Ashland Super D
Super D is the raddest thing to hit mountain bike racing since the Tioga disc wheel. A race that’s mostly downhill is, let’s face it, the frosted donut of bike racing. It’s a treat that should be savored. The anticipation of racing one is like standing at the counter, trying to zero in on which delectable ring of fried dough should find its way down your gullet.
All the Ashland singletrack flavors are tasty: smooth, cake-moist soil, sprinkled with rocks and roots, dusted with pine needles and fine dirt, ridged with double-jumps. String twelve miles together, and you’ve got a sugar high of baker’s-dozen proportions.
However, beware the unpopular Poison Oak Special, which the pizza-faced teenage counter guy will try to slip into your selection unawares.
In my book, a descent that long requires more aggressive eye protection, and I’m willing to look like a moron in exchange for seeing every bit of trail with bright, clear vision.
Testing the goggle/cross-country helmet setup at Hall Ranch. Ladies, the dudes love this look.
The rooster-esque nose protector is the best part, isn’t it? But I have to tell you that the goggles were TITS. My eyeballs have never been so happy after a ride when we did our initial pre-run of the Ashland course.
That day, Thursday June 10th, was cloudy in town, so that meant the top of Mt. Ashland was foggy and frigid.
The view down the fire road, which had recently been plowed. And check this out: it’s only 4800 feet at this spot.
We had caught a ride up with our pals Ariel and Abby, formerly the Yeti demo team, now working for Santa Cruz. We wasted little time getting ready at the top, then blazed down the fire road. Soon our hands were frozen and our legs shaking from the cold. The course was wet and sloppy, and rain continued to spit on on us, but everyone kept telling us it would be dry and grippy by race day. Later, as we destroyed our hotel bathroom with Mt. Ashland mud, we weren’t feeling so sure.
We scoped some singletrack that wasn’t part of the course. Yum.
Ariel and Rob model various other helmet & eyewear options.
We found the course to be a ton of fun. Fast, flowy and mostly non-technical, with lots of opportunity to catch some air, moto the turns, and make various Return of the Jedi comments. You know the drill. But it goes on and on, until finally you find yourself in Lithia Park, all the way back into the town of Ashland. Seriously badass.
On Friday we did another pre-ride, this time with the services of Ashland Mountain Adventures. A school bus possibly dating back to 1945 crept up the mountain, filled with blabbering, excited bikers and dragging a trailer full of expensive rigs.
Having a good time at 35mph
Once we made it to the top, we found that the track was already firmed up, and we could see how it could be awesome by the next day, when Rob raced.
We did another run, this time checking out the fireroad sections we’d skipped the day before. Nothing too difficult, but a couple of turns needed some practice. As our strategies began to form, we got more and more psyched for race day.
Saturday dawned sunny and clear.
Mt. Shasta makes its appearance
Rob was ready to rock.
The noise you hear in the background is the Taco Bell truck. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I doubt even a sixteen-year-old downhiller is going to eat a bean burrito before one of the most intense races in mountain biking.
Rob is loving his new Yeti ASR-7. He’s got it pretty tricked out, ready to take some abuse while not being a boat anchor, which is pretty amazing on a bike with seven inches of travel. It’s crazy where bikes have come. Awesome.
However, Rob slayed the course so hard he lost his chain twice. It’s tough when you’re hauling ass over rough stuff with no chainguard.
Blazing past the finish line
He finished in the middle of the expert pack, which I still think is awesome for a guy who works more than he gets to ride, and had mechanical problems to boot. Kick ass.
As for me, I had to wait until Sunday to race. I feared that the course would be pummeled beyond recognition, but it turned out to be just fine. I stood in the start tent feeling strong — euphoric, even. I was hardly listening to the starters in my final ten seconds, just staring down the fire road and picturing the first few turns. The promoter said something weird about stopping at the finish line to tell the officials my start time. This didn’t fully register, because as I had waited for Rob at the finish the day before, not a single rider had stopped at the finish line. It also just sounded odd. Don’t the timing officials KNOW my start time? Otherwise, how the hell are they timing my run at all? But as I said, I was deep in course visualizations and not really working all this out in my mind.
Soon my five seconds counted down and I was off. I hit the fire road at a good clip but not full gas, because the big climb was just down the hill. I rolled into it in the exact gear I had planned on, went to the limit I could hold, and began churning it out. I felt good, I didn’t blow up. Encouraged, I attacked the next section and kept on ripping, loving the sensation of having the track to myself. I was having a great time, just pumping and diving into turns and getting my groove on. Totally awesome.
But then, about 20 or 30 minutes into it, all alone out there, I began to lose focus on some of the flatter, more pedally sections that really require the rider to keep hauling ass. It was so quiet and peaceful that I had to keep reminding myself that this was still a race, not a joyride in the woods. I picked up my pace again at the end, pushing my limits around the steep, choppy switchbacks at the bottom.
The final turn before the finish. I look weird, but my eyes are so happy right now.
As I charged through the finish, my brain reminded me that there was something I was supposed to do. I made eye contact with the officials. They looked right back at me but didn’t react. So I kept going. Well, come to find out later that I truly was supposed to physically stop my bike and tell them my start time so they could figure my final run time. Which I just found very weird, considering I’ve been racing for quite a few years now, with plenty of Super Ds included, and I’ve never heard of this method before. So I ended up with a DNF, even though I finished the race right before the eyes of the officials.
I didn’t really have the heart to get mad, since the folks from the shuttle company had taken over race promotion late in the game and were doing the best they could. It’s not like they didn’t tell me what I needed to do. Besides that, it’s not like I was in contention for the podium. While I was only a couple of minutes down from the mid-pack times in expert class, which is a positive thing, I obviously lost too much time spacing out mid-race. The informal time I collected on my personal watch put me at last or possibly second-to-last. So that sucked some of the wind out of my sails, but didn’t detract from the fact that I’d had a great time out there. I just need to spruce up my skills and work on the mental game. This was my first-ever time-trial-style Super D, after all. It’s a much different experience, mentally, than a pack-style race, which naturally keeps you on the rivet at every second.
Rob and I capped off our week-long stay with several more days of riding in the area. Monday we explored some more of Mt. Ashland with the shuttle service owner (Bill and Sue are the owners…super nice folks who are working hard to get more trail built there).
Tuesday we drove out to Applegate Lake. The trails there are smooth and easy, with incredible views of the lake. We decided that area would make for a great training ride on chill days. And then on our last day, we joined a group of folks heading out on a shop ride in historic Jacksonville, just northwest of Ashland. When they heard that we had done the Ashland Super D, they had to show off their own Super D course. So we climbed a fire road into a nicely maintained motorcycle park, and then bombed down about six miles of deliciously narrow singletrack, deep in the trees with a mix of rocks, steeps and buff sections.
We were definitely impressed that the Oregon riders have both the trails and the initiative to create awesome Super D courses. It’s a damn shame that the Colorado options aren’t as long or as interesting. But, perhaps the race promoters just need some feedback.
At any rate, it appears that this race is ready to take off. For example, the Pro fields had a lot of big names like Adam Craig, Ross Schnell, and Kelli Emmett, plus SRAM brought their whole XO media circus to test out the new product. If you’ve got the time and the money, get yourself out there next year. Everybody needs a frosted donut in their life sometimes. Now, we just need to add bacon…
