The Cascade Chainbreaker is a local favorite and this year marked it's 15th annual appearance. Deschutes Brewery even came out with a beer just for the racers!
The course is just west of Shevlin Park and is one of the most spectator friendly XC races of the season. The course is an 11.5 mile loop that includes a little bit of everything. The best part is the loop near the finish that passes by spectators like 5 times...woo!
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| Post-race dusty shenanigans. |
Sean and I showed up around 9am for a 10am start time, so we were a little behind the rest of the team but we were able to get in a solid warm-up before the start. This race is known for being dusty, but this year was definitely the worst I've seen. At the start you're in a group of around 50 racers all competing for the front spot on dusty gravel roads and then even dustier double track for the first 1.5 or so miles. At one point I literally could not see the rider in front of me, so about 4 feet.
Despite the dusty conditions the team was able to pull out some solid results! For the Cat. 1s on the team Austin took 4th, Shane close behind in 5th and Bob took 17th in a field of 28. Sean unfortunately had to pull out of the race because of the hot and dry conditions, but DNFs only fuel motivation for the next race! For the CAT 2s Mr. Buskirk took 10th and I (Mr. Tanler) came away with a 4th place finish...inches away from the podium!! Okay a couple minutes...
Just two weekends later we were at it again in Central Oregon for Oregon's biggest and newest XC race, the Sisters Stampede! This is one of my favorites because of the lack of any serious climbing (and I call myself a mountain biker??).
Trinity Bikes saw it's biggest number of racers wearing the team and club kits ever, with 11 riders competing! There were 6 of the team riders and 5 club riders out in the checkers. We even had a girl racing the blue and white, something we'd like to see more often!
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| Dave Pickhardt crushing some singletrack. |
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| Bob taking 3rd! |
The weather was perfect leading up to the race with 3 days of decent rain to tack up the trails and then the sun came out for race day to make it an all around epic day of riding. For the Cat 2 men 45-54 we had two racers, Tom Holt coming in 41st and Dave Pickhardt taking 33rd. For the Cat 2 men 35-44 we had our trusty mechanic Greg McBride take 63rd and Gary O'Connell (one of our generous sponsors from Columbia Bank in Redmond and an avid cyclist) come in 44th in the biggest field of a staggering 69 racers! Cat 2 men 19-34 it was just me :( and I came away with 9th place. Cat 3 men 10-14 had our youngest rider, Liam Pickhardt, taking 7th out of 23, nice job Liam! In the Cat 3 Women 19-34, Sam donned the Trinity kit for her first race ever and took 8th out of 13! For Cat 1 men we had Sean Lewis taking 17th, Austin Line taking 12th (poor guy got a flat out there..), Shane took 5th and Bob was able to secure his first Cat 1 podium spot with 3rd place!
All in all it was a great day of racing for Trinity Bikes and we were pumped to have so many riders out in the checkers!
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