It has been a wonderful season for me so with only fumes left in my tank and pennies in my bank I was able to make one last trip to Texas for the Holidaze Marathon. This was stop number two of the TMBRA marathon series and took place at Camp Eagle, an amazing venue just a couple hours west of San Antonio. As we rolled in under sunny skies, I could tell this was going to be a great event as the place was beautiful and everyone had a smile with early holiday cheer in their eye. Read more »

This weekend I was back on the Luvjet–this time to Amarillo, Texas to check out the first race of the TMBRA marathon series. As I flew in, I wondered where the mountains were since Amarillo is located up north in the panhandle flatlands and known more for ranching not mountain biking. Charlie, a local racer on Team Kordestani (promoters of the event) picked me up and delivered me to the race site. Palo Duro Canyon is known as the “Grand Canyon” of Texas for good reason. After a half hour drive from the airport the grasslands fell away into a huge canyon that appeared to stretch on for miles or at least as far as the eye could see! Read more »

On September 23, my teammate Ryan Eisele and I dusted off our mtorbikes and headed to the Dick Jagow Memorial Grand Prix. The race is held at Washougal Motocross Park. I purchased a new Yamaha YZ450F in mid-August, so I started practicing 45 minute motos again on my mx track. The last mx race I had done was in 2008 and I knew I would be rusty even with a month of preparation. The Dick Jagow race used the whole Washougal mx track and surrounding fields and single track. It was similar to the 6hr mountain bike race that was held there in June–minus the mud!

I decided to race in the 30 amateur class. After a recent tailbone injury and not as much time on the moto, Ryan rode in the Sportsman category. The Sportsman class rides with the Women’s class so he offered to lend my wife a hand if she needed it as she was racing too. The grand prix began with a dead engine start and lasted hour and 45 minutes with the course being about 5 miles per lap. I got off to a slow start and most of the single track trails were extremely dusty which made trying to close any kind of gap on a rider ahead almost impossible. Read more »

Watch more video of 2012 Shenandoah Mountain 100 NUE on cyclingdirt.org

I headed east for the Shenandoah 100, but the best made travel plans were laid to waste by a hurricane named Isaac. After a late arrival into Baltimore, I got to bed after 2am. We got up and made it to the venue in time for a few showers to roll through. It seems like nearly every trip I make east for racing ends up a muddy mess! Read more »

A couple weeks ago the newest, youngest, and likely brightest member of our team came down to race some short track and spend a day riding trails here in the home range. Ian is a senior at Rex Putnam High School in Portland and has a great passion for MTB as well as photography and video production. Thank goodness he brought some of his toys along so we could document a great summer evening on bikes!

When Evan asked if I wanted to carpool down to Jacksonville for the OBRA State XC MTB race I was pretty stoked. It was a new race to try out so we packed up my Subaru and drove to Medford where we stayed the night before the race. Trying to get enough sleep, we woke up last minute and showed up to the venue just about 10 minutes before the race started. I didn’t manage to get much of a warm-up in, but felt great as we took off on the steep gravel road which spread all of the racers out by at least 20 seconds. I had studied the course map online and remembered seeing that my race was supposed to be about 20 miles with over 3,000ft of elevation gain so I made sure to save enough energy so the climbing wouldn’t wipe me out. I ended up missing one of the first turns and didn’t realize it until I was over a mile past it and had climbed an extra 500ft. After turning around and getting back to the race course, I rode about four miles of downhill singletrack along a steep hillside and was real shocked when I heard bells and saw the finish line, as my Garmin only showed 12 miles, two of those being off the course! I asked the promoter about the mileage and he explained that he wanted it to be suitable to all ages and levels which is why he chose to the truncate the course. I was a little disappointed since I would have stepped up my pace substantially if I had known this ahead of time. Evan won the Pro category capturing his fourth OBRA XC title, and I finished 2nd in Juniors. I’m not sure yet if I’ll plan to race next year in Jacksonville again or not.

Ian Mastenbrook