Downieville Classic - Max Houtzager

The Downieville Classic All-Mountain World Championship was this past weekend. In beautiful Downieville, CA (tucked away in Gold country), it is one of the toughest, technical and mind numbing races in the world. Riders must compete in both the DH and XC, striving for that "All-Mountain" title. Hear what 1st place Cat 1 junior Max Houtzager had to say about his experience:

I went into my run feeling really confident, knowing that I could out-pedal my competition. I won the xc by ten minutes the day before, but was in the lead in the all mountain (non-combined xc) division by twenty minutes, so could of totally chilled given the length of the downhill in order to win the overall. I wanted to do well in the dh individually also however, so I gave it my all without getting to gnarly. I was having a really clean run so did everything I could to not make any dumb mistakes. I passed all of the juniors that started in front of me (in one minute intervals) except for one that started first, 10 minutes before. This let me pedal even harder, because I had even more motivation to go hard when I saw them, like when I sprinted past Nik Dommen going up the 3rd divide climb or when I saw Matt Dion on the fireroad after 3rd. I met my original goal of going sub 50 minutes, cutting 3 minutes off my time from last year, however didn't meet my new goal I set during the race to beat or match last year's Junior X dh winning time of 48 minutes by Casey Sanchez. I can't complain in the end since my time put me in first for both DH and All Mountain, and racing that course is one of the most fun times you can have on a bike.

Wow. I was not expecting to do so well in this race. It may be my best result yet. I trained a ton for this race, probably more prep than for any other race. Getting up to Tahoe the friday before the WA camp gave me a solid two weeks to acclimate. I even got to stay in Forrest City which is higher than staying in downieville. I was more nervous/anxious for this race then any other race. Living like a pro mountain biker as soon as school got out definitely gave me the edge I needed in order to do so well. I knew it would be hard to do well in the XC, since I raced in all mountain and it was combined with the xc racers, like Cody Kaiser.

Off the start I rode at the front with Mark Weir and the leaders to open my legs since I didn't do any openers in my warmup. That was really cool. After that I settled into a nice easier pace up the climb, passing people I didn't expect to such as Nate Byrom and Dain Zaffke. I felt pretty strong. I ended up yoyo-ing with Kelli Emmett (women pro winner) and Kevin Smallman until they dropped me on the false flat/ around the top of the climb. I knew I had a large gap on my field and my legs were cooked after the first climb, so it was really hard to push race pace for the rest of the race. I went as hard as I could comfortably and used the smooth is fast motto for the remainder of the race. I definitely could of pushed harder both technically and physically on rest of the race, but it was hard to motivate and I wanted to finish safely. Highlights of the downhill were Mark Jordan (Giant/Decline) airing by me on the gnarly rock drop section on Polly Creek and following Nathan Riddle (Fluidride/Sram/Santa Cruz) for part of third divide. The visibility and dust made the rocks really hard to see so at one point I hit both rims on the same rock trying to keep up with Mark Jordan and thought I double flatted. It scared the bejeesus out of me and I think I burped some air out of the rear, so I proceeded to go a little harder to finish in case of a slow leak. I also came really close to going off the cliff on first divide on a little dip when my front wheel slid and both feet unclipped. I came in the top 20 overall/pro (70 pros) and won my category by 10 minutes. I definitely could of made up plenty of time hammering the rest of the race as hard as I did on the main climb and pushing it way faster on the technical sections. Whole Athlete completely killed it today and I think the preparation and training we've done has been huge.

Downieville XC
Junior Expert 15-18
1st (2:09:36)

Junior Expert 15-18
1st place 49:21 DH (and 1st place 2:58 combined dh and xc)