2014 Downieville Classic XC

 

My Santa Cruz Solo ready for Downieville.

After racing the Downieville Classic Cross-Country for the past two years I decided to compete in the All-Mountain category this year, the Downieville All-Mountain combines the grueling and technical cross-country race on Saturday with the long and demanding Downhill Race on Sunday, competitors must race both days on the same bike and the person with the most amount of points wins.

Home for the weekend!

Ready to get up early for the xc race in the morning.

The start line proved to be very challenging and with over 100 racers in expert alone this proved for some tight passing and sketchy situations in the first stretch of the eight mile climb to packer saddle.

The expert field, there was about 80 racers behind me.

This year I raced in the highly competitive Junior Expert category, and this made for the toughest Downieville races so far, I hit it hard going up the climb trying to keep up with the competition but  suffered from a 33 pound bike, cramps, and 90+ degree heat; despite the pain I still was able to set personal records all the way up to Packer Saddle.

Almost at the top.

At the top of the climb racers take the Sunrise singletrack and than have a few miles of rolling gravel road to the infamous "Baby Head" section, an old road bed completely filled with lose rock ranging from 6in to 3ft.  I unfortunately was held back on Sunrise Trail due to slower racers on the downhill, I did my best to pin the gravel road, and then left the brakes off for Baby Heads putting down my best time and passing a few racers.  At the bottom of this wild ride is the 30ft wide Pauley Creek crossing after a quick technical climb there lies a winding technical singletrack that is Pauley Creek Trail, with many tricky wet rooty/rocky sections.  After a few miles of physical downhill the XC course rejoins the famous "Downieville Downhill", after another mile or so of chunky stuff there is a short but extremely painful climb to the top of 3rd Divide Trail.  Third Divide is a high speed roller coaster known for the possibility of reaching post 50mph speeds and the guarantee of leaving you smiling at the bottom.  At the bottom of Third Divide it is time to get inside the paincave all the way to Downieville with a few miles of dirt road and than First Divide Trail a relatively flat shale path along a Gold Rush era ditch that requires a ton of pedaling.  Once you have completed the First Divide trail this leaves you with a mile of pavement that proves for an intense sprint to the finish in Downieville!

Just across the finish line, that was a tough one.

Although I was not able to beat my last years race time of 2:28:56 I still had my fastest time of this season at 2:35:08 and finished 11th out of 18 of NorCal's fastest junior racers.