Oakridge, Oregon Super D - Jordan Lopez

Good Morning All,

The 3rd round of the Oregon Super D Series - Oakridge is a wrap and one to look back and learn from. Going into this race I was not going to be able to race on my GIANT Trance, this was due to a mistake made at my local bike shop which caused my fork to need to be sent back to SRAM for a full rebuild. With this happening and still wanting to race, I was forced to ride and race on my Dad's Blur LTc. Mind you, this is a very nice bike, but it is a size to small and it is set up for more his style of light riding.
The race course (Alpine Trail) was one of the most aggressive and physically demanding trails of the series and of my season. With 750' of climbing and 4,000' feet of descending in just over 12.25 miles, it is a lot more up than the numbers let on. We were able to get in 1 rough practice run on Friday (I rode with car lag and was dehydrated) and 2 more on Saturday. With each practice run little issues that I knew going to affect my race run kept popping up. They were the lack of chain guide and the overall size of the bike. With each run, the chain dropped off the ring at least 3 times and at each occurrence, I had to slow down significantly and allow the chain to climb back on. The other issue was the overall size of the bike. Being almost 6'4", my normal bike size is a XL and with my Dads bike being a Large, the 90mm stem and the seat post were both to short. I was forced to compensate with my riding on the stem and put the seat up as high as it would go, which was still about an inch to short. I knew this lack in post height, would caused me to not be able to pedal efficiently up the 3 steep climbs losing valuable time in the race.



All my issues and fears came to a fruition in my race run, which started strong, but when pedaling out of a corner, I dropped the chain out and off and proceeded to go over the bars, off the bike and down a small hill. I got back up and had to pick up the bike and slowly crank chain back on. This exact situation happened again about 6 miles later in one of the flat rolling sections of the course, but in this crash I slammed my right leg, just above my knee cap into the bars and a golf ball sized welt immediately popped up on the muscle. After struggling up the last long hill, I reached he last bit of the course which is all down hill and was one of the best parts of the whole race; steep and straight. Just to make things worse about 3/4 of a mile from the finish line I got a rear flat tire (yes with stans too) in a mild rock section and because of the flat I spun out and came to a complete stop in a long sweeping corner soon after. I proceeded to limp the bike to the finish line in 14th place with a time of 49:14.



I was definitely disappointed with my race but I had yet another great weekend hanging out with friends and having the ability to race in Oregon. With every race, the Oregon Super D seems to improve and with over 116 people competing in a little town in Middle Oregon the sport of Mountain Biking and All Mountain Racing get propelled in the right direction

My next race will be the 4th and final round of the Oregon Super D Series which will be held in Sandy, Oregon September 3rd & 4th.