Enduro only seems to be kicking off in the States just now, how has a young guy like you ended up racing it for a living?

I grew up racing downhill, but where I live in North California we have no shuttle runs. So every day I was pedalling, pedalling, pedalling. Because I wanted to do the downhills, I’d have to do these long climbs. I was always saying ‘no, I’m not a cross country rider, I’m a downhiller.’ I wasn’t doing it on a downhill bike, it was a trail bike. So I kept on getting more and more into it and then I started winning downhill races on my trail bike. I used to race all the NORBA DH nationals as a junior.

I gave up on those races though, because everybody there was so cliquey, and if you weren’t in the group all of a sudden you’re the outcast. Everybody is hanging out in their super, fancy–ass race kits, their shiny gear and everybody is looking all clean. And then there was me and my three friends, we would show up in some beat–down ass old truck, sleeping in the parking lot, all dirty and everybody was like, ‘these kids are gross’. For me enduro is so rad because it’s what I do everyday – I go out and I pedal and do big descents. It just fits hand–in–hand.

I’ve known him since I was eight, we’d go banging on his door. He and his friends would be hiding bottles of booze and pretend to be eating cereal when all the little kids came around. He took notice of me after I got out of high school because he would see me in the hills every day. I remember the first day that I actually rode with him. I had run into him when I was out on my 40lb VP Free with a 38–tooth chainring, no water and no food. It was just him and two other dudes, and they asked me if I wanted to ride. I went with them and all of a sudden I was up at the front pedalling with Mark and dropping his friends. From then he took me under his wing and told me, ‘you’re good at this, you should start racing enduro’. That’s how it all came about, he basically said, ‘we’re going to get you fitter, get you faster, fine–tune your skills…’ and we’re still working on most things, like not crashing…

Weir and Moeschler are old, therefore they are stronger and much wiser than me…I can hang with Weir on the climbs and descents, he is a lot more conservative and is good at not crashing, unlike me! I know I can shotgun a beer faster than him though! Jason is a fit son of a bitch. He will drop me uphill, but I can beat that high–poster downhill most of the time. Although when it comes to brains he surpasses my mental strength by a long way. Being the youngest member of the WTB–Cannondale team means I have the chance to learn from strong, established riders. I may not be beating them on a daily basis but they have laid out the map for me, now I have to find my own path. One day it’ll happen but for now I want to just keep learning.

I used to do cross-country running races when I was in school, I was within the top ten in the state, which has helped. Right now I have been on a winter programme trying to tune my skills up: trail riding, downhill stuff – I jump in the truck and do some shuttles if I can. A couple of weeks before Sea Otter each year I get more into fitness, I get on the road bike and start putting the power down. With US racing that’s what you have to do, it’s all ‘let’s pedal to victory’.

We have Super–D, the Oregon Enduro Series is what it’s called now. It’s very cross–country based…open–face helmets, no kneepads and everybody is in full spandex. I’ve been at multiple races where 29ers have won the race, it’s not the raddest thing. I did Ross Schnell’s Tressle Park Enduro, the format was really good, but it wasn’t anything like the Euro–style riding because it was in a bike park. All the trails were set in stone and all the locals knew the trails. It was at 14,000ft, so it was impossible for me to breathe too!

It’s not that sweet when you’re on a Super–D course, as they call them, as you don’t stop pedalling. You’re going downhill, but it’s not steep enough to lay off the throttle and just rip the singletrack. When you’re racing them it’s not as fun because you have to pedal the whole time. I call a lot of the trails we race on in the United States ‘rip–off trails’. You’ll get all this elevation out of them, but the way they’re built, I call it a rip–off because you never get to really open it up. There are good trails, but you have to know where to go. You have to drive for hours to get a thirty minute descent. There is the real stuff, like where I live there is some gnarly, gnarly stuff – which is why I like this stuff here in Europe so much.

The US scene is picking up though. They are doing a super–enduro race in Santa Cruz so that will be interesting. It will all be on singletrack and they have a good format. They have untimed liaison stages where you just pedal and then they have the timed zones. Hopefully in the next few years it’ll really take–off.

The trail system me and my buddies have been working on over the last few years is good. We have one trail that goes straight down the hill and then we have an enduro trail that wraps round a canyon. It’s a cool training ground because you can hit runs on steep trails with a bunch of berms, we’ve built big slap–berms. You come drifting into them and right when you’re about to fall, you get into the hole and it catches you. And we built these whoops. They’re about a foot and a half deep and two and a half feet apart, but we separated the distances between them. You never see whoops for a mountain bike and these things are gnarly. Mark has some at his ranch that are straight, but we built ours through a high–speed S–turn. You bang this left–hand berm and you’re hauling ass, and then you kind of fade to the right, and right in the middle of the right hand turn, it starts. You’re going ‘bup–bup–bup–bup–bup–bup!’ You come out of it, if you can make it through, with no speed. You go in at about 30mph and when you come out, suddenly you’re doing 2mph. It’s just so abrupt.