A Note From
Bob Muzzy
1979 Cat's Hill Winner
Hi and thanks for 30+ years of a great race.
My recollections from '78 include having my cluster
fall apart too late in the race for a wheel change.
Also I watched Wayne Stetina catch his tire in
the expansion gap between the cement road slabs
on the block before the hill. He turned the bars
to get out without lifting his front wheel, which
ripped his front tire completely off the rim. It
remained inflated albeit sticking out to the side
of his brakes in a horizontal plane. To his credit
he stayed up.
I won the race as a senior in 1979. Bill Watkins & I
got away around 1/2 way into the race. Bill dropped
his chain with maybe 15 laps to go on the hill.
Keep in mind that we didn't have these new fangled
Edward Shifter-Hands back then. Friction shift
levers on the downtube were state of the art at
the time. So the occasional missed shift was excusable.
Bill was a good time trialist and I figured he
would have caught me had I continued on alone.
I was afraid I'd be worn out and decided we'd make
better time together. All that went through my
head in about 10 feet... I quickly decided to wait
for him, we stayed away, and my strategy worked.
I felt rested enough to have a good sprint left.
Bill won the next year but I like to think it
was *only* because I crashed and didn't finish
the race. Spectators tried to grab a stray dog
on the downhill who jumped away from them, directly
into my path. I T-boned the startled dog and flew
over the bars. After I licked my wounds, I felt
sorry for the dog, who couldn't have known what
what happening in his neighborhood that day.
I won the race again in 1989 as a master by virtue
of a better bike throw in the sprint. As memorable
to me as the win was seeing the effect of the Loma
Prieta earthquake on a surprising number of the
beautiful old bungalows in the immediate area of
the race course. Most were largely intact except
for having jumped off a corner or two of their
foundations. I rode down from Berkeley to watch
the race a couple years ago and was glad to see
that they'd all jumped back on by then.
Bob Muzzy
"quite possibly the oldest living winner of
a senior Cat's Hill race"
May 2007
