California Enduro Series Heads to Socal for Round 1
The 2016 California Enduro Series held their season opener in Fontana for the National Weekend. Round 1, presented by Pro Gold, saw over 300 riders take on the loose, rocky, and physical 12 miles, 4-stage course with 1800 feet of elevation change, oh and snakes, lots, and lots of snakes.
Found this beautiful Rattler near the top of Stage 1. Temps, while only in the upper 70's to low 80's were still warm enough to bring out several of these guys around the mountain.
Several CES Sponsors sent their reps out to support the riders in attendance for round 1.
FOX rider and 2nd place in Pro Women, Lauren Gregg poses with the FOX Tech Rep. FOX has stepped up again this year as a sponsor of the 2016 California Enduro Series. CES is raffling off a 2016 FOX 36 at every race this year - you get to choose the travel, wheel size, and color - can't beat that. Tickets are available on the CES website.
SRAM Tech Rep, Andy, aka Sramdy working on a Pink Bike. We couldn't help but include this one in the article. SRAM is the Official Brake Sponsor of the CES with a Guide Ultimate Brake Set being raffled off at each race.
VP had several visitors throughout the weekend. They are on board as a sponsor of the series once again in 2016.
Despite the timeline of the event being Friday and with practice on Thursday, several riders still made it out for practice sessions and for some good photo ops.
Here, Steven Nedaski from the Path team demonstrates proper style for the camera during practice.
After practice on Thursday, we took some time to check out a couple of vans. One of the more popular modes of transportation for Pro Athletes these days seems to be the modified Sprinter or Transit, with many Enduro riders loving the Van Life.
Lauren Gregg is living that van life for sure. Her Ford Van is her home on the road as she travels to her race events all over the US.
The Bike Garage in Lauren Gregg's Van holds her Fuji Race bike and her Fuji road bike plus plenty of gear and 45 gallons of fresh water for the road.
We also had the opportunity to check in on the vendor area and found Cody Johnson in the pits. Cody, is a local to Fontana. He looked very relaxed hanging out at the 100% booth. On race day, Johnson would finish 14th in Pro Men.
With an emphasis on team competition this year, The Path team brought 8 riders competing during the weekend.
We wrapped up Thursday's practice day talking with Bobby from RST.
He had to show me this new dropper they will be releasing in the next few months. Nothing is more vital to the enduro rider than fanny packs and dropper posts, so I had to throw it in the coverage. Some quick details: The "Elev 8" will have a range of 80-125mm in both Air and Hydraulic Height adjustments. There will be a stealth option with two diameters, 30.9mm and 31.6mm. Weights range from 610g to 810g.
Friday was an early day. We arrived at 7am expecting to see riders geared up and ready for some warm up time, as official practice ran from 7am - 8:45am. With no one in site, we headed to Nogales Burger for yet another one of their amazing breakfast burritos. We made it back in time for the riders meeting.
Tom from Team Big Bear giving the speech during the rider's meeting Friday morning. You can't see all the riders because the other half of them are behind me. Despite the Friday race day, there were still over 300 riders that showed up to compete. The start format was awesome too. Pro / Expert would start at 9:30 on stage 1 while Sport / Beginner would start on the same hill on Stage 4. This significantly decreased the time on the mountain covering the event, which we were pretty stoked on.
With the rider's meeting complete racers loaded up on Clif products and headed out to their starting stage. Clif was a sponsor last year and will again help out for 2016.
Riders pedal up the tarmac toward the start of Stage 1
The start of stage one was high atop the hill of Southridge Park. The sun really felt hotter up there. The timing crew was very happy to have Kenda Tires supply them with tents at very stage start.
Despite battling a cold, Jon Buckell, racing for Troy Lee Designs and Specialized, came out to the first round to "have fun" and he did that, showing his skills with the one handed wheelie, pointing at the camera, riding up-hill. Jon would finish in 11th out of 30 pro men.
Dillon Santos making easy work of the turns on Stage 2, with the city of Fontana in the background. He would finish 3rd on the day, just 0.7 seconds off of 2nd place.
A few of the Pro Women at the top of Stage 3. All smiles as the weather was decent and the terrain amazing. From right to left, Liz Miller, Megan Gemelos, Brianne Spiersch, Essence Barton
Essence Barton, Team Rabobank Marin, ran a couple of the events for the Fontana Winter Series and practicing the terrain paid off. She took the top step for the first round of the California Enduro Series.
Jacob Marr, railing the turns on stage 3. He would finish in Second Place in the Jr. Expert Category.
At the end of race day results would play out like this....
Full Race Results, Current Individual Standings and Team Standings are available on the CES website.
Round 2 takes us to Reno NV for the Battleborn Enduro on May 14th.
MENTIONS: @calienduro / @calledtocreation
O STEVIE YOU SO FINE YOU SO FINE YOU BLOW MY MIND!!!!
WILL YOU SIGN MY BUTT CHEEK, ITS KIND OF HAIRY IF YOU DONT MIND
YOURS TRUELY
P.s. We buddies! Fam! right!!!
This was not due to a lack of terrain available either. There are some killer runs out at Fontana. In addition I do believe there should be a fitness aspect to Enduro races and they should not just be DH lite. They threw in the road section to extend the racing time so it would look better on the scoring sheets. They could have easily thrown in another stage and achieved the same result. Everyone was off the hill by 11:30 in the morning so they had the time to do it as well.
I will say that their organization for the race was the best I have ever seen. No waiting for start times and the dual start format really helped move things along quickly.
Regarding timing - the first Pros were off the hill at around 11am, the Pros/Experts weren't done until 1:30pm, and last beginners were not off the hill until 2:30pm. There are a lot of logistics consider with a race running 300 riders covering skill levels from Pro to Beginner. That said, an extra technical stage for the Pro/Expert cats could have been added - and something to consider for next year.
Does anyone know how course set up works for CES? If courses are designed by a local (which I think is good) it would be cool if someone with CES could checkout the course beforehand to say "hey, what if we don't make them do that eternal road sprint?"
I feel like courses like last week's diminish CES' reputation, which is a shame because its run by a terrific, driven group of people, and no race course is set in stone.
In the future I would say to cut out stuff that is just filler like the fire road section. I know you guys are trying to make sure people get their money's worth, but every single person I talked to including the XC guys on 29'rs said it would have been a much better race if that fire road section had been omitted. Fitness should be a component of Enduro like Stage 2 and the climb in Stage 3, but it should not be the deciding factor.
Overall I want to say thank you for all the effort you put into these events. I know it is way more difficult than it looks on paper. It takes a lot of passion to run a series of this magnitude.