Race Report : Racing Around Williams

This was a new race on the circuit this year. It promised to be 'very technical, but in a fun way', so I signed up. However, with a more established race being run on the next day further North, it would be interesting to see what kind of crowd it drew.

In a rare moment of solidarity, the rains came in on the weekend, on both East and West sides of the mountains. Would it be muddy, or would the parched ground be able to absorb all the water Mother Nature could throw at it, and still be able to let off a few puffs of dust ? As I made the drive Westward, I thought it might be 50/50. Crossing I-5 as darkness fell, I noticed it clearing up. But then it became darker still, and I hit the Wall of Rain. Hadn't seen drops this big since I was freeriding in B.C.

Williams is not a big town - in fact it's hard to tell if there is a town there or not - and signs were sparse. With the pouring rain and bad visibility, I thought I might have arrived in the vicinity of the race, but then again it could well be that I would have to drive 10 miles the next day when I could see where I was going. Getting close to 11 pm, I was ready to setup camp, but the constant onslaught of mailboxes alongside the rural roads meant that this was private land territory. Finally got to a dead end, where a dirt road wandered up the hill a bit. I went as far as I could in the low-clearance van, then made a difficult turn-around where I almost rolled into a ditch. There was a bit of a flat spot on the side of the road where I could pitch a tent, but I was a little leery of the possibility of drunken partying rednecks running me over in the middle of the night. Decided it was time to test the theory "Sure I can sleep in the van - lotsa room, no problem!", so squeezed over to the side of the road to give it a try.

After 20 minutes of rearranging stuff, mostly shoving it into the front of the van, I was able to make enough room to lay down my Thermarest and test it out - lumpy, and I didn't exactly park on a level spot, but it should do. As I got into my bag and tried to sleep however, I realized the convex hump underneath my back was really not working for me. A concave depression you can live with, but this lump was hard to work around. I seriously contemplated setting up my tent in the rain, but decided to tough it out. Managed to get a few hours sleep, and the rain lasted most of the night.

The next morning I found the intersection where the race was supposed to start. Shortly after 8 a.m, no one around, and no signs of a race. Drive towards the last town, and then see the race setup a few hundred yards past where I was on a side road. Hmm, could have camped up here last night. The turn-out is pretty light, and only 20-25 Exp/Pro's take off at the 10 am start. I am in the front line, and am actually in first-place for the first quarter-mile! Ok, we are following a pace-car, but it's going pretty fast :) The pace car drops to the side, and half the pack surges ahead of me. Fools ! I am of course conserving energy, and will blow by them all later when ... er... maybe they all get squashed by a large meteorite ?

It's a 4-mile climb up a dirt road to the top, whereupon we will descend the promised 'technical' single track, get back onto the main road about halfway up from where we started, climb to the top again, do the downhill a second time... and then guess what, climb to the top again and do the downhill a third time. Check out the elevation profile in my cool graph below.

The descent is pretty sweet - lots of high speed forested sweepers, tight corners, baby-head sections. Then a bit of up-and-down technical, before another downhill section, that featured more and tighter switchbacks than Valleycliffe's 7 Stitches. I was jostling position with a couple of others here, but they ended up getting ahead. The third time on the downhill, you went straight instead of going back to the road, and this was the toughest section yet. Probably 2000 vert of narrow raw steep singletrack, reminiscent of the top of One Man's Garbage in its infancy. I passed yellow-jersey guy who I'd been battling earlier - funny because he mentioned he was local and knew these trails - figured he'd be railing the descent. Then as I get onto a flatter area with more visibility, I see another yellow jersey ahead - aha, so that was a different guy. Finally get out onto a dirt road, and I figure we must be getting near the end, and turn it up a notch. But ten minutes later I'm still in the middle of nowhere, no idea how far to the finish. Then yellow jersey passes me, and as it turns out the finish was only a few minutes away. And this was the same guy who knew the course, so he knew exactly when to put in the finishing kick.

Pretty wasted at the end, all that up-and-down really takes a toll. I ended up first in my class, which only had 2 people in it. So probably most who attended this race got a medal, due to the low turnout. Why the lack of racers ? Many possible reasons :

1) New race this year

2) Advertised as a difficult technical course, so this scared away all the roadies.

3) There was some road race happening the same day, so roadies had a great excuse :)

4) There was another more established mountain bike race the next day near Portland, so it was more convenient for many people [yeah, they had 9 racers in my class at that one]

But I would rate this race pretty high : great open start on ascending road that spread everybody out, and awesome technical downhills. I think this was the first time I did a race in Oregon, where my upper body was sore the next day [like it was when I did the Gearjammer last year]. See ya next year.