2011 Gowdy Grinder

Report by Eddie Clark  

(May 22, 2011) Curt Gowdy State Park, WY.—Regardless of winter like weather in Northern Colorado and Wyoming, the Gowdy Grinder provided racers with some great racing on a fast dry course.  Laramie Mountain Bike Series race co-promoter Nat Dyck was quick to note the attributes of well designed trails, “I can’t say enough good things about the trail system here.  We had 8 inches of snow up here on Wednesday night and its dry today. The trail system is really well built and it drains really well, it’s awesome.”

In fact, even with intermittent showers in the days leading up to the race, the singletrack was nearly perfect with only one very small slightly muddy bit, which made for a well rounded cross country race course.  Admittedly, the singletrack at Curt Gowdy State Park is REAL singletrack- not the 2 feet wide variety that many cross country races are run on.  It’s also quite challenging with plenty of undulating terrain and technical rocky sections, but is probably best defined as being really fun.

Open Class racer Heath Brown concurred on the great riding to be had, “I’m from Laramie, so it’s kind of my back yard. It’s one of my favorite places to ride, and it’s pretty technical racing as far as the course goes.  It’s probably a little bit more true style of mountain bike racing.”

Other easy draws for racers attending this event were racing licenses were not needed to participate, and in this time of exorbitant entry fees, the entry fee was a meager $10 dollars!  Being within a couple hours of the Colorado Front Range with no mountain passes and accompanying traffic ensured easy accessibility with low travel expenses for a quick one day trip.  Although, Curt Gowdy State Park also has plenty of amenities at its affordable campgrounds for racers wanting to arrive a day early.

Racers could choose from the beginner, intermediate or open classes with no age brackets for the men’s and women’s fields, and even still some women chose to ride in the men’s open race so they could ride for longer.  Basically it came down to your confidence level and how long you wanted to race your bike.

“Some of our friends said let’s do the whole race.  It’s 10 dollars and if you don’t want to do the whole thing you can drop out without worry.  I don’t think the conditions could be much better, the trails were great and the temperature was nice for racing.  It’s great that people still do races for fun", said Melissa Thomas who also raced in the men's open field so she could ride more singletrack.

In the men’s open field, which raced for 18 miles, Australian Josh Carlson took the win with a time of 1:38:50 while Peter Webber took second at 1:42:26 and Troy Heithecker rounded out third in 1:43:44.  Sara Tarkington won the 13.2 mile women’s open race in 1:37:11 with Laramie local Sarah Conrad in second at 1:40:58 and Karen Hogan in third at 1:43:48.

Complete results here.

More photos.