Race Report: Kenda's Race the World cross country race at Windham Mountain, NY - By Eli Shank

Two weekends ago I competed in Kenda's Race the World cross country race at Windham Mountain, NY.  It seemed an interesting and unique opportunity to enter a race using the same course that the world's most elite XC racers would compete on later that same weekend.  However, this was not the primary reason my girlfriend (Emma) and I traveled 10.5 hours to this event.

Maybe a little background on myself.  I started to mountain bike at the ripe age of 11, riding powerline trails with my father and a few other old hoagies.  As a highly influential, juvenescent mountain biker, I quickly developed a deep interest in gravity mountain bike sports; ditching the geezer group rides, dropping my seat-post to go "urban assault" and started saving up for a downhill bike.  16 years later, while I primarily ride XC (even a little road, UGH!), I still boost the curbs hahhhd, don't wear any more lycra than I absolutely need to and closely follow the World Cup Downhill Circuit.  Plus now Emma's into DH as well!  So, when we travelled to Windham, it wasn't to enter a wimpy 10 mile XC race, but to see all of our favorite athletes duke it out on a rough, northeastern DH track.



Emma with Danny Hart (GBR), the only (one of the only?) man she would leave me for in a heartbeat

All that being said, I was still very excited for the race.  I quickly discovered that there wasn't to be anything "wimpy" about the course though.  Each 5.1 K lap had nearly 700 feet of climbing; over 2000' for my 3 lap Cat II race.  Since this was a UCI event, I was confined to race Cat II.  Contemplating the race, I was for the first time seriously considering changing the gear ratio on my singlespeed (In the words of Eric Roy, "It's all I got").  Well I didn't change my ratio and upon pre-riding the course I found that it was all fairly do-able.  Nothing was so steep that I had to walk, just lots of steady climbing, broken up with short, exciting sections of downhill singletrack that was all pretty smooth for a dude from Maine.  I also knew I would benefit from the taller ratio on some of the faster, wide open DH sections of the course (and maybe Sam Hill would see me from the chairlift shredding and slashing my rigid SS through burms and jumps).


Race day came and I was feeling good.  Myself and 5 other SS open racers sidled up to the line.  We started second in Cat II, following the 19-29 category by a 5 minute delay.  The whistle blew and it was off with a sprint, which felt like a relief after two endurance races so far this season.  Quickly we settled into a climb and I was behind two SS racers.  I wanted to be steady but not too aggressive on the climbs because I knew I could pass people on the descents.  In the first woods section which had some fun, kinda rowdy, loose, rocky corners I bested the two SS racers ahead of me with a not-so-polite inside-corner pass.  Later in the first lap I got served a slice of humble pie (pucker berry) as I took the hardest fall I've had since my urban-assault dayz on one of the fastest sections of the course.  I got a little loosey-goosey (and I think there was a suspension failure) through a man-made rock garden.  Luckily I kept it together until I was over the rocks.  I'm pretty sure I hit the ground so hard that I bounced right back up onto my bike because I saw stars and then I was pedaling again, looking over my shoulder for blood and feeling if everything was working properly.  Well everything was.

Me riding one of the few rough downhill sections of the course

Laps two and three I got with a couple of racers from the 19-29 category and we went back and forth a bit.  I did my best to offer words of encouragement to all Cat III and First Time racers we lapped and I enjoyed the age and gender diversity that I saw competing on the course.


I never had any more crashes and I think my third lap was just about as fast as my first so I felt great kicking to the finish.  There was a strong sense of camaraderie on the course, I got to ride really fast on some really fun trails, and I was just lucky enough to win the Cat II SS Open category; it was a great experience.  Plus, afterwards I got to see all of my favorite DH racers goose-it hard in the finals and cheer and scream myself hoarse.  I would encourage anyone interested in XC and DH World Cup mountain bike racing to consider attending this event next year as the circuit plans to visit Windham Mountain again in 2015.


                    Trek World Racing's Greg Williamson (GBR) sending the road gap in finals