ROADTRIP: Somba Spring Thaw (Oregon)

Since it is a light week of racing here in NorCal this weekend (not a slight to the Coolest 24 people, I'm just figuring that there are a limited number of nuts who do 24 hour racing :> ), I'm featuring a few non NorCal MTB racing events.

The Southern Oregon Mountain Bike Association welcomes mountain bikers for two days of racing at the 2006 SOMAB Spring Thaw in Ashland, OR on May 6th and 7th, 2006. Part of the BreakAway MTB Racing Series, the races are Southern Oregon's largest MTB events. The cross-country (XC) race on Saturday is 10 - 25 mile events (depending on category) consisting of singletrack, rolling hils and screaming descents. The downhill (DH) race covers 1.7 miles consisting of "course has plenty of technical sections, tight switchbacks, a couple of all-out straight sections, and the last 60 yards is a slight uphill to the finish."

Registration is available at active.com until May 4th, 2006.

Slippery Eel Results Posted

The Trinity River Pirates have posted the results from this weekend's Slippery Eel chainless downhill event.

Congratulations to Jared Delong (Lost Coast Art Gallery) who posted 4:00 and 4:01 runs to beat Hank Matteson (SWD Racing / Trinity River Pirates) and Jake Todd (Revolution Bicycle Repair).

I'll update this post if I see any pictures. Pictures are up !

Norcal Racing This Weekend: Apr 29 - Apr 30, 2006

Just a few races on the schedule this weekend and they are all up north:

Billy Cross Racing has events on both Saturday and Sunday. Sunday is for high schoolers.

The Lemurian is on Saturday. If you are riding XC this weekend, you should be up there.

The Slippery Eel downhill race is also up north.

Good luck everyone.

RACE REPORT: PCRS #4

While I couldn't race this week (I'm travelling through Argentina at the moment), it looks like they had another great weeknight of racing out at Prairie City. Results up here and photos over there. It looks like another set of aerial photos too.

2007 Sea Otter Dates

Yes, it's never to soon to plan for next year. And in that spirit, the 2007 Sea Otter Classic will be held from April 12 - 15 in Monterey, California.

In fact, as bad as my season has gone, I am actively looking forward to 2007.

2006 Shasta Lemurian Update

Just wanted to post some updated information about this weekend's 2006 Shasta Lemurian.

The race organizers have posted some great course maps. Here is a link to the KML file for the Lemurian long course. KML files load in Google Earth (coolest. free. program. ever.) GPS plots the course against the terrain. Below is a terrain projection of the course (click to enlarge).


Organizers have also posted some great pictures of the course over at MTBR. Take a gander at this thread for the pics. They also have some PDF course maps over at the registration site.

The 2006 Shasta Lemurian will be held April 29th (this Saturday) at Whiskeytown NRA near Redding, CA. It is a variable distance XC race (between 8 and 26 miles depending on category) and costs $35 per rider. More details are available here.

Norcal Racing This Week: Apr 25 - Apr 28, 2006

Go get a nice mid-week tune-up before this weekend's heavy race schedule:

Tomorrow (WEDNESDAY) marks another Prairie City Race (PCRS#4). Last week's race was perfect and it doesn't look bad this week, so get there early to register if you haven't raced before. Riders do a varying amount o 4 mile laps (course varies weekly) depending on category. Registration starts at 4:15 PM and costs $25 (subsequent races cost $10). Make sure to come out to Prairie City (near Folsom, CA) for your enduro-style XC racin'.

THURSDAY night is the second race in the Reno Wheelmen's Twilight MTB series in Reno, NV. This week's XC race will be held at Keystone [ MAP ]. The race costs $10 with onsite registration and starts at 6:30 PM.

Keep the rubber side down.

HubTV Player with Brian Lopes

So I hate to do this since Macromedia Flash players don't seem to work very well on all browsers, but the Bay Area-based HubTV has started posting more MTB videos that can be embedded on blogs. This one, an interview with Brian Lopes during the 2006 Sea Otter Classic, seemed especially cool.



HubTV regularly airs MTB videos over at their site, many times focusing on the NorCal freeriding scene.

RACE REPORT: 2006 Iron Angels

So I haven't seen any actual results on this, but there are some good photos over at MTBR. I'll update this with results as soon as they are posted.

RACE REPORT: 2006 Napa Valley Dirt Classic

So they have posted the results from the 2006 Napa Valley Dirt Classic. In the Pro category, Aren Timmel (Soulcraft) edged Jason Moeschler and last year's winner Mark Weir by one and two minutes respectively. I like how the NVDC has all the racers run the same course so that you can compare all the times -- I like how some of the begineers would have placed in the top five in some of the sport divisions. They've all posted some of the official photography.

There are also some race reports over at MTBR.

Below is the satellite map following Mark Weir's race.


UPDATE (04/25/06): The SFist has a race report.

Cool Race Against Cancer 24 hr Race

I kinda forgot to update the details for the Coolest 24 Hour “Race Against Cancer” that I announced last month. This 24 hour endurance XC race will be held in Cool, CA (east of Sacramento near Auburn) on the Olmstead Loop trail (same as the Cool MTB race course). Held between noon on Saturday, May 6th and the following noon on Sunday May 7th, teams (or solo riders) will compete to complete the most number of laps (per 24 Hours of Andrenalin rules).

Event: The Coolest 24
Dates: May 5th - 6th, 2006
Location: Cool, CA [ Directions ]
Competition: MA (Endurance)
Cost: $130/rider
URL: http://www.thecoolestmtb.com/
License: none
Registration: active.com

This event benefits the Auburn Community Cancer Endowment Fund.

Downieville DH Registration Closed

That was fast. According to the online registration page, The Downieville Classic downhill (DH) competition is already closed to amateurs. From the website:

Registration for the Downieville Downhill is closed to all DH classes, except ALL-MOUNTAIN PRO CLASS. We have held a few spots for the ALL-MOUNTAIN PRO CLASS to ensure a high level of competition.

Well, you still can enter the XC point to point race.

Technorati Tags: mtb, MTB-DH, mtb-race, mtb-racing, norcalmtbracing

Rainbow Ridge TV Commercial ?

So I don't know if I should be in awe or simply stupified by this. Behold the Jetway Chevrolet Rainbow Ridge Challenge TV commercial:

Watch the Rainbow Ridge TV Commercial

So, sure it's in Windows Media Player format (if your on a mac you may have to save it to your hard drive before viewing), but how many MTB races have you actually seen with their own TV commercial ? That desert singletrack making me think about driving into Nevada this weekend.

Technorati Tags: mtb, mtb-race, mtb-racing, MTB-XC, norcalmtbracing

Norcal Racing This Weekend: Apr 22 - Apr 23, 2006

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RACE REPORT: PCRS#3

So this will be an extended race report for the Prairie City Race Series #3 since (a) I had someone with me to take pictures (thanks kelly) and (b) I got a new GPS unit that mapped this week's course. Let's start with the track: PCRS#3 was a dry, fast and short course. Measuring only 2.72 miles and 315 feet of climbing per lap, the pace was fast and ferious from the initial downhill. The only real problematic area were a set of rollers towards the last third of the course - it often piled up with slower riders and/or crashes. There was also a small bit of mud but nothing to complain about.

(PCRS#3 course map courtesy of Google Earth)

With the nice weather (temps in the mid sixties), there was a huge turnout. I think I heard over the PA that there were 216 riders tonight. I seemed like the everyone had decided that today was the day to try their hand at the beginners category. Kelly said there were scads of them tonight.

However, like any good race, I had to lay my bike down somewhere. Today, I had my most terrifying crash this year -- I tiggered over a set of whoop-dee-doops went headlong into a erosion ravine and stacked at about 25 miles per hour. In fact, I crashed so hard (a) I believe the woman behind me gasp'd when I hit and (b) I thought I might have taco'd my front wheel (or head). Luckily, it looked far worse than it was, and after a few seconds to figure out which way I should be riding, I was back on my way. On the minus side, my crash happened right in front of a bunch of photographers, so you might see some graphic pictures over on the Race MTB site. Overall, I thought this was one of my better race -- mostly because the shorter, less climbing courses favor my larger size, but also because I felt that I was in better shape after the last week or two of solid good weather and racing. I even had negative lap times for the last two laps (yeah).

Oh yeah, when they post the results, you need to check out the aerial photos page to see the UFO camera footage.

More photos from PCRS#3 are posted at the PCRS site. I'll link to results when they get posted (usually Thursday night). Results are posted here.

Technorati Tags: mtb, mtb-race, mtb-racing, MTB-XC, norcalmtbracing