Gunnison Growler Report

On May 31, 2012

We had a few Steamboat Velo riders competing at the Gunnison Growler, both the half and full distances, over some very challenging trails. Put it on your list for next year!

Half Results (32miles):
Aaron Tisdale – 4hrs38min/169th

Full Distance (64miles):
Alex Pond – 6hrs 17min/35th
Pat West – 6hrs 53min/73rd

Alex Pond reports in on his race:

Alex Pond rips legs at Town Challenge

Headed down Friday afternoon to enjoy the full weekend of festivities and watch some local talent race the half growler on Saturday. We awoke Saturday with a warm morning and no winds which soon made a huge change and by the start of the half growler winds picked up to a sustained 20 mile an hour with gusts up to 50 and temps were dropping, things were not looking good for Sunday. We were expecting the men to role in after about 2 and a half hours of riding and the first rider (Mike West) rolled in just after 3 hours. This was not a good sign for what was to come tomorrow. We were starting to expect a very long day due to the winds slowing everything down. Nate Bird took a 2nd in his class and 4th overall for the half.
Sunday morning I awoke in my tent around 4am to eat and could see my breath inside my tent. Standing at the start line all I wanted was to get to kill hill knowing it was going to suck but it was also the only thing that was going to warm me up. After the double shotgun blast start we had a nice 4 mile roll out from town to the Hartman rocks area. The climb up Kill Hill was a mess but after finishing with the top 15 at the top the pace set up nice and I settled in for the next 60 miles. Not knowing the course, I was thrown off by a lot of short technical areas which caused dismounts then afterwards realized I could have just cleaned them. I rode with Trevor Walz the first lap making good work of the pack, coming through the first lap in the top 20 overall. An earlier over the bars crash had done some damage to my rear derailleur in which didn’t shed light until the first climb going into the second lap. I stopped for a few minutes to mess with it only to have to stop for almost another 10 minutes later to repair a bent stop screw. I was glad to stop and repair it but lost about 20+ spots in doing so. I wouldn’t have finished the race if I didn’t tend to it. Once rolling again I knew I had some work to do. I used the sight of riders ahead to instigate some hard riding to catch them and chewed my way back to around 25th overall and 10th in my age group. Final time was 6:17 minutes My overall achievement was that I didn’t cramp once on a ride over 30 miles. This race takes everything you have as a mountain bike rider, legs alone would not finish this race, and I still feel the effects after a couple days. With that said I cant wait to go back and do it again and hopefully bring more friends to experience it….
 
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