SBR #3 Henry Coe Race Report - By Mike Urbina

This race was at Henry Coe Park which is right down the road from me so I couldn't miss it. Arriving at the venue it was bloody ass cold! After the sun came over the mountain it warmed up quite nicely.
I've lived in Morgan hill for 4 years and still have never ridden at Coe. Many years ago someone told me that most of the terrain was either straight up or straight down. They weren't far off the mark.

The start of the race was a little over 2 miles up the road from the parking/sign-up area which made for a good, much needed warm up.
They started all the sport racers together so it was a mass start. Again I got a crappy spot on the grid....gotta stop doing that. So as we're waiting to go I'm noticing we are already sitting on an uphill grade and the trail keeps going up. When the green flag dropped I was way in the back and it took about 15 seconds before I or anyone around me could start moving. Up up we go, doing nothing but climbing. On the fire road before the singletrack I managed to get in contact with the front sport guys. Great, but I'm working pretty hard. Into the singletrack I looked up ahead only to see everyone in front of me in a serpentine line still going up with no end in sight. We started hitting some really rocky, slippery, technical uphill stuff that was causing some riders to tip over, walk, etc. I got over most of it, making some passes in the process. I was thinking "wow this hurts like a mother but it's nice to see some technical stuff for a change, you usually don't see alot of this on a race course anymore". And there was reason for that. We were no longer on the race course.
Racers started coming back down the hill announcing we'd taken a wrong turn! After debating for a couple of moments whether to follow suit, I turned around and joined the conga line back down the mine field we'd just climbed. Ok, let's get back in this!
BUT we kept going down, down, down. When we finally got back on the course I'd estimate we'd gone about 2 miles out of our way. Not good.
Now we are on fire road and climbing again. And climbing more. Near the top I started to slowly get dropped by the main pack until they were out of my sight. All I could do was keep plugging along and hope for the best. After the summit we finally got some up/down action that included a few mud bogs that would just sap your energy. After the middle portion of the race I got a second wind and started passing people. Up ahead I see most of the group that dropped me earlier and that was all the motivation I needed. I could feel myself getting stronger on the last part of the climbing before we entered what would be about 2 miles of mostly downhill singletrack. I passed a couple guys in the group of around 7 riders ahead of me before we hit the the downhill. As we started the descent, everybody was definitely going for it and I was just biding my time until I could find a spot to get around someone. I got around one guy, then another. Now the trail gets steep, FAST and sketchy with some ruts thrown in for good measure. I was behind about 4 guys and saw there was a narrow line on the left that no one was using. I called out "on your left" and passed 3 of them one after the other. The next guy I came up on was actually an expert single speeder (they had a longer course) and he let me go by (thanks dude). After that I let go of the brakes and put a gap on the pack I'd just passed. I must say though, that downhill was pretty high on the pucker scale. I was doing probably 35-40mph and down the trail I'd see a slippery, off chamber turn. Whoa racerboy, better get your braking done before you get there cause if you try to do it IN the turn you're gonna be on your a$$.
When I got to the bottom I was treated to 4 really good creek crossings, 1 of them very deep! This went on for about a mile before crossing the finish line.
Since I had caught and passed most of the group from the start, I thought there may be a chance that I'd podium'd but the wrong turn was too much to overcome.
Looking at the sport results you could definitely see a pattern; 1st and 2nd would be fairly close in time, then 3rd place was 8-9 minutes behind. My theory is that the lead group opened a gap at the start, went the wrong way, then the group behind us went the right way and opened a gap of their own.
No excuses though, the course was marked well enough and it was my (our) own fault for not paying attention and just following the guy in front of us. That's racing.

--Mike U. 5/16 @2:12:18