CDC #4 Tiger Mountain: Race Report

My second mountain bike race! Went better this time. I achieved my goals of riding well, not crashing, and getting on the podium in my category.

This round of the Cascadia Dirt Cup Enduro Series was at Tiger Mountain, a classic and very popular Seattle-area mountain biking spot. I've ridden here a decent amount, so it was a good chance to test myself and see how much speed I've developed.

At my last race, I got 10th out of 15 guys and was 2min behind the leader in the Beginner Men category. I entered the same category again, with the loose goal of improving my time gap and hopefully getting on the podium. Spoiler alert: I ended up getting third and was only 20 seconds back from the winner, though some of that is just because less fast people entered the category this race.

Us Beginners left the parking lot first this time around 9am, and they were offering to shuttle us in a truck up the first 500ft vertical of the gravel road climb. There are a lot of young kids in Beginner categories who were waiting for the shuttle, and since I've climbed the mountain fine in other rides, I decided to skip the line and pedal all the way up myself. It's about 1700ft of elevation gain, though it was a cool and misty morning when we left around 9am, so no problems for me. I chatted with a dad and a kid on the way up, and I got to the top before most of the other beginners.

Our first timed downhill stage was the East Tiger Summit trail all the way down to where it ends on the Preston Railroad trail. This is the only trail from the very top of the mountain, so when I'm not racing I normally ride it chill to get to the main objective for the day, not as a destination trail on it's own. The trail itself is flat-ish tech-flow, with not too many notable features. It gets a blue 🟦 rating. I had fun racing it though! I ended up catching the kid and his dad who I chatted with on the pedal up and started in front of me, and apparently they couldn't hear that I was behind them for about 40s. It sucks to have to make a kid pull over, and to be impeded in my race, but that's part of beginner enduro and there wasn't any hard feelings from me or the kid. I'm guessing I could've gone 5-10s faster on this stage going my own pace, which I'm happy about because it would've put me even closer to the winning time.

One of my improvement areas from my last race was to get more aggressive with my pedaling on the flatter parts, not just letting the bike coast. In enduro this tends to be <10s bursts of full-power sprinting. While my sprint speed still leaves a lot to be desired, I'm happy that I got off the start lines faster and pedaled stronger at this race than my previous one. I definitely think it helped keep my average speed higher on the flat and uphill parts. When I'm not pedaling I try to "pump" the rollers and corners with my legs to generate speed. I'm also trying to brake less and later before corners for speed as well.

At the start of my second stage 'Side Hustle' - a 🟦 flow trail which is right near the end of my first one - there were a ton of people hanging out. It turned out that they were the Sport category who left the parking lot around 9:45am and were at the top of their first stage. So I hopped in the long line in between some Sport riders and chatted for a while waiting for our turn to race Side Hustle. Unfortunately I forgot to record this stage, but I have this nice race photo.

This stage went better in terms of passing! I was worried to get passed by the Sport rider behind me, but he only caught up right after the finish line. I don't think I rode some of these berms the best I have, but I went big on the jumps so I didn't case them as much, which helped keep speed in that section, and the pedaling intensity meant that I got a PR on the segment.

Yeah, so the race went well. I feel ready to move up to the Sport category, because they get to race more stages, and it'll be much tougher competition. This is probably my last race of the season, so the next one will be in 2027. Whoop whoop!