GG2MB 2010

What better way to enjoy the awesome weather of Valentine's & President's Day weekend by starting the race season and then following that up with an epic ride through the Marin Headlands and Mount Tamalpais. The ride is known as "GG2BM" which means Golden Gate Bridge to Marin Brew, the ride was organized on mtbr.com (mountain bike review), a big community of mountain bikers who come online to meet and discuss their passion for mountain biking, by "baycat" and was scheduled to leave at 10:30am just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

A few of us decided to park at the ending spot, which also happened to be Marin Brewing Company in Larkspur and ride the 11 miles to the starting point through Sausalito and meet up with the rest of the gang. We departed around 9am and got to the "starting" point where we met up with a lot bigger group! I think we were 27 strong once we ventured out at 10:30am. It started out foggy but cleared up as the day went on.

We started up Conzelman Road which offered a great view above the Golden Gate Bridge, the grade was gradual and soon enough we hit some dirt and headed down the fireroad to our first fire road climb of the day. But once up, we got to go down again and this was the fun part!

As you can see the day was nice and sunny and not windy at all. We made our way over to the base of Mt. Tam and went up it via Old Railroad Grade which is a pretty mellow climb since it was graded for a train back in the day, the 1900's! Haha

A small group of us branched off from the main pack at the West Point Inn near the top of Mt. Tam to continue to the top and get to the finish quicker while the others waited.

We got to the final decent, Eldridge Grade, which offered a fast rocky decent and I definately felt it on my hardtail, my hands were pretty locked onto my handlebars the whole way and had a hard time letting go once stopped, they were cramped pretty good!

We rolled back through Ross, Mill Valley and San Rafael to get to the finish where I was anxious to get some grub and beer in my system. This is the whole reason why I did the ride in the first place isn't it? BEER! I quickly cleaned up and drove across the street to quickly get seated and order my appetizer and beer ASAP with my fellow bikers. I started out with a wheat beer and some steak cut fries. For my main dish I ordered the "Mt. Tamalpais" burger for one simple reason..."Because I f**cking climbed it!"

Here are my pictures, take a look, there are some good ones! Again, awesome day! Click slideshow to view album or sit back and watch the show

In the end the ride took 4 hours 20 minutes moving time and about 41 miles! Here is the link
to the Garmin Activity: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/24797952

Here is a cool collage someone made on mtbr of a bunch of pictures (a good amount are the ones I took)



Link to the discussion on the forums about the ride:
http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=6587195&page=2&highlight=GG2MB

Pictures by others:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2051838&id=1118962678&saved#!/album.php?aid=2051838&id=1118962678

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dan-ger/sets/72157623333681443