Adam Craig’s Diary

By Adam Craig

Editor’s Note: It’s official: Team Giant’s Adam Craig is one of two men picked for the U.S. Olympic cross-country team. He continues to share his journals with VeloNews readers as he races around the world. This week he report on some East Coast racing: Windham, New York, last week and the national mountain bike championships at Mount Snow, Vermont, this weekend. Enjoy.

Even though I’ve moved away from the Right Coast and my roots due to the horrifying nature of the winters here, I’ll be coming back every summer for as long as possible. It’s awesome here. People and places go a long way towards making the region first noticed by Columbus a continued hit, especially with those who like to ride mountain bikes. Or be lost.

I don’t usually talk about racing proper in this little forum. I’m going to have to make an exception here, sorry … Pretty much from the moment the freshly constructed cross-country course used its awesomeness to trick Carl into riding an unintentional lap in the dark on Thursday evening we knew it was going to be a good weekend. Even if we were both a little puffed out from doing a bunch of Oxygen Assisted intervals at the Rebound Sports Performance Lab earlier in the week at home …

The XC race started with the usual fervor, which I deserved for taking the piss night before on the topic of National Series start intensity. I got gapped on “Alpe d’ Huez” (that’s right, whichever stoked local built each trail section got to name it) as punishment for saying domestic starts are nothing compared to World Cups … Eventually I caught Carl and the leaders as we wound our way up the (perfectly broken up by fun little descents and traverses) slopes of Windham Mountain. Somehow the fact that we ended up climbing fireroads sometimes in there wasn’t a problem at all since we were so entertained otherwise. And we knew that there was a pretty perfect descent awaiting our undivided attention.

I was able to use the big ring challenge to simultaneously pass the remainders of the lead group and build huge muscles for that Chinese race coming up. This also meant I got to roost the pleasantly long descent alone and off the front. Full suspension bikes are awesome. Lap two I continued to ride alone, but at the start of the third a Trek team rider joined me and pushed the pace. I let him. After more downhill awesomeness we came back together at the start of the fourth and final lap, thinking it would be a two-man battle.

But then, out of the dust came Mathieu Toulouse. I actually said out loud, upon noticing him a switchback below “holy crap, its Matt Toulouse!” Jeremiah and I upped the pace a bit but he kept coming, joining us on the last climb of the day and opening a small gap with a solid surge. Impressive. I did my best to respond and started the descent about 50 meters back. I like riding downhill fast, but Matt is from Canada, so he does too. We took chances and pedaled wherever we could as I slowly closed the gap. Contact was made with about 500m to go. The finish chute wasn’t exactly sprint worthy, but was exactly lined with rabid fans. Toulouse kind of slid out in the last sweeping turn, giving me the inside which I accepted and charged up, but the finish was just too close, he stayed ahead by approximately the width of three tires. Not wheels, tires … Carl had the foresight to remove himself from the race early due to the aforementioned puffed-out-edness and so that he could observe his teammate getting yet another sprinting lesson.

Whew, that was a lot of race description. I’m glad it was such an exciting race though, the local crew that put this thing on deserved a good show for their kick-off party. Windham Mountain has long been a New York City skiing destination and last summer the local mountain bike community convinced them that it could be a summer mountain bike hot spot as well, with a little work, of course …

The resort was selected in the fall of ’07 to host the “East Coast National” this summer and the GM immediately gave the local crew permission to flag out the courses before the snow started to fly. Ground was broken after the snow had flown all winter and melted off, sometime in April. This “not enough time” scenario plays out all the time with race venues, usually resulting in courses that seem to be an afterthought, just thrown together. Not so here. Every inch of each and every course, Super D, Slalom, Downhilll, Cross Country was manicured in some way or another. Beautifully benched in rolling grade singletrack with problem-solving ladder bridges and hand-placed rocks to link sections that would be unridable was the norm on the XC track. The gravity courses weren’t the usual fall line skid, they had great flow and were built with an eye toward sustainability. Good stuff overall, thanks, people who live and ride in the Catskills.

OK, more racing action. The short track was a barn-burner as well. Carl held things down for Team Giant at the front until I could get myself together and up into the mix. Once that happened Carl started riding on the front and trying to break things apart on a course where they just weren’t going to. I played the “smart guy” card and sat on. Smart guy looks a lot like “tired guy”… The fireworks started with two laps to go. Bishop and Wells rode off the front while Ryan Trebron uncharacteristically opened a gap to them. This put him and Carl in trouble while I set off to pedal down some bumpy ski slope on the Anthem and try to close the three-second gap. It didn’t happen, Wells won, I was third, Decker fifth. We like to flank the podium rather than stand on top of it all the time…

Here at Team Giant we try to give back to the local bike riding community here and there. Usually this just involves doing wheelies up to the start line. Sometimes, though, we go above and beyond the call of duty … Windham Mountain Outfitters, the local Giant Dealer, set up a “Night with Team Giant” at their store on Friday night. Sometimes these types of shop visits are sparsely attended. Whoever is there is always stoked, but sometimes it’s just the guy on the clock… Nick, the owner of WMO, and general Windham MTB crew ringleader, had the foresight to place a local radio ad in addition to telling all his buddies. This meant that after we were done tuning up our race bikes we got to spend a couple hours eating delicious hors’d’oveurs from the local Italian Deli and bench racing with about 75 enthusiastic locals.

It was a very impressive welcome to the valley and very indicative of the stoke level we would continue to encounter all weekend. Tons of kids, tons of parents, tons of random bike riders who just wanted to hang out. This is the kind of thing that gives me faith in mountain biking. People like those who came out for this event will keep this sport going the small towns that make up the soul of our sport forever. Thanks.

And a bunch of those people were fired up to race Super D. That’s because it’s the most fun racing you can fit into ten minutes. Once again, the course was SPOT ON! The LeMans start wasn’t even that long a run, I totally got on my bike in front of Carl and soon passed the holeshot king downhillers in the first minute of false flat traversing. I had a little lead on some people who were making very “people-like” noises behind me as we dropped into the first rocky doubletrack descent.

I would have liked to look back and see who they were and if they were gaining, but I would have crashed and died. More traversing took us to another steep rocky track, this one pretty much pinballing over perfectly moistened flagstone. More noise behind me, this time more like a bull in a china shop. Then out onto a ski run for a quick game of “who will brake latest into this huge dreamy berm?”… Dreamy berm flung us into the woods (where I ATE SHIT about 30 minutes prior in practice, funny how rain makes rocks slick…) and the ensuing seven minutes of railing absolutely perfect singletrack. Steep at times, flowing at times, always awesome. A couple little climbs to work on my Beijing Punch and we were railing Super G radius turns on the ski slopes toward the finish. I’d finally identified the infamous Sam Koerber about five seconds behind me, still making noise. We crossed the line like that. Always good to get a win on the weekend, especially if it’s in the “mountain biking” event. Carl was 5th on a Trance X we stole from a gracious Team Devo member, Greg …

Well, that’s all the racing and local stoke that’s fit to dish, but there is one more notable event that happened this weekend … My usual M.O. on the East Coast, where I grew up and have driven around A LOT, is to just kind of put it on autopilot when we’re driving around. Deep down, I know where to go. Well, somehow, Albany, New York isn’t one of the places I’ve driven through enough to know how to stay on I 87 North …

About an hour after passing Albany, something just didn’t feel right. Maybe it was the fact that we were on I 90 going west towards Buffalo. Oops. We exited immediately in Little Falls where a Gas Station Attendant told us the “back way” to Saratoga Springs, where I had spent some time hanging out. After looking at a map to confirm this we determined that there was a much spicier route through the southern end of the Adirondick Park.

Instead of buying said $4 map we just memorized the route and proceeded into the hills … Directly onto one of the top five Rally roads we’ve ever encountered. It was all time. Rain packed sand over endless flowing crests and bends. For about twenty miles. Another 45 min of driving nice north country pavement had us back on course at the Crown Point bridge over Lake Champlain and back into Vermont. Carl didn’t see Champ, Vermont’s version of the Loch Ness Monster, though. So far he’s 0 for 2 on lake monster sightings…

Next up, the Best Race Ever. US National Champs at Mount Snow Vermont. Awesome.

FILED UNDER: Mountain / Rider Diaries