Grinduro!

Grind-uro?  Grin-duro?  Is it a grind?  Is it a grin?  Yes.  The Grinduro! is a race that’s more ride that race.  It’s the type of event that I’ll keep coming back to because it’s so damn fun.  It’s a race with 4 different timed sections that total about 16 miles spread out over 63 miles and 8,200′ of climbing.  The first timed section, the only timed climbing section, pops up at mile 5.1.  No big deal.  Unless your body’s cold management system is totally fubared and gearing up for a start with 30 degree temperatures, knowing that the high will be in the upper 70s, means you choose suffering through the cold, trusting that you will warm up as you climb.  At mile 5.1, my fingers were just beginning to thaw and the pain as they thawed created a bit of nausea.  But, push on and up, because mile 5.1 was only about 1/3 the way up the first climb.  And what always waits for you at the end of a climb?  Yes, a descent.

The Grinduro! is made up of 4 timed sections during its length – a 1.2 mile climb, 6.4 mile fire road descent, 6 mile rolling pavement time trial, and finally a 3.3 mile single-track descent.  Choosing the proper bike is critical.  Last year when I did the first edition, the vast majority of bikes riders chose were cross bikes.  The same was the case this year, but more of those cross bikes had bigger tires and the number of mountain bikes on course were noticeably larger.  Last year, I chose my MUSA cross frame with 40c WTB Nano tires.  This year, I built up a 64cm pink cross frame during the summer that was originally going to be more of a road-going bike because I thought I wanted a bigger bike to help with some of the neck and back pain I experienced last year.  However, the more I rode it, the more it became my off-road bike.  Before the Grinduro!, I did change out a few parts and added a 26t granny ring to the double crankset I had been running because the climb out of Taylorsville after lunch dictates a low gear.  Well, for me.  I was in awe of the riders who passed me up that hill riding compact 50/34 cranks with an 11-28 cassette.  No way would I have been able to muscle that gearing up the gradients on that climb.  My 26/34 low was working just fine.  Thank you, very much.

As much as the Grinduro! is about the ride, it’s way more about the people.  It’s not an event you show up 40 minutes before the start, race, and then leave as soon as it’s over.  Folks arrive the day before the event, camp at the event, and then hang out telling tall tales after the race, eat lots of food, drink some beer, listen to some music…hang out together.  The event is about as close to the experience of the mountain bike racing of the 80s and early 90s that you can get without a time machine.

I spent a fair bit of the first long climb riding with photographer and classmate of my brother, Wil Matthews and Jake.  I built Jake up his custom Falconer a while back and he made the Grinduro his goal for the year and he crushed it.  And if you follow the cross racing scene on-line, you’ve seen Wil’s photos on many sites.  After the timed downhill fire road, I spent the rest of the day riding with Chris McNally.  You might not know the name, but you know the artwork.  Definitely worth some quality time checking out his work.  After the lunch stop, riders are met with a leg/lung busting, seemingly never ending climb.  Chris’s and my goal was to start slow and taper.  We achieved that goal with resounding success.  It’s also the kind of ride that you find yourself coming across the same people all day long.  One of the riders, Roy from Santa Cruz, had me build a British racing green cross bike for him several months ago and I seemed to see Roy on almost every section of the ride – really great to see you out there on the bike, Roy!

And what goes up, must come down – and down it goes, about 7 miles of descending on some of the best single-track you’ll ever ride.  This is the section why more folks chose a mountain bike.  But my cross bike is also my mountain bike and I felt right at home riding this section.  My time wasn’t blisteringly fast, but it wouldn’t have been much different, I don’t think, if I had been on a mountain bike.

The Grinduro! is the type of event that is so fun, it takes a considerable amount of time for the riders to come down from its high.  This is why, even 3 days later, riders are still posting photos and thoughts about the ride.  You just don’t come down from this kind of high quickly.  Might take a week or two, or a month.  It’s that good.

And yes, it was a race, and I actually did pretty darn ok for not really working on fitness.  I just went out and rode it like I would approach any other day’s ride.  13th out of 47 expert men 51-60.  Not too shabby.

As with any event that is 100% fun the whole time, it was difficult to make a concerted effort to stop for photos, but I got a few.  Head over to The Radavist to check out the best gallery of photos.

(What’s Playing:  Todd Rundgren Black Maria)

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