Bay Area Super Prestige #1: McLaren Park (Part 1: Morning Races)

The Moonies were out in force for the first race of the year in the Bay Area Super Prestige Series. We fielded 20 racers for the day, and fed substantially more. Unfortunately, our keg was intercepted by the park rangers, so we were forced to make do with the cans we could smuggle in.



McLaren Park has a reputation as a very hard course. It includes a brutal run up, several tough climbs, and some nasty, bumpy stuff on the downhills. We were able to manage pretty well (since most of us have mountain biking roots), but the course took its toll, for sure.

The gigantic (over 100 racers!) C men went off slightly after 9am. Moonies ended up from 29th to 95th at the end.

Ted Ketai proved that the huge miles he's been putting in does matter, by posting his best cross finish ever.



Scott Crosby led the Moonie contingent.


Brian and Derrick also had good results.





and Lee fought through some mechanical issues to finish respectably


(if that chain looks dodgy, it's because it wasn't particularly acquainted with the chainring at the moment)

Next up was the Masters B race. Mark Woloschuk and I represented the Moon Machine in this race.



Unfortunately, the results from this race are not yet posted, but I think we did pretty well. As usual, the lack of a good starting position came back to haunt us. The race bottlenecked drastically just after the initial run up, and anyone who didn't hit that in the first dozen or so certainly had his work cut out for him.

Morgan Fletcher was our sole representative in the A Masters race. He was somewhat hampered by his participation in the Gran Fondo the day before: 103 miles and 15,000 feet of climbing will do that to you!

(images by Moonies Mark, May, Ted, and Lee)