UVM Highland Re-Run

            The ECCC will return to Highland Mountain Bike Park for the fourth weekend of racing.  After the cancelation of the UMASS weekend at Sunday River, UVM cycling and Highland stepped in to keep the season whole.  Highland is one of the ECCC’s favorite venues to race at.  Northeastern hosted the opening weekend of the year here and many will be excited to return.

The XC course will be largely similar to the opening weekend.  Highland indicated a possibility of the addition of new singletrack for this weekend.   At this point that hasn’t been confirmed.  As is the course is  ~3mi.   It starts out with a generally descending, undulating descent.  From there a gut busting, lung scorching, muscle ripping fire road climb ensues.  Once riders have clawed their way to the top a rocking downhill brings them back out to the base lodge.  Our first time out the xc trails were pretty new. by now the trails should be burned in.

Saturday’s racing will be finished with Dual Slalom racing.  The track at Highland is nearly legendary in the ECCC.  It is long, steep and challenging.  These characteristics make the course extremely physically demanding on the racers  By the final rounds the fatigue of repeated 40+ second DS rounds is evident.

Sunday will see a variation from the NU Epic Kick Off.  The DH run will probably be a different track than was previously run.  Every track at Highland is extremely fun, and well built – so no matter what we get, it will be awesome.

The STXC and TR will also be a deviation from the last event.  Though the much loved machine made descent won’t be included this time around, Highland and UVM have promised that the STXC course will be just as thrilling and challenging.

The party biking at Highland is super rad.  Even those that have finished their races with soul crushing defeats will have a hard time leaving Highland without a smile.

 

More information on Highland is available Here

You can check out all of the action from the last time we were at Highland Here