I’ve been taking a pretty big break from the competitive race scene, but one race that was on the schedule this year was the National Championship race in Sol Vista.  I wanted to do my best to defend my National 4X Title from 2008!

I showed up late Wednesday night, and had 4X practice early Thursday morning.  The course had an interesting layout, with a pretty gnarly start on a 6 foot drop straight out of the gate!  We practiced the drop but minus gate starts the whole day, which I thought was a bad move.  DH practice was later in the afternoon; the course was relatively short, rough, with some huge jumps towards the bottom!

After getting a new Tazer shipped out, I built that bike up and was confident that would be the bike for 4X.  Practice was early, and I was feeling fast.  We still didn’t practice gates off the drop at the start, and I just don’t know why? DH practice was later in the afternoon, and I finally sacked up and hit the big dubs!  They were pretty fun, and by far the biggest gaps I’ve ever jumped!

Friday was another full practice day with DH in the morning and 4X in the afternoon.  The DH was relatively short, but super rough up top.  I did some tuning on my FOX 40’s, and I started to get my flow on the DH.  I knew I’d be a little off the pace, since I hadn’t done much DH testing over the last couple months.  I was having tons of fun on my Intense M6 though! I focused pretty hard on getting things dialed on 4X, and by the end of practice I was pretty confident on my speed. 

Saturday was DH training in the morning, and 4X finals in the evening.  I made sure to save enough energy in DH training, so that I could be fresh for 4X.  After a pretty big fiasco over the start of the 4X, they decided to run the amateur start section.  I’m bummed they did that, and bummed they didn’t allow us riders to do proper gate starts on the Pro section earlier in the week.  I’m pretty sure we would have ended up using the big drop, if us riders would have had a chance to test it out from day one.  4X went really well and I ended up making the final, and getting 2^nd place.  Mitch Ropelto was definitely the fastest kid on the course all week, and he ended up winning.  Much deserved, and much respect for that kid.  I’m stoked to see an American with that much talent! 

Sunday was DH finals.  I was pretty spent from the previous night’s racing, but I wanted to have a clean 2 runs, and have some fun!  Qualifier went ok, and I was mostly focused on my boy Aaron Gwin winning the National Championship.  My final run was smooth and consistent, and I ended up 27^th.  Good news is Gwinny won! I’ve been coaching him for the last 2 years, and it was cool to see him win.  Felt like a proud pappa!

Thanks to my sponsors this year, I really couldn’t have done it without you guys! 

Rich Houseman

Photo by: Jesper Kristensen

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