Photo by Nils Ribi
It's a tall order to design a world class mountain-biking course. I always knew that. Then I interviewed Greg Martin. He's the course director for the that were held in Sun Valley this past July. He laid out the specifics of building challenging terrain for me. In short, it's more work than you think.
Here's the dirt on everything that went into this year's course in Sun Valley. (And next week I'll have an interview up with Greg—stay tuned.)
USA Cycling Cross Country National Championships By the Numbers
180,000 Lbs. of rock used to create the boulder gardens
96,000 Lbs. of dirt needed to create the course, mostly used to “fill” a couple of the boulder gardens
6 Earth moving machines used on the course (1 sweco, 1 mini excavator, 1 loader, 3 dump trucks)
80 Hours of digging with a mini excavator for the boulder gardens
800 Hours of sweeping, watering, and shoveling
2,000 Feet of tape used in marking the course
Photo by A.E. Landes
10 Times Greg prerode the course
20 Hours spent redesigning the course
10 Cases of Red Bull guzzled by Breakaway Promotions & USA Cycling officials during the event
1 Case of beer sipped by the entire staff on Sunday afternoon, after the whole thing was over
–Heidi Volpe