by Menuel Prado

The Warrior’s Society is made up of a huge group of avid riders, runners and hikers dedicated to maintain and defend our rights to ride and be able to use the local trails here in Southern California, they are the ones that each passing year put together the famous Vision Quest Endurance Race. Each time you find yourself enjoying the nice well maintained single-track in Orange County is because of the hard work this organization and it’s volunteers do for us to enjoy.

With all the knowledge they have about the local trails, you can be sure to have events with all kinds of terrain and different routes. The Traverse event starts in Black Star Canyon and travels along the Main Divide fire-road in the Santa Ana Mountains and finishes at the Trabuco and Live Oak road intersection. With over 41-miles of great riding and lots of awesome vistas, The Traverse is sure to show you what the Santa Ana’s has to offer.

The first Climb to the top of peaks place is about 7.8 Miles long and ascends 2,200 feet. With a easy start at this year’s event, Prado had the time to check out the competition, and by the time they started to hit the steeper slopes of the Black Start Climb, Manny decided to put a heavy tempo pace at the front of the race and see what the other riders had. A small group of 4 riders formed at the front of the race, but Prado was not going to do any work for the others, so he decided to continue the hard tempo and rode away from the rest. So hard was the pace at the front that the little Costa Rican rider reached the top of the climb in 41:27, almost a record time for this local climb.

This year the weather was really nice with a average of 85F. The next leg of the course was from Beeks Place to the top of Motorway, a famous local single-track trail that the Vision Quest uses to take you to the bottom of Maple Springs, The Traverse bypasses this trail and continues on the Main Divide road all the way to Four Corners. Prado rode this leg of the course in 46:12.

The next section of the Course doesn’t look very long, but it has some of the steeper parts of the race. Prado decided to run the Prototype Specialized S-Works Renegade 2.1 tires for this event, this new tire allowed him to have a very low rolling resistance while having great traction and shock absorption due to it’s high volume; the soft compound on this tire also helped Prado maintain traction on the loose parts of the race.

By aid station one at the Four Corners junction Prado had a large advantage over the rest of the field, his PowerTap computer was telling him that he was at 2 hours and 29 minutes into the race with an average power of 235 watts. After filling his two 22oz bottles with E2 Hydro, Prado went on to continue and climb all the way to the top of Saddle Back Mountain. This climb reaches an altitude of 5400 feet. From there you can see most of Orange County all the way to the ocean, and on a clear day you can see Catalina Island. What follows from there is a long rocky fire road descent, followed by rolling short but steep climbs all the way to the top of the Trabuco Single-Track. Prado rode smart and smooth down this loose and exposed trail all the way to the finish with a time of 3:58 to claim the win in the Open Pro Category. Prado also owns the course record of 3:43, which he established in 2007.

If you are a local rider and have not yet challenge yourself with an Epic race, Prado encourages you to try one. With the great support of the Warrior’s Society it is a lot easier to be able to accomplish such task. You will be provided with E2 Hydro at the aid stations at all the Warrior’s Society events. Along with that they will be providing energy bars, fruit and much more. Prado will meet you at the starting line at the 2010 Traverse Race.

Thanks for reading.