This short three-mile loop ride is the perfect in-town hot lap: it was designed specifically as a race course for high school teams.
“NICA approached us to do a trail for state champs. They really wanted to do it up here, and couldn’t really find a good venue,” said Rickus Grobler, Recreation Coordinator for Payson Parks and Recreation. We just had the perfect opportunity with this land — plenty of parking. And I was like, ‘Cool, do a cross-country race course.’ And I love watching the XCO World Cup races. So that was kind of the main vision, is something that’s like the World Cup cross country tracks.”
Thanks to this bike-specific vision, Grobler was able to build some of the only purpose-built bike features in Payson. The track offers a few small tabletop jumps, rock drops, and a few berms, with a massive sweeping turn at the bottom of the hill. In addition, there are plenty of small rock gardens intentionally incorporated into the trail.
To provide that “World Cup” race course feel, Grobler, along with Mac Vorce and other locals, intentionally constructed multiple line options throughout the course, with pros and cons for each line choice. In some spots, the straight line is the fastest, but it’s the most technical. In others, the alt line might have a jump or a drop. Some corners offer a pair of dual slalom-style turns, opening up the opportunity for a high-speed inside pass.
Despite only having about three months to build the trail, it turned out really well. In addition to being a smash hit with the high school athletes (they couldn’t keep the kids off the trail in the evening), Ubuntu is also open to the general riding public.
“It’ll always be a work in progress,” said Grobler. “I’d like to see this become almost the training ground — not just for our local NICA and ACA teams, [for] the kids to develop their skills, because it is pretty technical — but for trail building itself.”
“We want kids who come back to race to be like, ‘Oh, it’s different. This year, there’s a new feature,’ things like that.”
This purpose-built NICA race course is a great in-town romp, perfect for after-work hot laps. I loved the multiple line choices to choose from and all of the bike-specific features.
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