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White City, Illinois
DNF
This was another of those races where nothing seemed to go right. This enduro is put on by a club where
I've raced several times before. At signup, they let us pick which row we wanted to start on. I chose an
earlier row because the area had received some rain during the week, and after the previous mud race
there in June and my experience of being on the last row in Marietta, I didn't want to get stuck riding through
everyone else's ruts. My choice of the 5th row turned out to be bad...more on that later. Again, I was running
way behind in getting set up, and had to throw everything together with only a minute or two to spare. The
trails turned out to be in excellent condition, so a 5th row position was not really necessary. The summer
had been so dry that any rainfall had been soaked right up. The problem was that the trails were not
marked very well, and there weren't many other riders ahead of me to make the trail easier to see. I kept
having to stop and look around for the familiar orange arrows and lost time in the process. About 5 miles
into the race, my right contact lens started drying out big time and eventually it fell out. I was able to pull it out
of my goggles and get it back in my eye, but lost a couple of minutes.
The course went through most of the club grounds before heading out to a road. The arrows were very
sparse, and I got lost a couple more times. By the time I got to the next woods section, I was actually late.
That should never happen when the route is going over paved roads, so it goes to show how poorly marked
the course was. Also, some of the mileage markers posted at different places were way off what my
odometer showed, so I had to make several adjustments. The second woods section was marked even
worse than the first. Plus, there were no established trails. Normally, these types of "virgin" trails are great,
but most of the time I couldn't tell where I was supposed to go. It's hard enough to concentrate on avoiding
obstacles...searching for orange arrows added more difficulties.
At one point I hit a gully pretty hard and noticed that my crotch was cold and wet. I don't normally wet my
pants while riding, so I stopped to see what the problem was. Turns out the valve on the end of my drinking
water hose had come off, and water was being siphoned out of the tube and onto my pants. We're talking
ice water here, in a very sensitive place. Wasn't quite as bad as gasoline, though.
After a long road section the route took us back into the woods. I was riding moderately well, and except for
getting lost about 50 times and losing my contact lens, I was having a decent race. That is, until I missed a
turn and found myself heading straight for a 3-foot ledge that dropped into a creek. I panicked, of course,
and didn't do anything except ride down into the creek bed. When the front wheel dropped down, the sudden
stop bucked me over the handlebars and I fell to the ground. No problem so far. Then the bike flipped over
on top of me and knocked the wind out of me. Houston, we have a problem. When I tried to breathe, it was
like a knife was stuck in my left side. After about minute of uncontrolled gasping, I caught my breath but the
pain didn't go away. It didn't take me long to figure out I was banged up pretty good and my race was over.
First, I had to get the bike off my legs (intense pain). Then I had to stand up (extreme pain). Then I had to
get the bike back on its wheels (unbearable pain...took a couple tries). Then I had to get the engine started
again (pain is pain, by now). I got back on the trail after having served as a human warning notice to all the
other riders that had passed by and barely missed making the same mistake. I limped along in 1st gear,
hoping that sometime soon the trail would get me out of the woods and take me back to a road. Every hill,
every log crossing, every bump for that matter, was mind-numbingly painful. After a couple miles of torture,
the trail led me to the next checkpoint, where I told the guys I was done and asked for directions back to the
setup area. They sent me back towards the town of Mt. Olive. I rode right through downtown in full riding
gear while receiving strange stares from the residents.
Back at the setup area, I painfully loaded up my bike and gear and set in for the ride home. Fortunately, the
club was only an hour from my apartment, but I couldn't find a comfortable driving position. My shoulder was
giving me a sharp pain that wouldn't go away. The ribs were just sore in general, and my right hand was
bruised. At home, I called up Rob Rogers and he came over with his wife Cyndi to help unload. Rob wasn't
in much better shape than me because he had just torn his abdominal muscles while working out. What a
worthless pair we were. They insisted that I go to the emergency room to get checked out. I felt bad that
they had to waste the better part of their Sunday afternoon sitting in the waiting area while I had x-rays and a
CAT scan. Diagnosis: broken ribs. I took off work the next day and began the long road to recovery.
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So that's how my racing season ended. I won the most trophies ever (4), at the expense of my body.
The new KTM didn't look so new, and the cost of keeping it in one piece drained my bank account. I
ended up in 12th place in the Missouri Hare Scrambles series, top-5 in the Southern Illinois hare
scrambles series, and somehow managed a 10th place in the D-17 enduro series for Open B (White
City was the only time I raced the Open B class). My best season yet.
