Cascadia Dirt Cup Round 2 Raging River: Race Report

For my first ever mountain bike race, I signed up for an Enduro format race at one of my favorite local trail systems: Raging River in North Bend, WA. It was put on by Race Cascadia as round 2 of their Cascadia Dirt Cup (CDC).

For the past year and a half since I got my first full suspension bike, I've been learning to properly mountain bike. It's been difficult but rewarding to build my skills and be a beginner at something again.

I've crashed a lot of the past two years, but am starting to learn a little more about bike handling and my skill limits. Out of climbing, snowboarding, and mountain biking, I'm definitely most comfortable and confident climbing. I think my analytical brain likes that climbing happens at my own speed. Mountain biking and snowboarding are more athletic. They require a lot of coordination and responsiveness to perform well.

I signed up for the beginner category of an Enduro race because it seemed like a format that would fit my style of riding (and bike), and after being inspired by Ari who does a lot of running races, I thought it would be productive to have something to train for instead of just going out for fun rides.

Enduro is the mountain biking format for the people. Cross-country (XC) races are timed the whole time, on the uphill and the downhill. Downhill (DH) race one track faster, on bigger bikes, and with an uplift so that you don't have to pedal up the mountain. Enduro races are supposed to be similar to how many people ride for fun out here in the Pacific Northwest. We pedal our bikes to the top of a mountain, then get timed on the way down. Enduro races have multiple "stages" or timed trails, they add up your total time for all the stages and the winner is the one with the quickest overall time.

CDC has a diverse range of categories split by age, ability level, gender, and an adaptive category. I raced the Men's Beginner 19+ category, and ended up with 10th out of 15, about 1m55s back from the winner, but there were around 300 racers across all the categories.

Beginner is an interesting category, I had deluded myself into thinking that I could get a top-5 result based on comparing my Strava times to race times from last year, but the beginner men were racing in 2026! My main goal was to execute a smooth run without crashing, which I achieved! I feel like I raced relatively close to the threshold of my skills, but I'd just need to get much more practice to do better in the results.

The community (shoutout to Aiden and Chad, my race buddies) and race org was friendly and well-run. I signed up for Round 4 at Tiger Mountain in July!

Since Beginner only does two stages of the six total, I was done around 11am (we started at 9am). Ari volunteered to be a start timer at the top of Stage 5: Ferdinand the Bull trail, so after comparing my results to the other beginner men and catching my breath, I pedaled the ~hour back up to the start of Stage 5 to hang out with Ari for the rest of the day.

I really enjoyed seeing all the higher categories on course! I only heckled the kids a little bit for their pockets being unzipped, being in the wrong gear, and not wearing their goggles. It's awesome to see how strong everyone launched off the line and attacked the first couple corners; in comparison, my stage start looks like a lazy cruise.