| 2002 Race Reports |
 |  |  |
Sedalia, Missouri
1st of 12 in Open B
Funny how some little mysteries in life have a way of solving themselves. After nearly
running out of gas at Polo, I went on a fact-finding mission to figure out where the fuel
was escaping. Keep in mind, when it's me trying to identify a problem, most other
people's logic need not apply. Case in point: two years ago when I couldn't figure out
why a tank of gas was only lasting 90 minutes, I spent months playing with the carb.
Actual problem: hole in the fuel line. Fast forward to MHSC Round #13 at Sedalia, and
I got lucky. The prior weekend I had filled up the gas tank and let it sit, figuring an
obvious leak would show up in a wet, oily spot on the garage floor. The floor stayed
dry, but when I unloaded the bike at the race site, the tank was messy with fuel that
had sloshed its way past the gas cap during the 3-1/2 hour drive. A readjustment of
the rubber piece inside the gas cap, and like magic, problem solved.
Conditions at Sedalia could not have been better. A nice rain during the week made
the trails loamy and full of traction, with only a hint of dust in the open areas. The
course still had its share of rocks, but several miles of singletrack, left pure and
unadulterated by the absence of our 4-wheeled friends, was absolutely beautiful. The
9-mile course was split roughly in thirds, with the first part following the ATV route
through some tight creek beds that were damp but mostly free of water. In a couple of
spots, the exits from the creeks were up short, steep banks that were slippery and full
of tree roots. The middle section of the course split off from the ATV route about 3-4
miles into the loop, just after we made a run through Lake Creek and climbed out of a
very slick creek bank. Like last year, a check was set up there as we headed into the
bike-only trail. It wasn't quite White City, Illinois singletrack but close enough. The trail
wound its way back to Lake Creek, at the same spot as the creek-side check, where
we linked up with the ATV trails and a couple miles later we were back at the staging
area.
On the start, I lined up on the inside and was a contender for the holeshot until
Dwayne Parish flew by on my left. I was second into the woods and followed him into
the first creek section. It wasn't an area well suited for passing, but I took a chance by
hopping over some logs lying across the creek. Everyone else, including Dwayne,
was going around the logs and I was able to take the lead at that spot. Soon after, I
put enough distance on the other riders in my class that I couldn't hear anything
except my own engine. Just as I was settling into a nice rhythm near the midpoint of
the first lap, I could feel a small pain in my left leg, just above the knee. Soon after, an
identical pain developed in my right leg. Hmmm....leg cramps?? Never had those
before. I tried to stand up and stretch out my quad muscles, but the pain persisted.
Not enough to keep me from riding hard, but plenty annoying.
On the second lap, not too long after the singletrack section began, an ambulance
was parked out in one of the pastures. That is never a good thing. In the woods, a
group of people attended to all-around good guy Shawn Hall, who had crashed badly
and suffered a broken leg, hip, and wrist. Further evidence that trees don't often move
over for dirt bikers. Shawn was still out here a half-hour later, while I was on my third
lap.
Other than my leg cramps, I felt good the whole race and kept up a pretty good pace.
The fast guys in the 4-stroke B class caught up to me on my third lap, and I tried to
hang with them, but they keep up a pretty fast pace. With nobody to race with but
lappers, my speed dropped off a bit and my 4th lap was my slowest. At the end of that
lap, Adam Ashcroft passed me just before the Lake Creek crossing. I followed him
through the scoring trailer and began my fifth and final lap behind him. Near the
staging area Adam stalled, which may have been the point in which a tree branch
jammed about an inch into his hand (he still finished the race, and very well).
By this time my legs were really beginning to hurt and I didn't stand up much on the
last lap (then again, I don't do much standing to begin with). The worst part was the
run through Lake Creek, which had developed Supercross-deep whoops and had
enough water to cloud my vision as I splashed through it in 3rd gear. As if whoops
themselves weren't bad enough, these were made from piles of walnut-sized gravel.
Each lap, I was downright slow through there.
The race ended uneventfully, with another strong ride and first place finish in my
class. The results showed that one of my laps was missed by the scanner and
placed me in the lower half of my class, but backup sheets confirmed my win. Steve
Weible printed out the revised Open B class results and handed them to me, gave me
a pat on the back and said, "You get to put'em up..." and then added something to the
effect of "Good luck with that." Marty Smith got knocked back to second place with the
revision, and then got dropped to third place when Ray Osia noticed a lap was also
missing from his results.
So with 3 class wins in a row, where is this newfound speed coming from? Who
knows, but it sure is fun. I still have aspirations of becoming a consistent top-20
finisher, but for now I'll have to settle for a nasty mud race for a shot at some overall
points.
September 8, 2002
Eugene, Missouri
1st of 13 in Open B
The first four minutes of the Eugene hare scramble went something like this: 3-kick
start, back of the pack choking on dust, creeping along in first gear while the
frontrunners blazed ahead breathing clean air, hard pass on PizzaMan (sorry, dude),
deep rut in which I crashed on the practice lap, unseen in the dust, again taking me
down, PizzaMan and another bike passing me while I picked up the bike, then more
dust.
Eugene is typically the 90-pound nerd in most 1960's teenage movies, but this
Eugene beat me up so bad that I could hardly get out of bed the next morning. This
Eugene hangs with the 'hoods, smokes unfiltered Camels and wears a wife-beater
around the house. Eugene flat-out brutalized me. With two crashes on the practice
lap and three more during the race, I left with a bruised right palm, a swollen left knee,
and a multi-colored titty-shiner, thanks to a strategically placed spring-loaded cedar
branch [note to racers: yeah, you know what I'm talkin' about]. I also came away with
the Open B class win. It's the classic risk-reward scenario: take a bunch of chances
to make up time, and it might actually work. The downside is feeling like I did after the
race.
The Eugene course was a new venue on the MHSC schedule, and since it was a
bike-only race, I was looking forward to some Polo-like singletrack. What we got was
the most technical course I've seen in a long time. The starting area was placed in an
open field that linked up with the last few miles of the course. The first quarter-mile
was tight single-track with no possibility of passing, so the start was critical. I had
been getting some good starts in the last three races and expected the trend to
continue, but the engine didn't fire on the first kick. Or the second. By the time I got
started, most of the class was already into the woods, led by Wayne Hatfield. I was
behind PizzaMan on his bored-out XR250 and couldn't see much of the trail ahead of
me. I finally got my chance to make up some time in a long creek section that led to
the scoring trailer. The creek was mostly flat rock, very slick with many boulders
thrown in, and lots of water. Carefully, I passed and passed again and made it to the
scoring trailer in 7th place, a minute behind the leader.
I spent some more time eating dust on the first full lap before the field spread out, and
my main challenge was keeping from stalling the bike, which must have happened 10
times during the race. Just before the long creek section, the trail dropped down a
steep boulder field with jagged basketball-sized rocks, kicked around by bike after
bike, each boulder slowly rolling to the bottom of the ravine. As if the stationary rocks
weren't hard enough to deal with...what's next? Moving trees? Anyway, I caught up to
Ray Osia and Matt Coffman and tried to get around Ray in the creek section, but
couldn't make the pass. The three of us checked through the scoring trailer within 15
seconds of each other. At the beginning of the second full lap I crashed hard in the
first woods section, down below the railroad tracks. My knee took a hard hit but I
picked myself up and began to chase down Matt and Ray. Matt, back racing after a
nasty finger break at Florence, had his clutch line break on that lap and I moved into
second place, still chasing Ray. I eventually caught up to him and ate his dust for
most of the lap. Passing was nearly impossible, so I hung back and waited for the
creek section to make my move. Ray rode flawlessly through the creek, but with Matt
out of the race I figured I had nothing to lose, so I did a Kamikaze charge through the
deepest part of the water, temporarily blinding myself but making the pass.
After the scoring trailer the course curved around the pit area and entered a fast
straightaway before heading back into the woods. I knew that Ray, with his big
4-stroke, would try to get back around me in the straightaway and make me eat his
dust again. He cut to my inside, just before a sharp right-hand turn before the woods,
and was ahead of me until going wide into the turn. I was able to sneak inside him
and barely beat him into the woods. So I passed, got passed, and passed again, all
within a half-mile. From there, I put some distance between him and built up a
2-minute lead by the end of the third complete lap. On my final lap, I continued to ride
hard and stayed clear (sort of) of the dust kicked up by lappers. I had no idea where
Ray was and figured he was just behind me, so I kept riding hard through the long
creek section and ended up crashing in the rocks, a mere quarter-mile from the finish.
Little did I know that Ray had suffered a flat front tire on the final lap and had to slow
down considerably. My right hand was hurting as I limped to the finish with a very sore
body.
Brandon Forrester took the overall win and solidified his top spot in the point
standings. Mathematically, Steve Leivan still has a chance, but either way, these two
fast guys have been in a class of their own during the second half of the season. On
Monday morning following the race, I performed my best impression of an 80-year-old
man. Days later, little pieces of Eugene lived with me in the form of thorns lodged in
my forearms. Eugene is one bad mutha. Word. [note to readers: that is the extent of
my hip-hop vocabulary for now, but I have been watching MTV's Cribs and will write my
next race report Doggy Style, if you know what I mean. Yes, you do.]
1st of 12 in Open B
Funny how some little mysteries in life have a way of solving themselves. After nearly
running out of gas at Polo, I went on a fact-finding mission to figure out where the fuel
was escaping. Keep in mind, when it's me trying to identify a problem, most other
people's logic need not apply. Case in point: two years ago when I couldn't figure out
why a tank of gas was only lasting 90 minutes, I spent months playing with the carb.
Actual problem: hole in the fuel line. Fast forward to MHSC Round #13 at Sedalia, and
I got lucky. The prior weekend I had filled up the gas tank and let it sit, figuring an
obvious leak would show up in a wet, oily spot on the garage floor. The floor stayed
dry, but when I unloaded the bike at the race site, the tank was messy with fuel that
had sloshed its way past the gas cap during the 3-1/2 hour drive. A readjustment of
the rubber piece inside the gas cap, and like magic, problem solved.
Conditions at Sedalia could not have been better. A nice rain during the week made
the trails loamy and full of traction, with only a hint of dust in the open areas. The
course still had its share of rocks, but several miles of singletrack, left pure and
unadulterated by the absence of our 4-wheeled friends, was absolutely beautiful. The
9-mile course was split roughly in thirds, with the first part following the ATV route
through some tight creek beds that were damp but mostly free of water. In a couple of
spots, the exits from the creeks were up short, steep banks that were slippery and full
of tree roots. The middle section of the course split off from the ATV route about 3-4
miles into the loop, just after we made a run through Lake Creek and climbed out of a
very slick creek bank. Like last year, a check was set up there as we headed into the
bike-only trail. It wasn't quite White City, Illinois singletrack but close enough. The trail
wound its way back to Lake Creek, at the same spot as the creek-side check, where
we linked up with the ATV trails and a couple miles later we were back at the staging
area.
On the start, I lined up on the inside and was a contender for the holeshot until
Dwayne Parish flew by on my left. I was second into the woods and followed him into
the first creek section. It wasn't an area well suited for passing, but I took a chance by
hopping over some logs lying across the creek. Everyone else, including Dwayne,
was going around the logs and I was able to take the lead at that spot. Soon after, I
put enough distance on the other riders in my class that I couldn't hear anything
except my own engine. Just as I was settling into a nice rhythm near the midpoint of
the first lap, I could feel a small pain in my left leg, just above the knee. Soon after, an
identical pain developed in my right leg. Hmmm....leg cramps?? Never had those
before. I tried to stand up and stretch out my quad muscles, but the pain persisted.
Not enough to keep me from riding hard, but plenty annoying.
On the second lap, not too long after the singletrack section began, an ambulance
was parked out in one of the pastures. That is never a good thing. In the woods, a
group of people attended to all-around good guy Shawn Hall, who had crashed badly
and suffered a broken leg, hip, and wrist. Further evidence that trees don't often move
over for dirt bikers. Shawn was still out here a half-hour later, while I was on my third
lap.
Other than my leg cramps, I felt good the whole race and kept up a pretty good pace.
The fast guys in the 4-stroke B class caught up to me on my third lap, and I tried to
hang with them, but they keep up a pretty fast pace. With nobody to race with but
lappers, my speed dropped off a bit and my 4th lap was my slowest. At the end of that
lap, Adam Ashcroft passed me just before the Lake Creek crossing. I followed him
through the scoring trailer and began my fifth and final lap behind him. Near the
staging area Adam stalled, which may have been the point in which a tree branch
jammed about an inch into his hand (he still finished the race, and very well).
By this time my legs were really beginning to hurt and I didn't stand up much on the
last lap (then again, I don't do much standing to begin with). The worst part was the
run through Lake Creek, which had developed Supercross-deep whoops and had
enough water to cloud my vision as I splashed through it in 3rd gear. As if whoops
themselves weren't bad enough, these were made from piles of walnut-sized gravel.
Each lap, I was downright slow through there.
The race ended uneventfully, with another strong ride and first place finish in my
class. The results showed that one of my laps was missed by the scanner and
placed me in the lower half of my class, but backup sheets confirmed my win. Steve
Weible printed out the revised Open B class results and handed them to me, gave me
a pat on the back and said, "You get to put'em up..." and then added something to the
effect of "Good luck with that." Marty Smith got knocked back to second place with the
revision, and then got dropped to third place when Ray Osia noticed a lap was also
missing from his results.
So with 3 class wins in a row, where is this newfound speed coming from? Who
knows, but it sure is fun. I still have aspirations of becoming a consistent top-20
finisher, but for now I'll have to settle for a nasty mud race for a shot at some overall
points.
September 8, 2002
Eugene, Missouri
1st of 13 in Open B
The first four minutes of the Eugene hare scramble went something like this: 3-kick
start, back of the pack choking on dust, creeping along in first gear while the
frontrunners blazed ahead breathing clean air, hard pass on PizzaMan (sorry, dude),
deep rut in which I crashed on the practice lap, unseen in the dust, again taking me
down, PizzaMan and another bike passing me while I picked up the bike, then more
dust.
Eugene is typically the 90-pound nerd in most 1960's teenage movies, but this
Eugene beat me up so bad that I could hardly get out of bed the next morning. This
Eugene hangs with the 'hoods, smokes unfiltered Camels and wears a wife-beater
around the house. Eugene flat-out brutalized me. With two crashes on the practice
lap and three more during the race, I left with a bruised right palm, a swollen left knee,
and a multi-colored titty-shiner, thanks to a strategically placed spring-loaded cedar
branch [note to racers: yeah, you know what I'm talkin' about]. I also came away with
the Open B class win. It's the classic risk-reward scenario: take a bunch of chances
to make up time, and it might actually work. The downside is feeling like I did after the
race.
The Eugene course was a new venue on the MHSC schedule, and since it was a
bike-only race, I was looking forward to some Polo-like singletrack. What we got was
the most technical course I've seen in a long time. The starting area was placed in an
open field that linked up with the last few miles of the course. The first quarter-mile
was tight single-track with no possibility of passing, so the start was critical. I had
been getting some good starts in the last three races and expected the trend to
continue, but the engine didn't fire on the first kick. Or the second. By the time I got
started, most of the class was already into the woods, led by Wayne Hatfield. I was
behind PizzaMan on his bored-out XR250 and couldn't see much of the trail ahead of
me. I finally got my chance to make up some time in a long creek section that led to
the scoring trailer. The creek was mostly flat rock, very slick with many boulders
thrown in, and lots of water. Carefully, I passed and passed again and made it to the
scoring trailer in 7th place, a minute behind the leader.
I spent some more time eating dust on the first full lap before the field spread out, and
my main challenge was keeping from stalling the bike, which must have happened 10
times during the race. Just before the long creek section, the trail dropped down a
steep boulder field with jagged basketball-sized rocks, kicked around by bike after
bike, each boulder slowly rolling to the bottom of the ravine. As if the stationary rocks
weren't hard enough to deal with...what's next? Moving trees? Anyway, I caught up to
Ray Osia and Matt Coffman and tried to get around Ray in the creek section, but
couldn't make the pass. The three of us checked through the scoring trailer within 15
seconds of each other. At the beginning of the second full lap I crashed hard in the
first woods section, down below the railroad tracks. My knee took a hard hit but I
picked myself up and began to chase down Matt and Ray. Matt, back racing after a
nasty finger break at Florence, had his clutch line break on that lap and I moved into
second place, still chasing Ray. I eventually caught up to him and ate his dust for
most of the lap. Passing was nearly impossible, so I hung back and waited for the
creek section to make my move. Ray rode flawlessly through the creek, but with Matt
out of the race I figured I had nothing to lose, so I did a Kamikaze charge through the
deepest part of the water, temporarily blinding myself but making the pass.
After the scoring trailer the course curved around the pit area and entered a fast
straightaway before heading back into the woods. I knew that Ray, with his big
4-stroke, would try to get back around me in the straightaway and make me eat his
dust again. He cut to my inside, just before a sharp right-hand turn before the woods,
and was ahead of me until going wide into the turn. I was able to sneak inside him
and barely beat him into the woods. So I passed, got passed, and passed again, all
within a half-mile. From there, I put some distance between him and built up a
2-minute lead by the end of the third complete lap. On my final lap, I continued to ride
hard and stayed clear (sort of) of the dust kicked up by lappers. I had no idea where
Ray was and figured he was just behind me, so I kept riding hard through the long
creek section and ended up crashing in the rocks, a mere quarter-mile from the finish.
Little did I know that Ray had suffered a flat front tire on the final lap and had to slow
down considerably. My right hand was hurting as I limped to the finish with a very sore
body.
Brandon Forrester took the overall win and solidified his top spot in the point
standings. Mathematically, Steve Leivan still has a chance, but either way, these two
fast guys have been in a class of their own during the second half of the season. On
Monday morning following the race, I performed my best impression of an 80-year-old
man. Days later, little pieces of Eugene lived with me in the form of thorns lodged in
my forearms. Eugene is one bad mutha. Word. [note to readers: that is the extent of
my hip-hop vocabulary for now, but I have been watching MTV's Cribs and will write my
next race report Doggy Style, if you know what I mean. Yes, you do.]
Sedalia, Missouri
Eugene, Missouri
Eugene, Missouri