Melisa Rollins Report
My 2022 off-road season started off with a bang at the True Grit Epic stage race. The stage race consisted of 3 stages: a 45 mile self supported and untimed gravel ride, a 50 mile technical mountain bike race, and a 80 mile burly gravel race with 8,000 ft of climbing to cap off the weekend.
Stage 1 went off without a hitch. My boyfriend, jeff, and I linked up with a friend and rode the route at a solid pace. This stage was not timed, so we were able to take in the beautiful desert views, and open our legs up for the real racing to begin the next day.
MTB Race - 1st
Stage 2 was the most my most highly anticipated stage of the weekend. The true grit mountain bike race happened to be my first ever bike race back in 2016, and I won the female sport class. I have had aspirations to come back and win the race in the pro division, but the race course has continued to get the better of me over the years. This has included a crash in the 2018 race resulting in 5 stitches in my knee, followed by a broken wrist on course in 2019. I was determined to not have pressure to make mistakes on any of the more technical portions of the course by establishing a lead early on, and I did just that. On the first major climb of the day, I broke away with a lead of about 2 minutes, which I kept until the finish. I was ecstatic to pull off a win, but even more excited to finish off the day without any trips to the hospital.
