Bicycle World team members represent at US CUP season opener

March 20th, 2017 10:30am

This past week at the season opener for the UCI Triple Crown and the second race in the California State XC series Bicycle World TV team members Steve Hughes and Jeff Herrera travelled to So. Cal to compete.  Hughes taking on the CAT 1 class of fast California riders.  Jeff Herrera going head to head with the best UCI Pro XC racers in the US and Canada. Not surprising, both racers did exceptionally well with Hughes taking second place and Herrera breaking into the top ten with a ninth place in the pro short track. Herreras ninth place in the short track gave him an eighteenth place overall in the three stage race that included XC and a Super D. Jeff result in the third race of the weekend shows that his fitness is good enough to compete with nations best and a testament to Coach Art MacFarland's Baja training system.

Here is the weekends wrap up in the words of our own Steve Hughes -

Bonelli Regional Park in San Dimas, California, was the site of a really awesome mtb racing event over the weekend of March 12th & 13th.  Put on by Team BigBear, this was a UCI Triple Crown event for the pros, and for the amateurs, it was the California State Series XC Kenda Cup #2 race.  This was a well organized race and had really good attendance with 600+ amateurs for the Sunday XC races and nearly 100 pros racing Saturday and Sunday in a 3 race format.  The pros did their XC and Super D races on Saturday and a dirt/pavement/grass Short Track event on Sund

The Pro Women's field was exceptionally small and easily won by Luna's Georgia Gould

The XC course was different from last year with the entire fire road climb and descent on the South side of the paved road, being eliminated.  More single track was added with more technical areas on the mountain just Northeast of the start area.  The XC course was a little shorter this year at 4.9 miles per lap, but it had more difficult elements.  The course started on a fast pavement stretch of 600' and then across a short grass area onto a steep fire road climb.  The course got very interesting after this with very fast single track descents, more fire road climbs and steep single track climbs and descents.  The single track had a lot of tight turns containing off camber climbs and descents.  There were also log and rock barriers across the trails and some rock gardens placed at different locations through out the mountain portion of the course.  These were all ride able but you had to take the right line with the right speed to get over them.  There were also a couple of steep descents with rutted chutes and turns to test your brakes and bike handling.  The course snaked up and down this one mountain innumerable times, giving a total vertical of nearly 700' of climbing per lap.

Steve Hughes winding back through the Bonelli Park infield. The course snaked through steep climbs, fast single track and some grass infields.

I raced in the Cat 1 category with the old guys and we started in the 10th wave.  They combined the 4 oldest age brackets in our wave and we lined up in rows at the start per our age brackets.  The start was very fast and crowded thru a couple of turns on the pavement and then quickly into the first steep fire road climb, where the racing order was sorted out before the single track descent.  My strategy was to keep the 2 very fast guys in my group within site or behind me thru the first climb.  I was 3rd out of the climb and was hanging near the wheel of the 2nd place rider for the first 1/3 of the lap when, on an off camber descent, my front tire slid out, hit a rock and I carefully crashed.  No damage, but 2 guys passed while I sorted out the bike and hopped back on, only to find I had dropped the chain and after fixing this while more racers passed me, I had lost about a minute.  I don't know if I was last, but I was pretty close to it.  My tactics were now simple, I kept my effort at the edge of the red zone to see if  I could get close to the 2nd place guy by the end of the 1st lap.  I was surprised at how quickly I was able to regain lost ground and before the 1st lap was over I had passed the 2nd place guy, who looked to be struggling.  I never saw the 1st place guy so I changed my tactics and backed off a little bit to be as smooth as possible without mistakes and still maintain a consistent yet fast pace.  This strategy seemed to work because with 700' of climbing per lap and the course difficulty would quickly tire you out without holding a little back for the last lap.  When I reached the final grass area for the finish I didn't see any one behind me in my group, but I maintained a high pace, just in case, to the finish.  I got 2nd place and 3rd place was only 20 seconds behind, so pushing it right to the end worked out for me.  Even though the 1st place guy was racing by himself at over 4 minutes ahead of me, I was very pleased with a 2nd, especially with my crash mistake.

Steve Hughes chugging up a steep Bonelli climb.  Jeff's Garmin said it was 24 degrees. Imagine that on the third, fourth or fifth lap!

Steve's dedicated training with Art MacFarland continues to pay off with another podium against a fast crowd of Californians.

Bicycle World TV's Jeff Herrera warming up in Bonelli Park before visiting the cave of pain.

NOTE: This photo is not of actual size. The bike is a 16" BMC road bike and Jeff is, well, let's just say, the bike fits him...oh yea, this guy can fly!

Ninth place against the best North American racers is legit.

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