Soo….it’s been a minute since I actually did this race, but I like to keep all of the races chronicled here so, better late than never.

Where is Downieville, CA…to be honest I couldn’t really answer this, and on some level still sort of struggle with it. It’s in Northern CA in the mountains sort of between Chico and Reno, in the middle of nowhere. This tiny town of 300 people hosts a huge Mountain Bike Festival and race that has always held some intrigue. However, from the east coast it’s not easy to get to. Also, the main event is the All Mountain, which is the XC race on Saturday and the Downhill on Sunday, now the DH on Sunday is more of a XC downhill with it being close to 45-50 mins long and a lot of pedaling but still predominantly downhill. This year instead of doing a big stage race or multi-day bikepacking trip, I opted for the Downieville Classic with a group of friends. We’d race and do some fun riding instead of 4-5 days of grueling riding. However, I did decide to only do the XC race on Saturday. The DH is not my strength and I wanted the chance to get out and ride for fun on Sunday to see more and stress less.

The summer lined up to be a crazy time. The 4 weeks before the event had stacked up so that I had a conference in Dallas, flew up to meet Katie in Burlington, VT to start our family road trip of the year into Quebec for 2 weeks of family tripping, before being home for just over a week before leaving to head to Downieville. This was not exactly the best preparation for getting into race shape for a 26 mile/3 hour race. I’m not a professional though and my results don’t really get me anything, so I wasn’t going to make too many concessions on my vacation to save 5-10 minutes in a race. So, I tried to squeeze in a few rides while we were traveling and put a few efforts into some of them but it still wasn’t anywhere near the same as being in a good place to prepare. Let alone the “vacation” eating and drinking, but it is what it is and we had a great family vacation. I will say that when I went to weigh my bike bag after packing it, which involves weighing myself first on the bathroom scale, I was slightly surprised by the number before I picked up the bike bag. But hey, not much to be done at this point.

If you’re not aware, Downieville isn’t really the easiest place to get to. For some reason we had decided to fly into San Francisco, then rent a car and drive the 3 hours up to Downieville from there. Why? To be honest I’m not 100% sure, I think it had to do with the itineraries that were available when we booked the flights, but I can tell you that I wouldn’t do it again. We also only had about an hour layover in Atlanta, which isn’t long enough these days, particularly if you have checked bags. After delays leaving Asheville, we missed our connection to San Fran. Fortunately, there was another flight before too long that went to Sacramento, which was a better airport for us to fly to. We managed to get on that flight along with one of the bikes, but not the other. Long story short we ended up having to stay at a hotel near the airport to be able to go back the next morning and pick up the bags. And, Delta airlines now has Wes on a list of sorts….needless to say it was a bit of an adventure already.

We had to pick up Tristan in Sacramento anyhow so ultimately this wasn’t such a bad deal. The morning went smoothly honestly, lazy breakfast, pick up Tristan, grocery store, airport to get the bike and bag, then on the road up to Graeagle. Things were rolling now. We made it to Graeagle, built the bikes up, and headed out for a little ride to get used to the area. After a long day and a half of travel it felt good to be pedaling and outside. It was hot but, in the shade, it wasn’t too bad. This was my introduction to the dust and overall extreme dryness. Riding with 3 guys who are all a bit faster than I am, I was tail gunning the whole time and getting the max dust. The trail was crazy fun though, a great mix of technical, chunky, smooth, fun, turns out we’d ride this a few times over the week.

Friday, we got the opportunity to pre-ride a lot of the course. This is a point-to-point race with one big gravel road climb out of the start up to a saddle then down mostly trail to the finish. We were lucky in that you can drive right up to that saddle and skip most of the big climb. Which was nice to keep the overall efforts in check the day before racing. We got picked up the course right where it turns from Gravel to trail on the newer Gold Valley Rim Trail (not all downhill from here). This traversed/climbed for a way until it turned downhill. Great trail, lots of rock, sharp rock, blind rises, super cool in my opinion. A lot of the rock was sharp looking, jagged, sort of felt like Krypton from the superman movies in places. Really glad we had the chance to get on this trail ahead of time. Off that into the Baby heads section, which was an old “road” I guess that’s largely a creek bed for some time of the year. Just full of loose softball to cantaloupe sized rocks (or baby head sized rocks). Stay loose and let’er rip, I say that but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t going near as fast as it felt like I was going. Then into the fast sections of Pauley’s creek, and the “divide” trails.

Somewhere in Pauley’s creek Tristan managed to get a flat in the rear tire. After looking at it for a while and pulling it off to put a tube in, I remembered I had some good plugs he could try. Which worked and he was ready to go. I took my position in the back, and we headed on. Really shortly after I felt my rear tire going flat….shit, I gave Tristan all my plugs. They got further ahead as I slowed way down to nurse the tire. Finally decided to tube it, spare tube has a hole, I put all the air I could in it and rode it as long as I could to get shorten the walk. Finally, caught the group and borrowed a tube and more air. We were back on our way. Our short little pre-ride got a lot longer than we’d anticipated.

Tristan and I both went into the bike shop there in Downieville and bought some tougher new tires for the back wheel. And headed back to do some bike maintenance. I was really glad we had the chance to do some pre-riding. Not that it was going to make me that much faster, but it really upped the enjoyment level knowing more about the course and trail. Where I needed to try and make up time and where the tricky spots were…and how to cross the big creek without falling in like I did on the pre-ride.