From Team FKT holders Neil, HR, and Bill:

The Marin High Five was an incredibly fun and memorable day with varied terrain, difficult climbing, and rough descents. That being said, there were also some very pleasant rolling hills and excellent single-track descents. When we looked at the route on Strava and saw Jack’s time, we thought we could beat it — especially if we took more “efficient” gravel bikes. We expected it would take us no more than 7 hours. Boy, were we wrong. HR had scheduled a haircut at 5pm (we were planning to start at 7am-ish). We thought we would be done by maybe 2 or 3pm in the worst case scenario…

The day started off with a punch as we climbed up and over to Lucas Valley, then proceeded up 1,800 ft or so of very steep fire roads. After a beautiful summit and a stellar, clear view of Mount Saint Helena across Napa Valley, we descended what was probably the best single-track of the route — on gravel bikes. As we reached the bottom of the first peak we were already 2 hours in. Doing some quick math, I thought: this is going to take us 10 hours. We continued on, enjoyed the ride, got completely worked, and of course, HR missed his haircut appointment.

“Definitely take your gravel bike, dude.” — Neil

“I believed and we survived. Just really hurting for a haircut right now.” — HR