OK so it’s been a while (never heard that here before eh?). I’ve been out with injury for the last 2 months and didn’t figure anyone would be all that excited to hear about my “epic” 35-50 mile road rides I’ve been doing on my 32 pound Super D bike (Hey It’s cushy and better than running) or my exciting trips to the Y to lift weights. Thrill a minute around here. But I wanted to write about this years Mt Ashland Super D.For those of you unfamiliar with the course I’ll try to lay it out for you. The start is at the Mt Ashland ski lodge at 6500 ft elev. from the start you can see the approximate area in Ashland where the finish is at about 2000 ft elev. Then you dive into a few miles of old road bed turned double track under a canopy of firs. After sprinting off the start & basically tucking & coasting for these first few minutes the joy ride comes to an abrupt end where you make a 180 and start up a 10% grade with about 500ft elev gain over about 3/4 mile. The worst part is after you make that 180 you’ve got a good 45 seconds to watch over your left shoulder to see if the guy who started behind you is making time on you while you’re suffering.
After the climb there is some pristine flowing singletrack for a few miles that eventually dumps you out onto a super fast decomposed granite fire road. A couple miles of drifty corners and it’s back to single track in the form of our local DH race course, followed by some swoopy single track and then a steeper bit of switchback track to the finish line. One thing I think a lot of the racers liked is that there are about 3 places on the 12 mile course where you’ve got a chance of a flat–So if you are cautious there you’ll more than likely get a clean run.
The race basically doubled in size this year to around 130 people which in & of itself is pretty cool. Mark Jordan from Decline Magazine showed up to cover the event & throw down a fast race run for himself of 37:52 to win the Semi-Pro field. Mark Weir of course won the event overall for the 3rd straight year–this time with a smokin’ fast time of 35:22. Here’s a link to the full Results. I spent a good deal of time getting advice about my broken wrist from Eric Carter & Ariel Linsley who have both suffered the same break and recovered from it (slowly but surely). Ariel’s still sporting a trick carbon fiber wrist brace from OTS, and Eric gave me a bunch of cool tips like cold lasers & bone-up. A bunch of the good folks from up the Friends of Capitol Forest crew made the trek down & had a great time. Everyone I talked to loved the event so I’m predicting it overflows 200 racers next year. Not hard when we had perfect weather–I’m talking blue bird skies, easy temps at the top for the start, unlike last year when we had freezing blowing fog at the top with about 150ft visibility. A little dust but not too bad. No snow drifts, no mud, no wind. Dirt was a good mixture between low rolling resistance & descent cornering traction.
Not racing sucks. But I did get some good pics of the race action.
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