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Brian Head Utah |
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Written by Adam Craig
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Tuesday, 15 August 2006 |
This is the second year for the Brian Head, Utah NORBA. Yeah, it's kind of in the middle of nowhere, 3+ hours south of Salt Lake and east of Las Vegas, but it's spectacularly scenic nowhere and happens to have some of the best singletrack I've ridden anywhere. Word got out after last year's meagerly attended event as to the quality of the area and a bunch of folks turned out to see for themselves. No one I talked to was disappointed.
Racing almost seemed to be an afterthought up there at 9000 feet and rising, we made sure to go on cool rides after the races and generally take it all in. Unlike me, as I had been training hard all week, making up for lost time and prepping for Worlds, Carl was pretty serious about the weekend's main events, as he'd been at home training hard and focusing for a couple weeks (whie I thrashed around in Whistler trying to play DH racer and kayaker guy who stayed up late...). With Carl's focus in mind, I was happy to see him go up the road in pursuit of the leaders midway through the amazingly beautiful and fun one 27 mile loop XC race. Once I lost sight of his charge and could no longer live vicariously I focused on the scenery and having a good time railing singletrack. Carl kept the leaders within sight for the rest of the race but could never close the gap. He ended up attacking (by attacking I mean pedalling, while seated, slightly faster, at approximately the strength of an eleven year old at sea level) Ross Schnell with 1k to go, finishing 6th. I completed the Schnell sandwich in 8th.
Keeping with my theme of racing every endurance oriented event the weekend had to offer, which started with second place to Ross in a pretty entertaining super D on friday night, I raced the Marathon on Sunday morning. For some reason a 50 mile MTB race starting at sunrise seemed like a good time and a good way to get in shape on the quick. I figured the secnery would be nice in the early morning light too. Turns out it was. Fortunately, I quickly came to the conclusion that following a bunch of altitude boys attacking at the beginning of 50 miles at dawn was foolhardy and I settled into riding tempo, eating snacks and appreciating the scenery for the next couple hours. Once 9am rolled around and my body's alarm clock went off I started actually riding and made up a bit of time, fininshing 5th in about three hours and twenty minutes. Definately a good way to get in shape.
After a short siesta in Parowan (6000ft instead of 9...) it was short track time. We gladly ignored the evil headwind on the paved start straight in favor of the gentle push it gave up the course's ascent of the dual slalom course. That climb, coupled with manualing down the tabletop, made the whole race a damn good time. Somehow I felt awesome, and Carl seemed to as well, so we settled into the lead group of seven, eventally whittling it to five. As always when we're in this position, we liked our odds. And as always, we blew it. JHK attacked hard with three to go, I tried to cover it and set Carl up to counter, but instead I gapped him off the group and failed to catch the rocky mountain boy. Both gassed from my effort we hung on for 4th and 5th, totally flanking the podium... Fun racing though.
A lesson to anyone whom it may concern- When Todd Wells says, "hey guys, I heard there's a sweet trail that drops you out at that mexican place in Parowan" you should ask some questions, maybe even suggest a map consultation. When you follow Todd off what is clearly the east side of a plateau you want to be dropping west off from, toward the setting sun instead of away from it, you shouldn't be tricked by how amazingly perfect the trail is into ignoring the obvious fact that you're going the wrong way. Had we known this about Todd and trails around Brian head we totally could have avoided bribing the proprieter of a closed for the evening shuttle service into driving us the 35 miles to Parowan from Panguitch, where we actually ended up after an hour of totally worth it descending... Good times.
The theme of not consulting maps or better judgement continued after we rode the Virgin River Rim Trail (amazing) on monday and set off for Durango, CO for a few days of layover before the Snowmann NORBA. Driving into the Arizona high desert in the middle of the night we spyed a shortcut on a gas station map. Forest Service Road #564 would totally cut off five miles of highway and insert some adventure into our drive. Turns out it would add seventy miles of dirt road in the wrong direction, over sandstone ridges and through "do not enter when flooded" sand washes, durning a pretty serious thunderstorm... After three hours we ended up on the highway again, twenty miles back from where we started. Sweet. Nice moonlight and entertaining rental abuse though...
Lesson clearly not learned, still mapless, we left Durango for Telluride on Wednesday to meet up with Walker Ferguson to ride some high country singletrack. The logical route on paved roads we deemed uninteresting and elected (unanimously) to tackle the 12,000 foot Ophir pass. The burly Jeep at the bottom didn't worry us and it turned out it needn't have. The mud caked Hyundai chugged it's way up and over, delivering us to one of the coolest rides I've done in quite a while. Singletrack laughter style.
One more long mapless dirt road from on the way to Aspen went smoothly at at interstate speed limits, making us think the wrong turn in Arizona (which actually brought up briefly back into Utah) was a fluke and that we should always seek the road less travelled... |
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