On Saturday, sand hill racing held their first dual slalom race of the 2006 season. It was also the first race on the newly revised slalom track.

The weather had been crappy all week, and I was having major issues getting motivated to get my gear together. The plan was to get to Sandhill Ranch early in order to get some practice runs on the newly renovated Dual Slalom course. Practice began two hours before the racing, which started at 10am. I really needed the practice too, as I had just swapped street tires for knobby treads on my bike.

This was to be my first competitive outing since blowing up my foot last October on the biggest "dead sailor" ever. I mean, I still can't even run very well, and I'm thinking about racing? It looked to be an interesting day... Somehow I managed to pull it together and drove the hour east to Livermore, and made it to registration with minutes to spare. I thought back to the last time I raced Dual Slalom at Oregon's Mount Hood Ski Bowl venue. I think the year was 1999, and I had my ass handed to me by Darrel Young.  The classes at this particular venue were often small, and if there weren't enough racers, the men would get grouped together in an open class by age. For the record, racing a pro when you're just getting started can be rather demoralizing.

The turn out for the races is pretty decent, with enough riders to maintain separate classes. The Sandhill Series is set up to prep riders for the first big race of the season, the Sea Otter Classic, and many of the riders go on to place well. I'm surprised more riders don't show up; the high speed berms and jumps of the Dual Slalom are extremely good practice for the similar terrain of the Sea Otter DH course.

local fast guy Mike Haderer rails a berm

I had a few minutes to test ride the course, and was able to get a run down each course before the course was closed for qualifying. My first impression of the course was that it was technical at the top, and fast at the bottom. Right out of the gate, a series of rollers kill your speed and momentum. This was actually helpful, it made up for my lack of ability with gates. They're just big enough to be difficult to pedal though forcing riders to work to keep their momentum. Right out of the rollers, you come upon a wide sweeping berm. The key to this section was to crank hard out of the rollers into the berm, carving, and then cranking right back out in order to have enough speed to clean the next straight. With enough speed, one could air the step up to step down, clear a long small double and clean the step up to table.

A racer practices a double into a berm

After the table came a tight 180 degree berm. Maintaining speed through the berm was the key to making it through a series of six tight rollers. It was possible to jump them double-double-double, but their size made it difficult, and on a good run I was able to double-double-manual the section. Tricky. The placement of the rollers made it difficult to keep your speed up through the next part, an S-turn of berms into a double/hip. At this point your speed picks up, and pace was basically turn, turn, jump to the bottom of the hill.

Jump, jump, carve!

As you can see in the photos, the course was smooth and fast at this point. The fast guys were just flying through these corners. If you weren't comfortable enough to rail this section and stay off the brakes, you were off the back.

Battling through the turns

The racing was fun, and during my initial runs I kept errors to a minimum, although as the day progressed, I started making more and more.

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