This Sunday hundreds of mountain bikers will descend on Real Life Church’s property on the edge of Black Diamond.

It is an event that is part of BuDu Racing’s Singletrack Cycles West Side mountain bike series. BuDu has run the series for seven years, explained Deanna Muller, who is an event manager for the organization that coordinates the series.

Muller said in an e-mail interview that nearly 450 mountain bikers participated in the series last year. Events include Beginner, Sport, Expert and Single Speed categories along with a new Clydesdale category for men who weigh more than 200 pounds.

“This year, Vince Haag, an avid mountain biker and participant in past BuDu Racing MTB events, suggested using the trails at Real Life Church for an event,” Muller said. “Vince and BuDu Racing’s Rory Miller rode the trails and started to partner with Real Life Church.”

This year’s event is the first time the trails at RLC’s property, which will also be the future home of the church, after being on King County Parks trails in the past.

“Together with some other mountain bikers, great courses were designed at the Real Life Church trails and at King County’s Henry ridge, where the last even of the series will be held on April 17,” Muller said. “The events are open to anyone who can ride a mountain bike.”

Hosting an event like this is a big deal for RLC and it shows how the relationship with the local mountain biking community has come a long way in the past two years.

Pastor Steve Murray had never envisioned mountain bike trails on the property when the church bought it a number of years ago.

Instead Murray saw it as a place for Real Life to have a church building to call its own — the congregation of 400 meets at Kentlake High these days — and the rest of the property could be used for recreational purposes and be open to the community.

His vision never included mountain bike trails with jumps, though, so when a work party encountered just such a trail on the property in 2008 while doing Scotch broom eradication it came as a shock.

Tension between the church and bikers who had ridden on the property for years grew with much of it expressed on Internet forums and blogs.

After some time and thought, any resistance on the part of church leaders melted away, and a meeting of the minds was set up at at a bike shop in Black Diamond.

From there, things happened quickly, faster than anyone had anticipated.

And now the site is not only homes to trails, but, to a major mountain biking series event.

For more information on the series visit www.BuDuRacing.com and look at the event flier.