Sky Tavern Collegiate Race at UNR
This past weekend, the Nevada Cycling Team hosted their home collegiate mountain bike race here in Reno. While it has historically been held at Peavine (where the N resides just north-west of UNR’s campus), this year the team sought to do something a little different. The folks at Sky Tavern have held a winter lease for many years there; it’s where most kids in Reno go for junior ski programs and the like. They’ve only got two lifts, but it’s a nice, steep ski hill which isn’t bad at all for learning how to pizza and french fries on skis. I don’t know what snowboarders do, but it must be something less delicious.
This summer, Sky Tavern actually was able to get a year-round lease (I assume from the Forest Service?), so they were able to host UNR’s home race on the mountain. The cross-country trail is fairly well-known and has been used by the Reno Wheelmen and the Sierra Cup Series many times. UNR has hosted the cross-country portion of their races here before this year, but it was always done separately from Sky Tavern’s mountain operations. To host a complete collegiate race, Sky Tavern (with a heaping load of help from the UNR team) built brand new Dual Slalom, Downhill and Short Track courses. The dual slalom course was especially impressive. If you haven’t seen a dual slalom track before, two racers are released from a gate at the same time and have to negotiate a bunch of berms and often jumps in a head-to-head race to the finish. The shear amount of dirt required to make the course mid-mountain was daunting, and a lot of clay and water had to be trucked up to the site too. With some help from Ben Jones on the heavy machinery and a lot of digging, raking and shoveling from the Sky Tavern Crew & UNR racers, the course was built up in only a week.
Griffin on the UNR team on the way to winning his run against a Chico racer on the new Dual Slalom track at Sky Tavern
I should point out I did exactly zero work on the dual slalom course, so I take no credit there. Work made it quite difficult to get up there on weekdays and help out. However, I did help mark the cross country course, so I’m not a total dick after all! Right? Right?
The racing itself began with the cross-country course on Saturday morning. It was intended to be a 7 mile loop, but ended up being only about 5.7 miles per lap. I had to do two laps for the Men’s Bs, and that was PLENTY. The 1,000 ft fire road climb began immediately, and after about 1 mile, the road has a section steep enough that only 1-2 guys could ride up the whole thing in my race. Most got off and walked their bike 150 yards or so up. After that, it winds through some lovely single track, across a couple creeks, through some meadows, etc. It would be very enjoyable if one weren’t at 8,000 ft gasping for air. I have to admit I was pretty bummed with my performance – at the top of the climb, I came out something like 15th out of 20 riders. I seriously put 110% into the pedals and just watched people slowly pull away from me the whole way up. It was a reminder that riding road bikes doesn’t quite translate to mountain biking, and the one month injury hiatus from August to September walloped my ability to climb hills.
Although I sucked on the climb, I began to reel people in through the meadows at the top. A few logs and muddy wallows forced people to get off their bikes, and I gave them the middle finger and started passing. The descent turned out to be right up my alley, and marking the course the day before didn’t hurt either. It’s a loose, rocky fire road for most of it, with a somewhat evil single-track gulley at the end (which was totally trashed and bombed out by the second lap). I passed several more guys through there, so I ended up 6th for the day. Not too shabby. My hero Trevor DeRuise placed 1st with a solid lead in the Men’s As:
Trevor D GETTING REAL for 1st place
After that performance, I made it up to dual slalom. I pretty much suck at this event, but I forced myself through it anyway. I actually nailed a few of my practice runs and I think I could have top 5’d, but both my qualifier run and my first elimination run involved me laying down in the dirt, so I ended up 13th. Here’s a few of the better shots from the race:
Megan and Kristin battle for the win (Wolf on Wolf crime)
Christian looking a lot more PRO than I do
I performed about the same on the Short Track the next day – I came out roaring and stayed in 3rd for several laps, and then started to falter. I think I ended up 7th, but I was really disappointed in that one. Short track is supposed to be my jam, and I just couldn’t muster any more speed. For not really training, it was a decent finish, and having the UNR team (along with pals from Berkeley and Humboldt) yelling at me and trying to force feed me donuts made it worthwhile.
Sunday’s last event was the downhill course, with a real ski lift to take racers to the top. I did a practice run and completely got my ass kicked. A full face helmet and knee pads were nice, but I seriously regretted not having arm or shin protection after my 4th time over the bars. The course had some steep, sandy chutes; basketball-sized rock gardens, and washed out switchback descents. After I made it through most of the more technical stuff up top, I found myself eating manzanita berries several more times before I hit the finish line. I finally said “screw this, I don’t have the skills or the bike.” It turned out my suspension was set all the way to firm on my 5″ Specialized Stumpjumper, but I saw some guys hit this run on hardtails, so I can’t really blame that. Whatever the cause, my confidence was shot, and I volunteered to be a course marshall instead. It turned out to be a good choice; we needed the extra help on course, and I was able to take some more photos:
Sky Tavern view on the way up
Kristy repping UNR in the women’s A category
The UNR team ripped it up all weekend, and I don’t really have the juice to summarize all the results here, but needless to say we brought in a lot of podium spots on our home turf. There’s a little summary on NevadaCycling.com for your reading enjoyment. I am really proud to be part of a great, hard working squad that put on a race like this in such a short amount of time. Aside from that, I had a blast just watching everyone race. There were lots of new racers on the team, and many of them were competing for the first time (or even riding a mountain bike for the first time). Between the new folks, the veterans, the badass course venue and the racing itself, it was an awesome weekend at Sky Tavern.
Great entry Scotty!