Race Report: Ukiah Mendo Grasshopper

Race Report: Ukiah Mendo Grasshopper

Date: April 27, 2025

AVRT racers: Steph Hart

Top Result: 5/6 women’s pro field

Course: 75 miles and 8500 ft of climbing, ~60-70% gravel. Not a terribly technical course, but there was a ton of rain Saturday, which made the course pretty muddy for Sunday’s race. 

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/14306937543

Race Recap (written by Steph)

This was day 2 of racing for me after getting smoked at Berkeley Hills RR. Nonetheless, I optimistically signed up for the pro field, because I’ve had a gravel bike for two months, and I had already done a whole race without crashing. 

The course starts with a climb up lowgap road (30-35 minute climb + another 10-15 minutes of rollers). All 50 or so women in the field started together 5 minutes after the pro men. I made it halfway up the climb with the main group of 6 riders before getting slowly gapped and finishing the uphill section with Kelly Brennan. Once the road turned back down and there were mud puddles and some sketchy descending to contend with, I was out of my element and got dropped very hard on the ~6 mile descent. I spent the next hour or so riding alone (and also some mental real estate wondering if I was even still on course), before eventually getting passed by some age group men I could ride with for the longer paved sections. Most of the second climb from 60 miles onwards was solo, and was comparatively very slow and sloppy- as was the following descent. Given that I hadn’t seen anyone in the women’s field all day, I kinda lost the plot and was just out for a bike ride- trying not to think about the minutes (hours?) I was bleeding to people who were competent off-road cyclists. Eventually I rolled into the finish a full 30 minutes behind Jen (yikes)- but also kudos to Jen for finally winning a hopper. Looks like I’ve got some bike handling skills to address before the next gravel event, but at least I didn’t get beat by any of the women in the age group field.