Downieville Race Report from Adam

Pre-riding the Downieville XC course every weekend paid off well in
2005, finishing in the top 30% of the senior sport males was my best
race of that season. This motivated me to take it seriously this year.
Pacing the climb, tire selection, avoiding pinch flats, fixing pinch
flats, attempting to memorize the blind sections of the downhill,
it'll hold your attention for sure. Brought my 12 year old Y33
suspended bike, recently "updated" with a home modified swing arm
(increased travel, tire clearance, and disc mounts). Been loving it
all season, haven't ridden any thing else off road this summer since
cracking the chain stay on the hard tail due to mud induced chain-suck
racing early in the season. Had a bunch of pinch flats this season,
been planning on going tubeless, even built up the wheels for it, just
haven't gotten around to using them yet. Tried different tires each
weekend (mismatched as usual, wider in front, heavier in the rear)
decided that short or blocky knobs have been confidence inspiring
through the rocks, skinnier taller knobs seemed to squirm around not
bite in, even on the hard packed dirt road decent. The Saturday pre
rides went well.

Inspected the bike on the Sunday before the Saturday race, and found a
small crack just below the relocated shock mount, no biggie, I had
time to repair it Monday. I drilled holes in the ends of the crack,
(to stop their propagation) and brazed a plate over it. During Paint
preparation with the sandblaster on Tuesday I discovered two more
cracks in near the main pivot, these couldn't be fixed without brazing
in a new seat tube. So Wednesday I had three days before the race and
I no geared mountain bikes built up. I dug out the new partially
assembled hard tail frame and the stupid light Stans tubeless wheels,
wrenched 'till midnight, road it to work the next morning and worked
out the new bike kinks on my lunch break.

I've been paying attention to my rest/recovery just before races. My
week day routine ends with a 40 minute 1400' climb from the office to
home, decided to pay $1 to take the bus home for the first time ever
(this was my rest day). When I got home (the bus took longer than
riding!) a friend had left some plants on my porch, I guess I got a
little over excited because I sprained my ankle digging compost into
the garden, most painful thing I've done in many years (even after
applying a Lidocaine patch). Decided to call in sick to work for
Friday and declared that I wasn't racing Saturday. When I woke up
Friday afternoon I felt 99% better. Rode over to meet Eddie & George
Cruz for dinner and stay at Eddies house so we'd get an early start
Saturday, didn't sleep more than 30 minutes all night.

My goal of finishing in the top 25% was staring to seem out of reach.
Took some ibuprofen, warmed up and picked a spot on the line in the
front quarter of the field, ended up easily passing folks the entire
climb, Should have remembered I was on a 22 pound bike, and going to
lose positions the rest of the race, could have been more aggressive.
Was still passing people on the dirt road descent. This was my first
off road tubeless ride and first hard tail ride in months! 20 psi in a
Mosquito Airlight 2.3 in front and 24 PSI in a Smart Sam 2.25 in back,
seemed to be working well enough to comfortably push the front end to
the limit in a couple corners. As expected I lost at least 10 spots to
the suspended folks in the baby heads.

Somehow this warped my front rotor a bit. Also, I nicked a log
damaging a spring in the pedal, it kept releasing and was hard to get
back in. I had put all my weight forward and on the sprained ankle
trying to clip in during the decent when the warped rotor pulsed and
through me over the bars. Six more guys went by while getting back on
the bike. The rest of the race wasn't to bad. Didn't notice the elbow
wound until after the finish, got 17th (top 25%) and 4 stitches.