Original Growler IV

Damnit I love mountain bike racing. The growler took place this past memorial day weekend. It's a 64 mile mountain bike race, aptly named for 64 ounces of fluid goodness. The race basically beats the snot out of you by throwing rock, after rock, after rock, after rock at you. One alone doesn't hurt, but the 64 miles of cumulative effect adds up, resulting in just about everyone crossing the finish line with that good old fashioned full body hurt. Head, shoulders, knees and toes. And ass cheek, if you are like me, and fell into a cactus. With any good mountain bike race, there are really three main parts. Camping. Beer. And Bikes. This race combined them ease. I camped at the hartman rocks trails themselves, right beside the last hamstring/calve/glute/quad cramp inducing hill before the end of each 30 mile lap. Aside from the wind, it was an awesome area to throw down a tent. Mark Lonac, my roomie in Fort Collins ran the sage burner the previous day placing second overall, and then dawned his gorilla suit on Sunday to sweat his balls off and cheer on the racers on that aforementioned hill, occasionally hiding behind a rock and then jumping out to scare racers up the hill. The course itself had everything. Some smooth single track. Some fire road to allow for passing and connecting of more sweet single track, some technical, twisty, turning, rocky, loose, trail, and then rocks. Yeah, they must have named the place after these. What you could ride with some effort on the first lap looked quite a bit harder on the second lap. I saw some blood on others and on myself, shed while you were trying to maintain your rhythm and just get over one more big rock obstacle, and then finding out you didn't quite have it in you. The race wore you down. It was awesome. I rode my new Tomac Flint 29 set up Single Speed with all kinds of sweet parts I hand picked with the help of Dave Chase at Redstone Cyclery in Lyons. The bike feels like MY bike, cause Dave listens to what you want and helps build what suits you. I personally don't like the lightest possible bike, I like to race bikes I'd take out on the trail and beat the shit out of. So my tomac flint 29 race bike has a Reba 29 Maxle 20 mm thru axle fork attached, with a 185mm rotor up front, ergon grips, and for this race, was outfitted with Maxxis Ikon 29s. They are fast rolling and held up to the punishment of a ton of sharp, loose rocks. I was impressed. Upon getting the the finish line, you were greated by Dave Wiens himself. Hell yeah. If that wasn't enough, you were handed a custom growler, full of your favorite New Belgium beer (Ranger IPA for me), and a plate of food.

If this doesn't sound appealing, you probably don't like endurance racing. Or gorillas. My guess is you just tried to sign up for the race next year.