The second annual Tamarancho Endor Flow Trail Chainless race is in the books. The race is a part of Bike Monkey’s Tamarancho Dirt Classic weekend. Last year’s race was super fun, amazing, challenging, and a thrill. It was the first legal gravity race in Marin County since the last Repack race in 1984. Major props!
This event is hosted as a fundraiser for trail advocacy in Marin. Proceeds went to Access4bikes. They need your support so look into helping them out.
This race is probably one of the most fun and easy to do races in the area. It cost $15 (if you pre-reg) and can be done at the end of a regular ride or after racing the short track at the event if you like. There’s so much laughing and shit talking going on that everyone walks away satisfied. One of the best reasons for locals to do this race is that you can have a real time posted that can’t be disputed. There’s a real timing system in place recording times down to the 1/1000th of a second for awesome accuracy.
Bike Monkey has become the leader in race timing and organization in the Bay Area and beyond. Thanks to their system, we can gate at our leisure, in any order, get a good time, and have live updating via web as the race progresses. This really adds to the vibe at the top of the course as riders always know who is leading and what the time to beat is. Years ago this would be a dream at a world cup race. Now we have it at a local event. It makes things really fun. Good job!
After being swept clean, the course is amazingly consistent for racers to get a real measure of each other’s performance. Typical runs from a rider will vary within a second once they are warmed up and to speed. A time of 2:53 is apparently the split line for being on the faster side of the spectrum. A general rule of thumb when running the trail is that a sub-3:00 is where good riding begins.
Several bikes on course were running without front brakes and 26″ hardtails are a popular tool. It’s not often you see setups like this.
NorCal Gravity video:
http://www.pinkbike.com/v/embed/411487/
I was feeling a little haggard for the race after putting in a full day prepping the course the day before the race. I wanted things right for both the Chainless and XC events so I put in a lot of extra work. I also worked the registration tent for the first part of the day. I tried to pay attention to my energy levels but probably ran on more practice run than I should have. I had a good run and gave everything I had. I must have done that in fact as I was totally shagged for the rest of the day. My run was better than any of my practice had been and I ended up with 7th place at 2:42.79. Pretty good for an old man. I just need to speed up another 4.5%.
PVD #399 (Fairfax Cyclery). Getting into a metal mood. (photo by Megan Dale)
Ronen #396. Google Bus badass! (photo by Timothy John Perry)
Last year, Marco Osborne of Cannondale Overmountain was the first to go sub-2:40 on the course. This year two more names were added to the list, super star enduro junior Teddy Haden (Bear Development) and 30+ Expert PRO/GRT DH racer Ryan Rodriguez (DVO). Completely mad respect for these guys, especially Teddy who ran the course on an 29er XC bike with crappy light tires folding over in each corner.
Looking at this chart comparing results, we can see that times after 3:40.0 in the race are disasters. Either a crash, mechanical, serious fumble, or inability to ride a bike happened. for reference, the Median time for all finishers was 3:03 and an average was 3:18. Given that the mode of the results was approximately 2:51, that’s not saying much. Most riders in the race should be expecting to achieve the mode of the course. Some will do better than that and the probability that some under performance will take place skews our results. Still, 25% of the racers did run a 2:52 or better.
This year we had some fantastic course photos taken by Brian Tyson. You can find them HERE.
A big shout out to Angel Garbarino and Carlos Perez for making the timing happen.
Place, Name, Time
1 Marco Osborne 2:36.166
2 Ryan Rodriguez 2:39.324
3 Teddy Haden 2:39.512
4 Thomas Ravina 2:40.868
5 Christian Ferrone 2:41.429
6 Nick Dommen 2:42.930
7 Peter Verdone 2:43.790
8 Vincent Kimber 2:46.681
9 Gabe Codwell 2:47.246
10 ronen sarig 2:48.283
11 Justin Eagleton 2:48.500
12 Cristiano Torresi 2:48.944
13 Dean Lyons 2:50.100
14 andrew burke 2:50.209
15 Jared Shutz 2:51.642
16 Mark Ridler 2:52.085
17 Dylan Renn 2:52.532
18 Adriano Iggy 2:53.068
19 Matt Grafton 2:54.180
20 Tom Max 2:55.344
21 Nelson Osborn 2:55.669
22 Davey Simon 2:55.882
23 Aaron Spindel 2:56.496
24 Andrea Kobzar 2:56.771
25 Forest Murnane 2:57.845
26 Tyler Ohera 2:58.120
27 Henry Moore 2:58.139
28 Brian Berringer 2:58.332
29 Logan Osborn 2:59.050
30 Luke Raddue 2:59.671
31 Pete Villington 3:02.986
32 Peter Koch 3:04.212
33 Krage Olrich 3:04.979
34 Jordan Halpern 3:07.466
35 Seth Martinelle 3:09.114
36 Casey Botts 3:09.205
37 logan lammer 3:10.413
38 adam wade 3:10.773
39 Steven Schillings 3:12.269
40 Andrew Tilley 3:12.369
41 Brian Popplewell 3:14.622
42 Nick Nesbitt 3:16.954
43 Adam Preuss 3:17.842
44 TJ Jones 3:18.569
45 Alex Slagle 3:21.954
46 Cassidy Mountjoy 3:22.523
47 Rusty Buholz 3:26.691
48 Brian Pier 3:27.184
49 Rowan Kawczak 3:27.766
50 Chris Broesamle 3:28.577
51 Timothy perry 3:28.614
52 David Martinez 3:35.930
53 Nathan Delaney 3:36.606
54 Beck Kirby 3:54.435
55 Lloyd Vance 4:02.262
56 John Geary 4:07.486
57 Reed Smith 4:09.018
58 Ricardo Cassada 5:08.574
59 Tom Holud 5:34.122
60 Dragon Reed 5:57.618
61 Zibigniew Rozbicki 7:30.482