Nevada City Dirt classic #2 2017

[Greg Alsterlind]

Drove up early Sunday morning with Jim, Simon and Shiloh for a 9:00am start for Simon. Fairly remote place but as we where all about to find out , well worth the trip. Acme had a good amount of riders attend: the four of us plus-Mark Gibson, Mark Buell and Mike Koppe. The course was only open to pre-ride till 8:30 and I was having a hard time getting going so I skipped it. After seeing Simon off, Shiloh and I walked the first section of the course. The short climb out of the start lead to a fun/fast down hill that ended with a couple of short log and ramped drops. That was all I was going to see until the race. Mark Buell and I warmed up about 11am just outside the parking area. We did a little exploring on some single tracks that seemed to split every 200 yards into endless hand made trails with jumps, bumps and berms. I don't think even Northstar has this many single track trails.  I was getting excited to see what this 4 mile race course was going to have.

My plan was to hang with the fastest guy in my small (8 of us) group to the top and catch my breath on the down hill. Dan Goldsmith, who beat me last year in race #3, was at the front as we left but downhiller Mike Galeoto was in the lead as we started down. I gave Mike a little room to get his fat tire bike started and then I tried to close the gap and flow his line. Not sure how I did it but I managed to stay right on him as we passed 2 riders on they way down. It wasn't until we started to climb that I realized we had put some time on Dan. The climbs were short but Mike's fat tire bike was not going to roll as easy as my Bontrager 2.0 XR1's. I managed to jump into the lead and hold it.

I caught Buell early in the second lap but he got stronger as we kept going. By the 4th lap I was starting to get tired and could see Dan closing in. I picked a downhill area before the last climb to see if I could separate from him. In the end it was close but I won my first Cat 1 race. I have always been a team athlete and while this was fun to win, our team saw Mike, Jim and Shiloh all take seconds. Simon( Mechanical problems) and Mark Buell finished high in their two largest groups. Perhaps the most exciting thing at the end of the day is Mark Gibson (1st place Cat 1 40-49) and Jim Hewett (Pro) have real good shots at being 2017 California State Champions! Fun to be part of.