Nevada City Dirt Classic #2

[Mark Gibson]

Race #2 is held on some private land on Osborne Hill owned by the Sanchez family, and the prior weekend was the scene of "The Dirty Sanchez Enduro".  The place is a mountain biker's paradise.  Since it's on private property, there was no pre-riding (at least for non-locals) in the days before, but there was a pre-ride window of 7-9am the day of the race.  I'd heard the course was challenging in parts, and as far as your typical "XC" courses go, this was definitely less "XC", and more on the fun end of the spectrum.  Unusually, each lap was only 4 miles, but had 750' of climbing, and lots of technical spots, so the 4 lap course turned out to be a hard 16 miles.  I was riding a Trek Top Fuel with a dropper post, which ended up being a good component choice for this course.

My kids were racing Cat 2 (it was my daughter's 15th birthday, and she actually wanted to get out of bed at 5am, and go race a mtb on her birthday, which made me smile), so we got up there around 8am to make sure we got a pre-ride lap in.

After pre-riding, I relaxed, and watched my kids race, getting a few good pics of them getting air off some wooden features so they can show off on their Insty feeds.  The temps started to pick up, and by noon when the Pro and Cat 1 field went off, it felt like it was in the high 70s.  My Cat 1 40-49 wave had 11 or 12 racers.  I knew a good start was important as early on there would be some sections where passing opportunities were non-existent.  I got out well, really well, and took the front.  Concentrating too much on hammering, and not enough on the course, after less than a quarter mile in, I then totally missed a sharp left turn and blew straight through the yellow course marker tape, losing several places. Excellent.......  So much for the good start.

I got back at it, and caught and passed everyone while still on the first climb.  At that point, I was leading a group of three, and we had already caught up to some of the Cat 1, 19-39, wave that went out ahead of us.  We began the downhill, a super fun flow-type trail with a couple features/drops thrown in, but I got slightly held up by the riders in front, so I was not able to get away.  

On the next climb, I caught one of the guys from the 19-39 wave, and politely told him I was coming by on his left, which I then tried to do.  He veered left as I tried to pass, cutting off my passing line, which I assumed was an innocent mistake.  When I got another chance to pass, I told him again "I'm coming by on your left".  Once again, he veered left.  Hmmm, maybe not a mistake, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.  OK, let's give it a go on the right and see what happens.  Yep, he veered right.  WTF?  I eventually got around him but that kind of behaviour is just puzzling. Whatever.

The first lap was kind of a blur after that.  There was a short flat section, some more climbing, mostly on beautiful Pine tree shaded singletrack, and then another fairly lengthy downhill, with a bunch of features, including some jumps, and a car!  It was actually ramped and not technical to ride over, but sums up this crazy course well.  The finish to each lap was a quarter mile or so climb, steep in places, and a bit more exposed to the sun.  I came in to the end of lap 1 with a lead, but I had no idea how big, so dug in again fairly hard on lap 2, passing a couple more of the 19-39 Cat 1 guys, and some singlespeeders.  I got in a back and forth race with a crazy strong singlespeeder, who was impressively pulling away from me on the climbs, but then I would take back over the front on the descents.  We traded back and forth on lap 2, and I eventually got away from him on lap 3 to avoid being humbled again by him on the climbs.

I basically had no idea where they guys behind me were on lap 2 or 3, and had to toe the line between not going so hard that I would be cramping on lap 4, while continuing to hammer hard enough so as not to be caught.  Lap 3 was a good one in as much as I was starting to get familiar with the downhill, so was able to flow a little better, go faster, and so not push as much on the climbs.  Lap 4 was more of the same, maintaining a good pace and finishing strong, albeit more tired than anyone should be after "just" 16 miles.  

I finished 1st place in Cat 1, 40-49, also finishing ahead of all the other Cat 1 racers except for the winner of the 19-39 group.  That made it two 1st place finishes out of two, in this three race series for the State Championship.

It was quite a day for Acme, with Greg winning his Cat 1, 50+ race, Jim getting 2nd in the pro race, Shiloh 2nd in Cat 1, 19-39, and Michael also getting 2nd in Cat 2.

I'm looking forward to the next and final race in this unique series.