When you go for a mountain bike ride with a guy who has his name on his shorts and jersey, you know you’ll have to work to keep up.

So Bend resident Marcel Russenberger goes easy, and occasionally slows and looks back over his shoulder at the rest of the field.

On this day that’s a quintet of local mountain bike racing enthusiasts. He’s giving them a tour of the course he’s designed west of Bend for Sunday’s Cascade Chainbreaker mountain bike race.

Russenberger, 42, is a veteran of three Tour de France competitions, races that included Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault.

He’s ridden against the world’s best at world championships, competed in all the big European road races, and claimed national titles in road, cyclocross and mountain bike in his native Switzerland.

”To race the tour was a dream,” says Russenberger.

A long, twisting road with plenty of epic climbs brought him to Bend for the 1987 Cascade Cycling Classic. Back visiting a few years later because he liked the area, he met a girl, and decided to call Bend home, quickly fitting into the local biking community.

”He’s the real deal, is what we call him,” says Alex McClaran of Bend, a former pro racer himself whose early encounter with Russenberger he describes as a turning point in his life. ”Every kid who has dreamed of racing bicycles and going to Europe – he’s the guy” to talk to, McClaran said.

Russenberger married the girl he met in Bend and, with two daughters now, has settled into a comfortable pace, which includes organizing the annual Cascade Chainbreaker, designing the course himself.

”I organize this race because I still want to be connected with cycling,” he says. ”I can design a race course that is fun for a beginner and good action for an expert, too.”

On the course, he pauses at the top of a steep hill – not even close to being out of breath – to look back at the trail.

”Last year everybody said the race was too easy; no climbing,” he recalls. ”So I was looking for a really steep climb.”

He found one. In fact, he found more than one. But he hasn’t put in so many as to make the 11.7-mile course overly challenging for racers trying to get in shape early in the season.

”I don’t want it too hard in the spring,” he says. ”People just start riding bikes now so they’re not in top shape. I don’t want too long an uphill.”

Russenberger’s father raced in the Tour de France in the 1950s, pedaling to the top of gravel-road passes and helping teammate Hugo Koblet win the overall title in 1951. As a child, Marcel Russenberger watched the great road racers of the time, notably five-time Tour de France winner Eddy Merckx.

Inspired, Russenberger grew up racing bikes, winning the Swiss cyclocross national title for juniors at age 16. By 20, he was racing professionally, competing in the Tour de France from 1982-1984, finishing each one.

One year, his team led their sprinter to the final stage victory in Paris, with Russenberger taking him into the final turn on Champs Elysees for the winning sprint to the finish. Russenberger finished ninth in the stage.

From 1985 to 1989 Russenberger won five medals, including the gold in 1988, for the cyclocross national championship of Switzerland. In 1985, he placed fifth in the world championships in Munich, Germany, in Olympic Stadium.

In 1987 he began riding for a pro road racing team based in Boston, which brought him to the Cascade Cycling Classic. He raced the CCC from 1987 to 1991, taking third in the downtown twilight criterium in 1987.

Late in the summer of 1988, Russenberger tried his first mountain bike race on a course between Bend and Sunriver.

”I was in Bend for a vacation and someone told me we had a mountain bike race,” recalls Russenberger. ”I borrowed a bike and beat Paul Thomasberg.”

At the time of the race, Thomasberg was one of the nation’s top mountain bike racers, and in 1990 took third in the downhill and fourth in cross country at the world championships, a combination finish that remains unmatched more than a decade later.

But in that 1988 race Thomasberg found himself challenged at a local event. He still recalls it, with Russenberger trying to use his road tactics and Thomasberg his superior technical skills.

”We were way ahead of everybody else,” says Thomasberg, who lives in Bend and now tests mountain bike equipment. ”He couldn’t out attack me and I couldn’t out attack him. He was just fast. We didn’t know each other and he was on an old, beat up bike.”

It finally came down to a sprint finish where, Thomasberg recalls, an automobile on the race course played a role in the outcome.

But regardless, it was an eye opener for Russenberger.

”Then I was kind of surprised, and I was interested in doing some more,” he remembers. ”Mountain biking was out into nature, and I did so many races in the city. A mountain bike race is always out in the country, especially here in the Northwest.”

He continued racing road, cyclocross and mountain bike, eventually concentrating on mountain biking, which started getting popular in Europe.

He estimates he won more than a 100 mountain bike races in Europe during the 1990s, including the Swiss national title in 1996. He was also third at the world championships in Vail, Colo., that same year. Also in 96, he won two individual races and the overall title in the European Mountain Bike Marathon Series, which features races 80 miles long with thousands of feet of climbing through the Alps against 4,000 to 8,000 competitors.

”A really hard, long race,” says Russenberger. ”A lot of climbing. A big survival race.”

Mountain biking, he says, ”had endurance from road racing and technical skills from cyclocross. It was a perfect combination.”

But Russenberger says it took three or four years to learn the technical skills on the mountain bike, and even then the downhill sections gave him problems.

”There were young kids who always had fun going downhill,” he said. ”Now the young kids have the technique for downhill and the endurance as well. So now it’s a new generation that is taking over. The road racer can’t do it anymore because he doesn’t have the technical skills.”

But Russenberger wasn’t ready to just give the title to young kids. At a local race in the late 1980s a youthful McClaran found himself up against Russenberger for the pro/expert win.

”He waited for me at the top of hills and I was too young to understand why,” recalls McClaran. ”I thought I was killing him. He just wanted someone to ride with.”

But on the last hill, Russenberger didn’t wait, building a three-minute lead, as McClaran recalls, on the last mile and a half.

At the time, McClaran wore a hat that he had lettered with ”I (heart symbol) pain.”

”Marcel comes over to me and says, I gave you pain, no? You shouldn’t like pain. You should like fishing.’ ” recalls McClaran, still one of the top local mountain bike racers.

”I took that hat off, put it in my pocket and never wore it again. And I’ve tried to be humble ever since. The message was to let your legs do the talking.”

An estimated 300 pairs of legs will do the talking Sunday on a course Russenberger says will a fair test for expert riders but get beginners across the finish line with smile on their faces.

”Exactly – fun,” says Russenberger. ”I want people to come back and feel like they can do another race.”