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Surf City, The Next XTERRA Mecca?

One hundred and twenty-five years ago Hawaiian Princes brought surfing to Santa Cruz.  125 years later the Hawaii-based XTERRA crew is bringing off-road tri.  Only time will tell if a century from now this super cool city on California’s Northern Coast will have two monikers – Surf City and XTERRA Central. One thing is for certain, though, everyone signed up for Sunday’s inaugural race is in for one awesome experience.

Santa Cruz is silly cool.  The host hotel is on the beach, across the street from the brilliant bright colors of the boardwalk with giant roller coasters sitting on the sand and a wharf that jets 2700-feet into the Pacific Ocean with a dozen restaurants selling the freshest fish imaginable.

The swim itself is right next to the barking seals and the Wharf built in the early 1900’s so locals could ship potatoes to San Francisco for mining camps in the Sierra Nevada during the Gold Rush.  Just to get down to the swim start at Cowell’s Beach racers will have to bob-and-weave their way through kids on cruisers, grandma’s on skates, 6-foot-6 beach volleyball players, 4-foot-4 lil’ surfer groms, fisherman, freaks (oh yeah), and college kids.  Heck, the XTERRA crowd will fit right in.

Even the road section of the bike course is epic.  The four-mile zigzag on West Cliff Drive to get from the cold water to the coastal mountain trails at Wilder Ranch has got to be one of the sweetest stretches of asphalt in America.  Never more than a few feet from cliffs that drop dramatically into the Sea, riders will pass the Santa Cruz surf museum housed in an old school lighthouse, girls in bikini’s walking miniature dogs, and one of the most famous surf spots in the world - Steamer Lane.

At just about the same time the ocean breeze is about to seduce them into some summer fantasy they’ll make a sharp right turn, head through a tunnel below Highway 1, and enter the dirt.  XTERRA reality will hit hard as the clickity-clack of chainrings drop into low gear to handle the Douglas-fir and redwood-laden ridges at Wilder Ranch State Park.  There’s a lot of climbing on this course, which is good because it’ll give them time to see if they can spot the deer, boar, bobcats, coyotes, or mountain lions that live there.

On a clear day at the top of the course you can see for miles all the way across the bay to Monterey.  The euphoria will last about as long as a deep breath before it transforms into pure adrenalin when they hit some screaming fast singletrack downhills.  Ahh, mountain biking – skills, speed, s-turns!

By the time racers trade their bikes for trail runners they’ll have already experienced a lifetime worth of emotion.  From anticipation to anxiety before the race, focus to freezing during the swim; groove to grind on the first half of the bike, and trepidation to thrill on the second half.  Then comes the run and a lot more fun all along the coast and up-and-down the bluffs.

When it’s all over they’ll be smiling – full of accomplishment and with their own unique story to tell.  Then they’ll party – Santa Cruz style on the beach or in the hip downtown and there’s a good chance they’ll say, "that was cool."  And maybe, just maybe, in 2111 there will be some kind of fat tire track tribute on Beach Street with a sign that says “XTERRA was here,” circa 2011.