Race report by Nancy Harris, member of The Path Race Team

Nancy Harris, The Path race team - Open Women class

Roger Gutierrez, The Path race team - Expert Men

Another great weekend of racing at Bootleg is in the books. Roger and I arrived Saturday morning, got registered, and then visited with friends. It was a nice surprise to find Carmen, Lynette and Kathleen from AZ come out for the race as they were originally going snowboarding (Carmen and Kathleen are in my class and great riders).

So then we headed up for practice. The course for Amateurs was Snakeback to Reaper to a new combined finish where the bottom of our course connected with the bottom of G-String (pro course). The course was in excellent shape thanks to Craig Van Cleve who is now partnering with Francine on the race series at Bootleg.

We did one run with some do-overs and then on run 2, Roger decided to rip a small hole in his sidewall (at the top of the course). I was in front and never turned around so I got to the bottom and no Roger. 15 minutes later, I saw him hiking down the hill. Since he was tubeless, it required a tire change. Run number 3 was good so we decided to finish off the afternoon with a Boy Scout to Girl Scout run. Overall it was a good day, but let’s just say that it wasn’t my best day of practice at Bootleg.

Up early on Sunday and off to practice. It was a bit breezy but the temperatures where nice (60s). We did 2 practice runs and then decided to rehydrate and get something to eat.  As we all know Bootleg is kinda laid back and no one but the Socal crowd seems to be in a hurry. Racing was not slated to start until 12:00pm so it was a long day. The initial seed list got posted but with no start times and in the midst of printing the new one, their computer crashed. For some reason Francine decided to put the Open Women class last so I headed up on the truck with Roger (class I) so I could watch some racing instead of hanging in the parking lot.

Well with 150 entrants and 1 minute seen times and the races starting late, my race run was not until about 4pm. Needless to say I tried to warm up, but there is not any place to do sprints. I set myself up next to the zipline and used one of the support cables to hold on to while I pedaled backwards to attempt to warm up my legs.

My race run had 3 dabs as I was not warmed up and I felt like it was the 1st run of the day. The lower section was fast and I pedaled by butt off but not my best race run, but as we all know, that’s racing. Roger’s run left something to be desired as well, as he encountered 2 loose rocks on the off camber section which bounced him off line and caused him to get off the bike and hike back up the trail. He came in 2nd to his nemesis Bobby Bondurant.

A small herd of bighorn sheep was on the mountain all weekend. The highlight of the day was the Expert racer who almost got hit head on by one. He had to pull off the course and ended up getting a re-run. However they put him behind our class and he ended up passing Carmen, and finished right behind me at the finish. I kept hearing “there’s a fast racer coming” and assumed it was Carmen. I pedaled furiously and saw the rider’s shadow right behind me at the finish. I turned around and saw who it was and thought, wow, he made up 2 minutes on us, I want to be that fast when I grow up.

It was so late and we were so hungry, we loaded up, changed clothes, hit the Hacienda for dinner and then made it home by 10pm. So, we didn’t stay for awards. I ended up 2nd out of 3 in the Open Women 40+ class.

It was great to see Marshall (Stray_Bullit) who recently moved up that way and who was nice enough to volunteer to drive the shuttle truck (THANKS)! And then there was the Incycle sexy beasts Compton and Gil and some other new guy that was like 8 foot tall. Oh, and I met Rondo (Werldcup) and his buddy. There was also a Luke and Jake sighting!

Good times, with good friends and great racing, that’s what it’s all about!!!