OK - - on to a report. This'll be a two-day, since I just finished a two-day event at Mt. Coeur d'Alene in Idaho. First day was an Endurance DH (emphasis on 'endurance'); second day was a shorter 'technical DH.'
Endurance DH encompassed the upper half of Lake Coeur d'Alene's Caribou Ridge trail (FS #79), coupled with about a 2-mile fireroad connector (more on that $%#^%%&^& in aminute) to the lower 2/3 of FS trail 257. All-in-all about 7+ miles of not-all-downhill race in N. Idaho fir-and-cedar forest. Trail 79 is swoopy, flowing singletrack in its upper half and too high-consequence to use for racing in the lower half (hence the cut-over). Ahhh . . . the cut-over: the first 100 yards tips downhill slightly and you think "This won't be bad." Then it flattens out; then it goes up; then it flattens out; then it goes up . . . for literally two miles. I took the Blindside on the practice run, never having done this part of the course before. It beat the crap out of me. It finally joined up with trail 257 and then it was back to flowy, not-really-technical singletrack punctuated with enough high-speed flat corners and another ¼-mile uphill section to keep it interesting.
Was glad I decided at the last minute that morning to throw the DB on the rack and take it too. 'Most everyone showed up for this one on their 5-6" trailbikes for this one. I had a good run. I was the only 40+ Cat 1 there (let alone 50+), so podium was a default. What I was interested in was how my time stacked up overall. Turns out my 25:21 would have gotten me second in 30+ Cat 1 - - bested the second place guy's time by about 2 minutes; and would have taken a close fourth in Cat 1 19-29 behind my friend Scott's 25:17. That made me pretty darned happy.
Sunday was the tech DH that ran the entire length of trail 257. 257 is the one that never and I and the guys shuttled a few weeks ago - - wonderfully buff, swoopy singletrack . . . usually. It gets interesting when rain gets in the mix. And rain it did, from the end of practice at 11 am through the Cat 3s and 2s all the way through our about-2 pm start time it alternated between drizzling and pouring. By the time we got on it was fairly chewed. I had a mostly clean run, maybe a little too cautious in a few places; but I kept the bike under me for the most part. Except for getting sideways in one compression and almost taking out a photographer. Somehow pulled the slide out, though, and got back up on the trail and kept pedalling to the finish. I'll post the pic when Shawn's dad posts it up. He kept clicking until he had to jump clear.
Anyway, since there were no other 40+ Cat 1s that day either, I was by myself again. I felt like I repped respectably enough, though, with an 8:55. A friend of mine in 30+ Cat 1 got on the podium with an 8:48, so I was at least close. All-in-all a fun weekend and got to take home a little hardware and schwag.
A pic from Saturday's Enduro DH - - dunno why I have that deer-in-the-headlights look
(well a link anyway, with credit to Asa of Digital daredevil Media):
http://shop.digitaldaredevil.com/Spo...90956307_zz6cB
Hoho! Just found this Sunday sequence from another photog of me almost taking out Shawn's dad:
