Massanutten Yee Ha DH Race

Race Recap by Joaquin Canizales:

The weekend of 4/29 to 5/01 kicked off the beginning of the 2010 GES series at the beautiful Massanutten 4 season resort in VA with the “Yee Ha” race. The Gravity East Series is the largest downhill gravity racing series in the East Coast and is quickly becoming the premier gravity series in the country. 263 racers from 23 states attended this weekend’s race. This DH course was also a former world cup course used in the 1997 season. This was the second biggest race at Massanutten since the world cup race. The weather was great and temperatures were in the high 50s in the evenings and as hot as 91ºF on race day.

Jennel and I left NJ Thursday night at 10:30pm and arrived at Massunutten at 5am. We had our campsite set up by 5:45am and finally made it to bed just as the sun was rising at 6am Friday morning. We finally got on the lift at 1pm and headed up for some practice runs. The scenery on the lift was simply amazing, which takes you to the Summit Elevation of 2860 ft. Then it’s a bit a grueling push-a-bike to the Peak Elevation of 2925 ft.

The course itself had a challenging rock garden section that could be described as a series of massive rock slabs and boulders, followed by a fast mountain cross to the 1^st fast flowing section. The middle section of the course was a series of fast rooty, rutted out sandy trails with steep 90º turns into and out of rock gardens. The easier “B” lines had been taped off and all riders from Pro level to cat3 were forced to take the more challenging “A” lines. The loose gravel made the long and straight fire roads quite challenging. The last section of the course was a steep (pictures do it no justice) rock garden infested with loose rocks ranging from baseballs to basketballs and permanent boulders embedded amongst them. A quick jump off the end of the rock garden placed you on the final stretch towards the fine line.

Jennel suffered a mid course crash on Friday afternoon that may have possible fractured a rib. She has trouble breathing and performing simple movements. It was doubtful if she was going to race on Saturday. This race saw a few people taken away on ambulances.

As for my handling of the course, I was 50/50 on the rock slabs at the top and never once cleared any of the 90º turns into and out of rock garden. Hopefully race day would be a different story.

Race day arrived and Jennel decided to race and just take it easy down the mountain. I decided to give it a good effort, but not go totally nuts and risk injury (I had the Wawayanda XC race on Sunday). Jennel was up and headed down the mountain and into the rock slabs. She cleared most of it with only a brief dismount over the largest boulder. She didn’t crash in the loose sandy roots/ruts and quickly dismounted and remounted her bike at the 90º turns. She made it down the home stretch into the last steep rock garden in a good amount of pain from her bruised and batter ribs. She managed to finish 6 of 7 in the Category 2/3 woman’s class.

I headed down the mountain in my first Cat2 race in downhill. No more easy podiums, as was the case in Cat3. I had a dab on the rock slab portion, which scrubbed all my speed through the rock garden, then went into the sandy turns without issues. Came to the 1^st 90º turn and didn’t hit a rock with enough speed, so instead of rolling over the rock, I took a header and the bike came tumbling down with me to the bottom. Got back up and continued. Came to the second 90º turn and gave it a try, but came up short. Quickly dismounted and placed the bike on a flatter angle that I could ride. By now my legs were on fire and I was starting to sit on my bike. Apparently I did not do enough DH training over the winter. Had I had stronger legs, I may have shaved off a couple of seconds to move down a couple of spots. Otherwise I was actually happy not be last in my category (13^th of 16^th).

We packed up our campsite, loaded the bikes and went out and had some southern BBQ ribs and beers. Hope to see more of our Marty’s teammates or any new comers to the sport of Downhill racing at the next GES race:

Here is a link to a short video taken by the GES.

http://gravityeastseries.com/media.html