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Lake Sonoma, November 5th-6th
The team headed up to the UC Berkeley race at Lake Sonoma early Saturday morning,
some of us getting up
before 5am. The first race was the XC: roughly 5 miles per lap of twisty, creek-riven
trail peppered with broken parts, from bikes and bodies alike. The ground was
still wet in spots from rain earlier in the week, and a few of the creeks had
enough water in them to cause ample mischief.
In MA, Todd Norwood got off to a blazing start, opening up a good lead on the
rest of the field, until his ever-so-light front wheel found a creek crossing
that made it wish maybe it was a bit heavier (as pictured below, in Todd's hands).
A bit behind Todd came Matt Hale, valiantly carrying the Stanford flag and making
up for the wimpiness of our best MB riders, ending up as our only finisher in MA
with a solid 4-lap time that should make all gravity grunts proud.
In the swollen MB field, Andrew Lizotte and Mike Morici led the way with top-10
finishes. Evan Pickett was the first, and thankfully only, casualty of the day,
as he took a spill while trying to pass Stanford's own secret weapon, Andre
Gondouin, who was forced to ride in his own shirt due to the ongoing global
shortage of Stanford Cycling apparel. Evan could not tell he was attempting
to elbow his way past a teammate! That's right, this crash can be blamed on
our not having enough clothing. Evan awaits final diagnosis of his hand. Lisa
Stright (battling illness as well as the rest of the WA field), Andre Marta,
Kevin Walters, Aaron Johnson, and myself all finished strong and relatively free of incident.
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L-R: Matt, Lisa, Mike, Dan, Andrew, Evan, Kevin, Aaron, Todd, Andre 1,
Andre 2
(not pictured: Carolyn, Sean, and Theo)
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Saturday afternoon brought the Hill Climb, a blissful 1-mile loose dirt road with
double-digit grades. Todd reached the podium this time, finishing 3rd, and I made
2nd in MB. While Todd and I were awarded medals, the real champion of the day was Sean Ardley in MC, who posted a solid finish on his singlespeed trials bike! Almost all of the XC riders, joined by Carolyn Seto in WA, granny-gear'd their way up the hill.
The Sunday Morning DH course was a loose, wet dirt road downhill leading into a harder section of the XC course, complete with multiple steep-banked creek crossings. The Saturday night rain turned much of the course into peanut buttery mud. Todd, Matt, Sean, and Mike gave the team a formidable presence in MA. Lisa ably represented the Stanford female riders, continuing her string of strong gravity performances. Theo Huzyk arrived to race MB and joined the DH corps in mud-soaked glory.
The rain may have stopped in the morning, but the thick fog and mist never left.
By the afternoon, everything was wet, and the short-track course was a ring of mud.
Only Todd and I stuck around. It also happened to be the most technical ST course
I've seen in 4 years of league racing, by far. I had decided, Matt Hale-style, to
try to get the team some points by stepping up to MA (this despite the total lack
of a nearby Rafer telling me to do so), thus also letting us leave Lake Sonoma
without having to wait for the MB race. I knew it was a bad sign when other MA
racers (as in, people who belonged on that particular starting line) were
questioning the race organizers about what exactly they were thinking with this
particular course. Nevertheless, Todd pulled another 3rd place finish, while I brought
up the rear of a small field, beating-- in the
loosest sense of the word--
only a Cal racer and his rolled tire.
In sum, as a team we finished mid-pack in the XC (though we would have easily made
3rd or higher with even just Todd finishing), and 2nd overall in the HC. I left
before team DH and ST results were posted, but we likely did well in the DH. The
XC and the ST courses were as technical as they come in this league, and the mud
added another layer of difficulty, but overall we had a great team showing: this
was a fine weekend of racing.
submitted by Dan McGarry
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