529 Beginner racers Alex Fowler and Audrey Sarin started off in the first heat. Audrey showed that the Evergreen camps and Whistler downhill time paid off by continuing her winning streak, this time beating a few of the older women in the process as well. She’s only got one more year in the 12 and under category and she’s stepping up her game.

Sadly Sergei, our expert class rider was sadly out for a work related trip. Disappointing to not see where he stands after a hard winters training that saw him drop 3 minutes from his previous years lap time in the practice run the week before. Old man and Clydes-rider Rob Bangerter was with Sergei in New York test riding a new 529 yellow big wheel.

Sport riders VB and Nate had an epic battle, with each other, which ended in Nate taking an inside line I’m not sure Jeff Gordon would’ve gone for, shoulder checking VB and pushing ahead to take the leading spot in the 529 cup.

Brian Hilger stepped up to the 40-49 age bracket this year and riding a steed he borrowed from Paul Midgen placed well in the top half. His spanky new Blur XC frame fresh from paint was delivered to him the very same day and we look forward to seeing what he’ll do aboard that.

Me? Well I started training late, and then got myself injured in December with an IT Band issue, so saying my training suffered is an understatement. I’m working with the great folks at VO2 Performance out of Bellevue, and enjoying that. I’ll just say that I wasn’t last, and was actually happy to not be. I look forward to watching my forward path through the field and am concentrating on being in tip top shape for my XC race at Sea Otter.

Friends of 529 – Steve

Ten of us from The Project made the trek south to experience Super-D Ashland-style at the Ashland Mountain Challenge Powered by SRAM. If you’re not familiar with Super-D, it’s the duck-billed platypus of mountain bike racing. A Super-D is a mostly downhill course that’s much longer than a downhill race with at least one big climb thrown in. Pure downhillers suffer on the climb and don’t have the endurance needed to win. Pure XC racers don’t have the skills to negotiate the technical descents. Someone with the skills and the legs for both dominates.

On Thursday, a group of us met at Ashland Mountain Adventures to get a couple of shuttles in to preview the course. The weather was perfect and we were all pumped to see the 12 mi. course and to see how steep the 600 ft. of climbing was like. Starting on the course with the fire road at the bottom of the Mt. Ashland ski runs, the fire road was really fast with sweeping corners, ruts and jumps. The fire road ended right at the base of the climb where many riders quickly redlined on the steep grade. At the top of the climb the course turned down again with a mix of rolling single track, eye watering fire roads and step single track littered with switchbacks, jumps and brake ruts. At the bottom we discussed key points on the course and the importance of using our brakes wisely. Avid makes the best brakes in the world, but no brake can overcome rider error. Getting on the brakes too much was going to cook them on the course. Sections of the course were steep. Ungodly steep. From there it was dinner at Caldera Tap House and back to the hotel to get some sleep.

The SRAM Chainless race was on Friday and the name is, well, literal. The race is a downhill course raced with no chain, which means no pedaling. On Project 529, we’re used to putting SRAM parts on our bikes to make them faster, so it was strange to be taking parts off for a race. After removing our chains, we all realized the only way to get started as by either pushing the bike and hopping on (cyclo-cross style) or by running from the saddle (Flintstone style). After a quick practice run, we shuttled up for the race. Again, the course and weather were awesome. Loose sand over hard-pack, sweeping turns and some really steep technical sections. As long as you maintained momentum and pumped the back side of everything on the hill, you really didn’t miss the chain. But in case you did miss your chain, SRAM was at the bottom of the course to hand you a brand new chain just for finishing.

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We all met for dinner again, woofed down some Mexican food at Agave, had a few beers with the Avid product team to discuss the changes to the Elixir line for 2012 and turned in, psyched for the racing Saturday.

On Saturday, the weather took a turn for the worse, which just means it was no longer perfect but just really great with clouds and cooler temps. We all tried to keep warm at the top while waiting for our number to be called. Each of us had our own pre-race ritual (including, but not limited to, fiddling with tire pressure, shoes, suspension sag, tire pressure again or endless runs to the restroom). As members of The Project left the gate the excitement built. On the course, the conditions were awesome. Scattered showers kept the dust down and those that followed the advice of the guys at Avid did well using their brakes wisely.

After the race, we all agreed that the Ashland Mountain Challenge is a world class Super-D race. Huge props to SRAM for sponsoring the race and all the support they provided during the weekend.

-Mayo

Keeping that SRAM chain on the cranks once again is MRP! Welcome back to Maxxis providing us the rubber for those rare moments the DH time actually has their tires on the ground, and SixSixOne/One Industries for providing us the protection for the even rarer times when it’s not the tires hitting the ground. Crank Brothers are also back with us providing the excellent 50/50s for the gravity folks, and the egg beaters the XC loves to rock on our bikes.

Nate Marsh along with rocking that carbon V10 on the NW Cup circuit is taking over as Team Manager, keeping the DH team running, and ensuring they have everything they need to go big and come home.

New to the team this year are Mark Grey and Chris Mayo. Mark is VB’s partner in crime and will be doing some XC races along with a good chunk of downhill events. Chris has been part of our Thursday night ride crew and done a bunch of weekend epics with us as well he’ll be stepping it up to race the BUDU XC races for a few events this year as well.

We have some more cool news coming soon, but that brings you up to date with the 411 on 529.

Nate and Raman

Friends of 529: Brian Hillger

The cross country racing season opened up on Sunday with the first race at Dash Point State Park. When we pre-rode the course there were some concerns about the start. Since the forest service was working on the park it looked like racers would get sent from the starting line straight into a downhill singletrack. But the awesome people at BuDu Racing figured out how to get a straightaway worked in at the start and the huge pile-up was avoided.

It was a good day to start the season, the sun was out and only every other turn on the trail had mud on it. For those of you not familiar with the PNW, this is a good thing. The course proved to be quite challenging. Most of it felt like a never ending climb with more uphill around the turn and never enough flat or downhill parts.

Alex and Audrey rode first during the day for the beginner class, both did very well:

• Alex – 1st
• Audrey – 1st

Sport proved to be a bit more challenging:

• Tina – 5th
• Sergei – 5th
• Nate – 6th
• Brian – 15th
• Raman – 18th

Results

Coming up on 3/6 is the race at Black Diamond.

Still everyone had a good time, got some great practice in for the upcoming races, and agreed VB had set a good course for the work to be done.

-R

Nate takes Mark, Raman and I down Schleyer and Dirt Merchant, stopping at each major obstacle and walks us through how to do it. Shows us the way to do it and then turns around and hikes his bike back up to have each of us follow him over the drops.

And like two older brothers Nate and Clinton go explore a steep rock roller and let me come with them up, and when it’s my turn to do the roller, they look away muttering ‘this won’t end well’ but it does and they are proud of me.

And sometimes it does not go well. Sometimes my lack of fear is matched by my lack of skills and I try to use a boulder like a jump and end up on my head and shoulder and Tina quits the ride and get me to a hospital and later when I need surgery and my wife cannot drive me because she just gave birth to our son four days earlier, Tina picks me up well before dawn and get me to the clinic and back again.

The project 529 manifesto says ‘Friends are family’. I don’t think those are just empty words. I think that is Project 529.

-Christian (VikingBalls)

Friends of 529: Chris Mayo, Brian Hillger

This week the Duthie Hill training was put on break and instead the team went to Woodinville for Stinky Spoke. There was some initial confusion over the start time of the ride, ‘from 9 – 10′ is a strange way to start a race. Finally, we figured out that even though there’s more than one rider on the same course, it’s not actually a race.

For being on the statistically worst weather weekend of the year, the ride turned out to be quite pleasant. It was 50 degrees and not raining, so we only had to deal with mud and some puddles. I decided to take full advantage of the flexible starting time and start as late as possible. I did manage to catch up to the group half way through by skipping a few rest stops and not grabbing one card.

Half way into the race Christian was egged on to jump over a pile of rocks. He managed to clear them, but the lip on the back of the last rock sent him flying at the wrong angle and into the emergency room. Speedy recovery to you  Christian, we’ll miss your leadership for pre season training.

The rest of the team made it through the course and to the beer garden with no major adventures. Nate did manage to scare a pack of bikers on a decent by passing them on the grass going twice as fast. A few of them actually almost fell because they turned to watch him.

Duthie to the rescue. The 529 XC team is going to do a pretend race run there every weekend until the first race run in February. Duthie’s layout is easy to explain and remember. We do the SW XC Loop (movin’ on) > Bootcamp > Step it up > Braveheart. The way to remember it is that we go counter clockwise from Movin up. We picked this order of trails because it puts the most distance between the end of a trail and the beginning of the next. That gives us more miles, and more time to pass, or catch your break.

Today snowed, providing amble justification for the water part of the  name of our little cup: “Hell and High Water”. Two loops came out to just under eight miles which for some of us also seemed like a tad too much hell, but we need to up it to three laps next time to get into the real sport course length.

The energizer bunny also known as Sergei won today’s installment with a time of 1.04. Nate did not get to use his DH superpowers to crush Sergei on the Braveheart beginning and came in second at 1.05. I thought I was further behind but came in around 1.08. Tina and Ty had had enough cold hell for a day after 1.5 laps and we all met up in the meadow. Tired but more motivated than ever to get in shape for the looming race season.

Next week is Stinky Spoke so we will put the Hell and High Water 529 training cup on pause and come back for three lovely laps on the 23rd.