Into Summer: Ashland and Wisconsin - Max Houtzager

I love ashland. Like last year, it gives me the first real taste of summer. The nice weather + re familiarization of some of the raddest trails ever combo works perfectly. There's also a large portion of the industry gathered making it cool to see, meet, and ride with so many different faces (the most stoked pro field with top endurance downhillers, downhillers, marathon xc riders, world cup xc riders, and more). Add in some of my favorite places to eat and awesome prizes and you get a truly great time.

This event was new to me since they skipped it last year. I couldn't use my xc fitness to win. The course was fast turny drifty double track that rides like singletrack with some tech rocks/massive ruts near the end. There were a lot of shin to waist high water bars / rollers to manual, jump, or suck up to keep and generate more speed which were super fun. Since most of it wasn't too steep any errors would be detrimental. Dialing in your lines/position/speed was essential to hit the sweeping turns fast without drifting too much. It's a total mind game between not over-braking or blowing corners, ruining your run completely. Some sections feel super slow without pedaling, which is unstressful as far as racing goes yet annoying while you must keep your head in the game. I had a clean run, nothing super loose or amazing but it was enough for a pretty fast time! loved pumping like crazy, tucking, and just riding as smooth as possible. I ended up 6 seconds faster than second place!

Ashland Mountain Challenge
Ashland, OR
Junior Men Open 13-18 (25)
Result: 1st (37:42)

Mostly remembering the pedaly nature of the course made me completely forget about the awesome downhill sections. From railing the upper loam to sliding sandy banked switchbacks around trees and some doubles in between at the bottom, with pumping some high speed Third Divide type flow in between, it's impossible to not have a blast.

I mainly killed myself up the main 4 minute climb and rode smooth is fast on the downhills. I definitely made fewer mistakes than last year and ended up with a clean but fast run (just not really what will get me a competitive time in the pro field). I did start to get a bit excited/rowdy on the bottom corners, trying to really get my roost on. I drifted completely around one of the last sandy switchbacks, hearing tons of sand and rocks thrown off the trail a second later. Easily the highlight of my race as it was like making one of the best powder slashes in snowboarding or off the tops surfing. Thinking about it still makes me smile.

I finished ~1 minute up from second place. Almost backing out of the trip to let my back heal faster in preparation for the big races ahead, I'm super stoked I went ahead with it. I even got a Rockshox Lyrik fork for the Super D and Elixir 9 Brakes for the Chainless Race! I look forward to returning next year and working my way up in the pro field.

Subaru Mt Morris Pro XCT
Mt Morris Nordic Ski Area, WI
Cat 1 17-18 (17 and 130 Cat 1's)
Teammates: none
Result: 3rd
FOOD HERE



Even beyond the race my whole experience on this trip was nothing less than amazing, from staying with team specialized in a kick ass house on a lake to riding an epic course. After some gnarly unfortunate travels (not that bad when your with awesome super knowledgeable Specialized USA Marketing Manager Sean Estes) I was a bit burned going into it but once I got to the front after a bottlenecked massive cat 1 field (thought juniors would get first call up like last year so missed the front line) I began duking it out the entire race- totally rad.

I lost a lot of time in the first wooded single track section from the ball ups, but did successfully work my way up in the field pretty fast given (far from my first time with this). I also fortunately discovered the most technical section of the course followed by sweet fast and flowy singletrack during the race, which added a lot to the tight twisty tacky east coast singletrack course. The third junior I caught was Ryan Standish (Merida Flight Centre, USA World Cup Team member and 3 time Ozzy Champ) at the top of the climb on lap 1 and then Payson McElveen early in lap 2.

The course was pretty hard to give it with few real climbing sections and short flats you had to really focus at any chance to pedal and use all those efforts to add up to a fast time. I wasn't quite by myself with other cat 1's yet not quite up there with Casey Williams (2nd, Bear Valley Bikes) and Brendon (Ellsworth Jeep, African Continental Champ) either making this nature of the course even harder. It was still sick having guys on my heals at every second. That's fun bike racing!

I even got paid for 3rd place overall in cat 1! Congrats to Casey for an awesome ride and Brendon Davids as well because he is really cool.

I'm glad with my performance and another consistent result. Can't wait to train in Tahoe, shred Downieville, and kill it at nationals!