Our first annual Trabuco Challenge was a great success!

We could not have asked for better riding weather with the overcast keeping the temps down. We had a few bumps prior to the event with our timer, Barry Wood, having the trip from hell trying to get back to California Friday from Iowa after one of his flights was cancelled due to plane issues. Barry, now known as "father timer," was in good spirits Saturday morning despite his travel issues.

The first place finish went as expected to Tinker Juarez, a past 1st place finisher in the Vision Quest. He did the 24 miles and 4,000 feet of climbing in a time of 2:15:09 despite having to stop and fix a flat tire. Tinker will return to compete in the October 22nd Vision Quest for the Pro 50 and up and possibly overall in the 2017 SENA King and Queen of the Mountain Series. The staff actually guessed what time we expected him to finish the Challenge and several of us were very close.

One of the behind the scenes things that took place was club member Calvin "Superman" Mulder decided to sag the Pro Class on a fat tire 36 pound bike. Calvin is a tremendous athlete who has the Vision Quest running record, fixed gear rigid record and has the only record for riding the Vision Quest in a time of 6:30:39 and then putting on his running shorts and running it back wards finishing in 13:07 for a combined time of 19:37:39. We called this the "Calvin Quest."

Here are the top finishers in their class:

Male Pro 50 and Up
1. Tinker Juarez - 2:15:17
2. Joe Ruffino - 2:54:04
3. Steve Dickson - 3:07:25

Male Pro 20 to 49
1. Josh Oskins - 2:22:38
2. Kevin Baxter - 2:26:36
3. Chris Heinrich - 2:29:09

Male Intermediate 50 and Up
1. Doug Andrews - 2:27:50
2. Thomas Harden - 2:54:08
3. Bill Toth - 2:55:43

Male Intermediate 20 to 49
1. Jimmy Adams - 2:40:59
2. Clint Allen - 2:52:54
3. Sharone Levy - 2:55:49

Male Intermediate 15 to 19
1. Joshua Dix - 3:03:02

Female Open
1. Kate Mullarkey - 3:56:10
2. Jeanine Reiswig - 4:39:11

The complete results can be found here.

We have 18 places open for the October 22nd 2016 Vision Quest and 36 spots open in the Counting Coup. All those who participated in the 2016 Trabuco Challenge who are not signed up for the 2017 Vision Quest or Counting Coup will have first chance to fill those spots. I'll be contacting them in early October with a code they can use to sign up for the events based on whether they raced the Pro class or Intermediate class in the Trabuco Challenge. You will be able to sign up for the Vision Quest and Counting Coup respectively. Any spots left over will be open to the public. All those entered in the 2016 Vision Quest and Counting Coup will be given priority registration for our 2017 Vision Quest, Counting Coup (on April 8th 2017) and Trabuco Challenge (May 6, 2017).

This is the first year we've had the SENA Queen and King of the Mountain Series combining the finishing times of the Trabuco Challenge and the Vision Quest (pro) and Counting Coup (intermediate) with champions in each age class and with overall champions. Next year as (previously mentioned) the Vision Quest and Counting Coup will return to being held in April with the Trabuco Challenge being the series final in May. We may have custom jerseys made for the overall champions. We also want the Trabuco Challenge to be more of a party with camping overnight on Friday with a D.J. Friday night.

We thank the U.S. Forest Service for their assistance in making all our events happen. The Trabuco District of the Cleveland National Forest is under staffed and the great people that work for the district perform an amazing job despite the understaffing. We also thank Steve Parker for use of the Parker Ranch. Steve is a great guy who cares deeply about the wilderness that surrounds him. We also thank Dennis Duty for making the awards; he does a great job as does Barry Wood on the t-shirts. Of course all our events would not be possible without the support of our club members and other volunteers. A shout out to Carrie Harden, our medical director, who is successfully battling cancer with a sense of humor that should be a lesson to us all and Joe Lopez, our communications director, who is caring for a parent with Alzheimers and despite the demands of their care stretches his time out to keep our communications support on track.

We thank our sponsors, El Pollo Loco for their food and SENA, a world class leader in Bluetooth communications for motorcycles and industry who are coming out with Bluetooth communications for mountain bikers. They provided us with communicators for our staff and motorcycle support. They will be at our October Pow Wow with their upcoming mountain bike products. This year's and next years King of the Mountain Series will be the SENA King and Queen of the Mountain Series.

And most importantly - thanks to all of you for your patience during the two years of fire closures. The words of encouragement and thanks are appreciated.

See you at the Pow Wow in October,
The Warrior's Society