Congratulations to Red Peloton team members on great finishes at the Old Caz Grasshopper Race January 22, 2011

16 Dan Boyle
19 Joe Feng
25 Brian Staby
51 Kashy Ghazzagh
65 Royce Fraley
116 Keith Howell

Here is a race recap by Kashy Ghazzagh:
Here it was.. my very first Grasshopper event. An event dubbed as a “ride” and not a “race”. In days leading to the “ride” I was getting a bit nervous. I had been warned of the toughness of this course by many solid riders, which is a good reason to be a bit worried…

I got there early. I had been fairly fresh and had not done any super hard riding for a few days. I felt pretty ready. I registered, mingled a bit, got my gear on and eventually connected with my good friend Royce to do a warm up. Royce has not only been a great mentor to me in the road cycling and cyclocross, he now was my Hopper adviser. Gotta love that dude! Honestly, he is one of the main reasons I am on the team. Its guys like him who makes cycling a joy and a passion. Now that I have built him up, time to “cap” on him a bit.. After Royce wrapped up his blanket behind the van (I refer to as his Yoga mat) and he finished lubing his skinny legs, we eventually left to warm up.

It was essential to get a nice warm up in. I am not a huge fan of a super long warm up, but this ride was going to start with a climb up Colman Valley right away, and then a bit more of climbing on Willow Creek before the long and nasty descend in the dirt. So, we climbed Coleman to Willow and back and that was plenty of a warm up for me..

The vibe of this event is something else, so many great folks, many of which are great friends. Waiting prior to the start I met Keith Howell, Dan Boyle, to mention a couple of names from the team, as well as many other friends from other clubs and teams and many cyclocorss racers that I had recently met. And many great folks from our shop ride led by Jonathan along with folks from WCR and 2WR and almost the entire Colavita team to cheer us all on and send us off to the deep pain cave!

So, the race starts with Levi rolling off the front… And we start the climb. After a good 3 to 4 minutes, I found Royce ahead and Dan Boyle next to me.. Dan said: If we pass most of these guys before the descend, we will be ahead of 90% of the field.. Sounds advice.. So, we kept on climbing and got to the dirt section. Right away, I realized that I had never done any riding with my 4 month old CX bike. Within 30 seconds, some dude behind me hit this 7” ledge on the road so hard; he broke his frame in 3 pieces (so I was told later on) Shortly after, I saw Royce off to the side fixing a flat and he told me to keep rolling.

I had only raced 5 times on my rig and no other experience that included long descends! And boy did it play a role. I had passed so many riders on the climb and a good 10-20 passed me on the downhill due to my lack of confidence on the gravel and steep terrain. Once we reached the bottom of the park we entered a road that resembled roads in Kandahar. I guess it was paved, but you’d never know it… Huge potholes, gravel, puddles, mud, water running and etc.. It was an adventure.. Then we popped out by Sizzling Tandoor on Hwy 1 near the River. We had a nice train formed by then which also included a couple of Boba friends.. As we started rolling on River Rd, the pace picked up.. We had some highly eager young bucks who didn’t have a clue about how to be smooth.. That was a challenge. And then low and behold this crazy fast guy comes from behind and moves right past us.. I quickly jumped out of our fairly slow train and grabbed onto his wheels. This dude was a MONSTER. Later on I found out that was Tyler Brandt, and ex Swifty who now rides as a STRONG cat 1 for Giant Strawberry. Most of the guys on the previous train hopped on and we had a larger and much faster train now.. He and a couple of us (but mainly Tyler only!!) pulled us up to the larger group up ahead.. Immediately the ride was 20 times easier.. As if we went from a motorcycle ride in the wind to a nice limo ride with the sunroof open!

This train stayed together all the way to old Caz.. There I was able to drop many guys on the climb during the paved and the dirt.. But gave a few back again in the dirt downhill section due to lack of confidence with the bike in the gravel downhill… Once back on the pavement, I actually could not believe what I was seeing. Todd Witzenberg was riding right in front of me. First I thought “ man, I must be doing really good to be catching him!!” Until I found out that he had accidentally taken two wrong turns and he had been forced into back tracking and that was why!! We rode together for a bit and after a bit of confusion with the group we were in at the time, we found Cherry St, and then he was gone!

Shortly after, I connected with Windsor cycling club rider who comes to our lunch rides, Pastor Lance Wallace. His entire family was on the climb with bells and all cheering him on.. That was so cool to see. We stayed together all the way up to the top of Old Caz. There, Jim Keene of Norcal had two water bottles of mine that I had labled and given him ready for me, but I did not want to stop and felt that I had enough water to finish.. Thanks Jim for being there for us! We continued down the road until we hit the next dirt section. That section was very technical as it was muddy, peppered with logs and finished with a creek crossing. After the creek you hit a gnarly gravel uphill that really put the hurt on me.. Again, I had lost Lance on the downhill and picked him up on the climb. Same old story of the day for me.

After forming yet another group of riders which included me, Lance and another guy from DFL along with 4 guys on mountain bikes and a few on CX bikes, we headed down and into Cazedero then up Austin Creek. Nobody wanted to do any work.. Pretty much Lance, I and one other guy did all the work. We passed many solo and hurting folks along the way, a few hopped on, a few tried and could not stay with us.. Before we arrived at River Rd area, here comes Tyler Brandt and a train of 8 guys behind him smoking by us.. What the heck? He had been gone a long time ago ahead of me earlier in the day.. I think he either had gotten lost or had mechanical issues and that is why he was behind me again.. I’ll have to ask him that question someday. Anyhow, our train hopped on to their train and off we were.. We soon hit River Rd and low and behold, here is Tyler pulling us in the head wind at an average of 27MPH easy.. It was crazy.. He was so selfless about it too. I think he wanted the work and training!! One time one guy tried to help him for about 1 minute until Tyler got back up there and we were back to 28MPH again! This went on all the way to Sizzling Tandoor again! At that point, he got up, after doing all that pulling and attacked all of us! We were shocked as to how strong this guy is.. One guy jumped out and tried to chase him and that is when I decided I needed to follow him. I grabbed his wheel for 25 seconds until he was done, as I went in the front to help him, I realized he was totally done.. So, I put the hammer down and was able to bridge up to Tyler.. But man, that was many matches!! Struggling to stay with his wheel, seeing double vision and cross eyed and all, I was just trying to recover. It was obvious that Kashy was not going to get in front of Tyler and help him.. I’d be slowing him down!! So, I barely hung on and then we picked up another good friend, Brian Anderson (multiple times winner of Terrible Two, old high school friend of mine) Turns out that Brian had just fixed a flat. He hopped on and apparently in my cross eyed state, as he was cross wheeling me, I drove him off the road!!!!!! I had no idea! I just looked back and Brian was not there anymore.. About 3 or 4 minutes later, he comes by me from behind saying: “dude, you drove me of the road!!!!!” I was apologetic and kind of shocked! And that was the last time I saw Brain.. Just shortly before, Tyler had disposed of me and I was solo, and now Brian went by. I knew I was getting REALLY tired and still had a gnarly climb ahead of me.. So, I decided to focus on not letting the group that I was in before catch us. That is the group that Tyler attacked earlier which we were both in. But unfortunately 4 more of those folks did catch and pass me. I held off most of them, but lost 4 positions this way on Willow Creek. As a matter of fact, there is one really steep section in Willow Creek which I had to get off of my bike and hike it. I noticed everyone who was there at the time doing the same thing!! Brutal!