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Race Report by Anthony Thaulad Just thought I share this with everyone, What a great weekend at the NORBA season opener. The weather was just nice for everybody to have a great time. I was concern about the weather at first since the forecast called for a heatwave for the whole weekend. I arrived late Friday after a grueling 9 hours (with a lunch stop) drive from the bay area. The main freeway 330 was closed due to a truck accident so I had to go around using highway 38 which is pretty much add another 45 minutes. The first beg/sport practice session was already over by the time I got there, which is OK since I did not plan to do that one. I walked the course just to be familiar for my Saturday practice run. The course NORBA runs two courses for this year DH race ( I guess they did the same thing last year).
Course A – Expert/Semi-pro/Pro. The pro course was more of a high-speed type of course. It was pretty much fire road with a lot big jumps. I heard NORBA lost the permit to run the course through the woods for some singletracks. That’s why they end up with a fast course with multiple jumps. The experts/pros were getting some serous air running that course. On the other hand, the beg/sport course was actually more technical than the pro course with two 3’ drops, rock garden, steep tight singletrack, some jumps (not as big as jumps in the pro course) and some fast sweeping fireroads. The course ends with a long pedaling section to the finish. Practice Day Since Sea Otter was my only big race experience, I expected the worst on practice day. I thought the line was going to be really bad for the chairlift and it did not turn out that way. I guess having two courses help to spread the crowd. Riding the chairlift was a very enjoyable experience since I had to stand in the back of a flat bed truck on my last race at Bass Lake. I did four practice runs because it was just fun course to ride. Race Day Did one practice run in the morning before the race just to see the condition of the course. The race starts at 10 am and my start time was 11:52 which was not too bad. I had a clean run which what I was hoping but probably didn’t pedal enough because I was out of gas somewhere in the middle (need to start doing interval training). Finished 15/30 with a time of 7:05. The guy who took first place, finish with the time of 6:10. The competition was definitely tougher than other events. Overall it was a great experience. The event was great, organization was excellent. I’m looking forward to the NORBA national at Mammoth lakes. They are going to have two DH races.
- Velocity DH (new technical course like the bullet) A guy from NORBA told us that it would be possible to do both since they will have different practice and race time.
Anthony
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