.

Mike’s doing some awesome stuff for mountain biking in the area – bringing a national event to santa barbara county, trying to promote two 24 hour events, a summer XC and DH series, weekly dirt crits, collegiate races and make a working ranch into an active mountain bike club. I just wish someone would notice… certainly not the chicken ranchers (3 of us showed) and platinum team riders (0 present); we owe it to our cycling community to come out and support these local events and the poor turnout from both teams make me disappointed to say the least. Come on guys, where were you?