Race Report from Fontana, California
Recently, club member Felix Wilberg was south of the border racing in Fontana, California. He had a moment to write a race report for us. Here is what he had to say.
Fontana National Race Report
Cross-Country
Well on March 26th this year (2010) I departed Calgary for Fontana California to race three bike races. The night before I left, I woke up with a fever of 102 degrees. Anyway, the next day I took an airplane from Calgary to LAX, rented a van, and drove out to Fontana. I got into Fontana on the Thursday and pre-rode the cross-country (xc) and 4-cross (4x) courses on the Friday.
10:00 Saturday morning the gun went off to start my XC race. At this point, there were very powerful winds which gusted up to 120 km/h!!! I realized that I had to pull out my new goggles! The race started off well for me and after only a kilometre or so I found myself out front with another racer. Unfortunately, while ascending a “slickrock” type climb, the racer in front of me flatted, causing both of us to fall. This was too bad because I got passed by several people while getting back on the bike. For the rest of the first lap I played catch-up and passed back a few people.
The second lap was going better until me and a few other racers arrived at a fork in the road/trail and the 120 km/h winds had blown down all the signs and tape. None of us were from the area and knew the trail system at all. As luck would have it we ended up taking the wrong trail and getting lost. After we got back on track, we figured that we were at the very back of the pack and had a lot of work cut out ahead of us.
Finally it was the third and final lap for us Junior Cat 1’s. I got some rad Gatorade from the feed zone and was stoked to pin the last lap. At around the halfway point in this lap, I had a length of industrial cable blown into my front wheel which caused a fiery wreck. I tried to wrench the cable from my front wheel but it was wrapped around the spokes and disk too tightly. I had no choice but to finish the race with a metre of ¼ in steel cable lodged in my front wheel!
I finished the race in 11th place and spent the next little while (with my dad’s additional strength) removing the cable from my front wheel.
4-Cross
After eating lunch at an authentic Mexican restaurant, I decided that I would have nothing to lose by signing up for the 4X. My first job was to find a 4X bike that someone would let me use to race on. I talked to the folks at the Giant Bicycles tent and they said that I could use the beater pit bike for the race. Anything would be better than my carbon XC bike or DH bike!
A few hours later, the dudes at the Giant tent had set me up a Giant STP with Fox suspension, 2010 Saint, Atherton stem and bars, new ODI ruffians, new Schwalbe’s, etc. I handed over a case of cold beer as a rental fee and proceeded to take a few practice runs. This was a great feeling because it had been about half a year since I had done any gate starts. My riding on this track was spot-on and the bike was awesome. It was also really cool to be part of the event because many pro teams attended. This included the World Champion Jared Graves!
We all listened to the most perplexing explanation of how the heats would be organized then we set off to race. I don’t remember each heat individually since there were so many and they go by in a flash. Anyway, I made it to the final. I had an awesome gate start, got out in front, and held my position on the berms, whoops, and doubles. I crossed the line winning the U19 race!
That was a good end to a long day.
Downhill
So on the Sunday I did my first pre-ride of the DH course and had my front tyre roll partially off on the first turn. I lost enough air that I couldn’t ride so I walked down to the pits, got my tyre fixed by the guys at the Giant tent and went up to do a run.
By race time (later that day) I had done only one run of the track but the weather was rad and I was totally stoked to go pin it. In my race run I was riding smoothly but not very fast because I didn’t know the track at all and in DH that’s pretty key. About half-way down, something happened and I ended up crashing… even to this day I have no idea what caused that crash. I got up and hammered to the finish but there was no way I would make up the lost time for that crash.
Anyway to sum up, Fontana was awesome and did exactly what it was supposed to (get me back into racing at a top level). And it was great to be able to race in hot weather! So I would like to say thanks to Cyclemeisters for making that trip possible and I look forward to the upcoming race season!
Felix Wilberg
