Big Creek Time Trial – XC, DH and Slalom

Since most of the responses to my latest poll indicated that many of you race your mountain bikes, I thought I would share my last race experience on Mountain Biking by 198. First off, I do not race that often. I do a couple little local events throughout the year, but…for the most part…I am on my quest for that perfect stretch of singletrack that throws my riding into a whole new level. This quest is done on many different bikes through every cycling discipline. These local cross country and downhill events are a way to interact and enjoy the mountain biking community in a different way and a chance to see riders that I don’t get to ride with very often.

The latest event was the Big Creek 3 Ways In A Day time trial. Why is it called 3 Ways In A Day? There are three completely different time trials that you can compete in during the day.

  • Cross Country – Bring your weight weenie bike! This XC TT is basically a 20 minute sprint around our 4 mile (6.38 km) local, urban cross country course. It is a test to see how long you can keep your body in the red zone without completely puking everything you had to eat over the last 24 hours. The only way to get a competitive time is to keep your light bike in the big ring and just hammer it out. You get multiple chances at getting your best lap time in either direction and the best times from clockwise and counterclockwise are added together for your overall time.
  • Downhill – Big Creek has a DH/FR area in the back that is short, but a great local option as we don’t have a lot of this kind of riding in urban Atlanta. The beginning DH is a gully run from the top and for the open class…we do one of those gullys and a longer, far run that includes a rock gully for your total time.
  • Slalom – In the middle of the DH/FR area, there is a slalom run that snakes straight down the middle of the course. The best of your two runs counts as your score.

For this event, I was competing for the King of Big Creek by completing all of the scheduled events…hence the 3 Ways In A Day. I loaded up the Niner Jet 9 and the brand spankin’ new Trek Session 88 to thrash some trail all day long. I even mounted the Garmin 705 to the Jet 9 to keep track of the course for you guys and you can see the data below.

Cross Country TT at Big Creek

I hate cross country racing. There…I said it. Any of you guys that race cross country competitively have a ton of respect in my book. How you are able to hammer out those laps and call that fun is a feat in itself and I choose to only participate in this mass explosion of the chest roughly once a year. I started both directions with the Jet 9 in the big ring and just left it there hammering out the miles as I tried to breath consistently. By the end of each run, I literally just wanted to fall over and die. I guess my hard efforts on the trail paid off because I ended up finishing second and was on my way to try to compete for the King’s crown. Unfortunately, Artur Sagat (a teenager that is a CAT 3 roadie in Europe) put up a blistering time beating the course record by 30 seconds, and this would prove to be enough to take the crown after his dh and slalom efforts (you didn’t have to run open class dh for the King of Big Creek…only beginner runs.). No one could make up for the lost time.

Downhill TT at Big Creek

Finally! The part I actually have fun with! Just one problem…my legs are toast! The xc event completely cooked me for the dh events, but I was out there to have fun anyway…so it wasn’t that big of a deal. Add to that…the Trek Session 88 FR that I brought along had never even seen dirt, so this was the break in ride. I ran my gully run and the open class dh rock runs without any serious hitches. The bike did incredibly well, but having a timed event as the first ride did make me feel really slow. The entire downhill event went very well for all of those involved and the wrecks were kept at a minimum. There were a couple bad ones (heal fast Tweety), but all things considered…there were a lot of REAL beginner dh’ers out there…the event went incredibly well.

Slalom TT at Big Creek

By this time, I was just trying to keep standing. It had been a really long day of riding and the mood around the slalom TT was much lighter as everyone was just trying to get through the day and have some fun at the end. We hit the large berms, tables and doubles with some speed and style to give what was left of the spectators a show.

Ethan Quehl…our local sponsored DH rider…ripped up the slalom and DH runs beating everyone by several seconds.

After a complete day of racing (basically 7am to 7pm), I was cooked. I was pretty happy with my results even though my DH and slalom times would have been faster on a familiar bike. I was out there to have fun with the event fully knowing that I was not going to win…so it was all good. Big thanks to everyone that organized everything for the Big Creek 3 Ways In A Day time trial. It was a great time on the bike and I’ll see you out there next year for the DH and slalom runs…not sure I’ll be doing the XC next time around…

For overall results…click here…I was #5 for those that care!

Note: The times on the Garmin data below are longer than the actual lap times. I had to start it early and end it late for obvious reasons…

Images by regularjoe

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