Today is Monday October 12 2026 and yesterday i raced the 50 kilometer Little Sugar mountain bike race in Bentonville, Arkansas.
It was pretty awesome.
Here are a lot of words (and a lot of pictures) about the race and our family trip to Bentonville in general...
The race started at 7:30 am and i got to the start line 10 min prior and was thankfully able to line up close to the front, 478 people were there and i'd bet close to 400 of them were lined up behind me.
There was a brutal road climb 2 minutes after the start but i was prepared. i drove it twice two days prior and mentally broke it down into 3 sections. By the end of the 3rd section i was fading and getting passed but i got to the top without going too deep so that was a success.
From there the race went relatively smoothly all the way to the finish. I hit very moderate stop and go traffic, i got bad cramps at the very end but handled it, i never crashed, i had no mechanicals, it took me 2 hours and 59 minutes and i finished 127th out of 478 total starters.
The cramps and general fatigue from the family trip that occurred the previous two days prevented a likely top 100 finish and a potential top 75 finish. The complete lack of single track riding in the 3 months leading up to the race prevented a lot more!
But... it was an awesome race and an awesome trip. Our Airbnb rental was on the course about a mile from the finish and X and the not so little man were standing out front to cheer me on as i came thru... how awesome is that!
The three of us arrived in Bentonville Thursday night. The rental was sweet and would have been sweeter if it didn't have so many necessary stairs. Friday morning we explored the downtown on a warm and picture perfect fall day and ate breakfast outside, later i did a 2 hour bike ride including some good course recon. i saw Tinker Juarez! Then we headed out for a family trip to our favorite creek / swimming spot which felt amazing on a 90 degree day. That night the not so little man stayed home alone (we half jokingly asked some of the members of the USA national team who were staying in the unit directly across the courtyard from us to keep an eye on him!) while X and i went out for drinks and dinner, which was totally awesome. Walking around Bentonville with the love of your life on a perfect Saturday night when the town is hopping is pretty sweet.
i had 3 drinks and never regretted it for a second.
The next morning was a lazy morning and after lunch, X and i pedaled to the race packed pick up. This was X's first outdoor bike ride since she crashed and dislocated her elbow 8 weeks prior. Later i rented an e-bike and we did a family bike ride. The not so little man continues to resist the joys of pedaling a bicycle under his own power so on special occasions like this i'll hook up the tag along and pull him. This time i was smart and rented the E bike to make that task monumentally easier. We had a great time exploring the area, stopping at creeks and flying up hills. That night we did a movie night, Mandalorian and Grogu, a favorite of ours. We did pause the movie midway (exactly midway, luck of the draw!) for a quick family bike ride thru town at night, complete with Halloween music on the blue tooth and a stop at our favorite ice cream spot.
Bentonville is a fantasy land.
The following day was race day and i was up at 5:15 and out the door at 6:30 for the 7:30 start.
i grabbed an espresso at a coffee shop along the way (the single cup of pour over coffee i had at the place wasn't getting the job done) and then did the 30 minute pedal on sweet bike trails up to the start.
i felt calm on the start line and moved up aggressively after they said go. i recall feeling pleased that i took the fast outside line into that first brutal road climb and then i recall almost immediately realizing that the climb was so steep and so long that coming in fast didn't help much. After cresting that first road climb i spent the rest of the day on the back foot. i was never in over my head but i had no snap, no punch, no pep. i might not have had that anyway but a 5-10 minute very hard climb right out of the gate sure didn't help. The first hour was smooth in a rusty way, meaning my single track skills were rusty but i managed it smoothly. Rocky technical stuff didn't give me problems but trying to go fast down swooping trails did. For some reason i just cant lean into these fast corners.
My skills warmed up as the race went on but by the end of hour two i knew cramps would be a problem. i held them off as long as possible but with about 2 miles to go i actually had to get off my bike and stretch out my hamstrings. That was on the final climb which was steep. i came sooo close to avoiding a true cramping issue. The race was a bridge too far for me. So i stretched for a minute or two and then got back on and finished relatively strong. Seeing X and the not so little man cheer me on gave me some extra juju for that last mile.
And that was the race.
i'd define my result as "okay", i expected better but i'm still satisfied.
The truth is that i've done nothing in the recent past that comes close to equaling the effort i put out yesterday, so to expect my body to magically rise to the occasion is silly.
But i can be silly sometimes.
Ultimately i'm incredibly proud that, just like last year, i'm able to do a fun family vacation followed by a hard bike race and to do it all with a good attitude.
And i did have a good attitude. i was like a hungover yet extremely zen jedi out there. Nothing phased me. i was thrilled to have the opportunity to do a race like this and by golly i was going to embrace every second of it. i rode all the technical sections, unless i hit traffic and had to walk in which case i was smoothly off and back on the bike. i cant say the same for some of my riding companions, apparently i'm a true jedi when it comes to mounting a bicycle. i passed and let pass in rhythm. Including allowing one impatient guy to come around on a steep sharply banked downhill section. i sensed him on my left and also sensed his hesitation to pass me because his window was closing, i went very high onto the bank, making it clear i was giving him the inside line but he continued to hesitate so i slowed even more which caused my rear wheel to ever so slightly slide down the steep slope, but i'm a (hungover) jedi so i Tokyo Drifted and kept it upright while he passed me.
Then i slotted neatly in behind him.
i wont lie, it was a sweet move and i felt pretty cool in that moment.
It's hard to feel cool after getting passed in a mountain bike race but i managed to do it.
i make the rules around here.
There were other jedi moments, i was unclipping at will, with both feet, whenever i needed to push off against a rock or root, and this was always done in rhythm.
You might be saying to yourself "a jedi wouldn't need to unclip to clear a single track section" but i was a hungover jedi. That's different. They occasionally unclip and they don't feel bad about it.
And truth be told i wasn't really hungover, that was the day before when i woke up after 3 drinks the night before. On that occasion i was a hungover jedi on vacation. But that vibe carried over to race day so i think "hungover jedi" accurately describes the state i was in... plus it sounds cool.
When i looked at my race splits my sense that i was in a solid rhythm was confirmed. At mile 8.4 i was averaging 10.94 mph and when all was said and done i'd averaged 10.87.
i had a pre race goal of averaging 12 mph, maybe next year.
Upon crossing the finishing line i chugged the cold blue bottled water they handed me, chatted with old friend Justin Bowes (he finished 17th!), and then got my bike fully washed for a $10 donation to the local Nica group. Then i pedaled back to the rental, packed up (well X thankfully did most of that), showered, and were on the road in under an hour and back in KC by 3:30.
What a trip!
(Tinker Juarez, who did my race and is 65 years young finished 10th!)
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