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MHSC Round #6
Marshfield, Missouri
2nd of 13 in Vet (11th overall)
Experienced racers know that simple things are often the difference between winning and
losing. Simple things like Loctite, the stuff that keeps KTM's, those paint shakers on wheels,
from shedding their bolts. One would expect that after owning KTM's since 1999, I would fully
understand and appreciate the consequences of absent-minded bike maintenance.
But this is me we're talkin' about.
Matt and I drove down to Marshfield in his new Chevy 1500 HD with 4 doors, leather seats
(heated), a really big engine, and New Car Smell (standard). I remember a time when a
Silverado was the quintessential farm truck, parked next to F-150's at the town café, lightly
coated in gravel dust, a soybean-encrusted vinyl front seat (bench), an interior aroma of dirt,
sweat, and corn, and more often than not, a grungy farm dog along for the ride. Times have
changed, and I ain't complaining. There was certainly no griping about the weather, as the
day was about as pleasant as anyone could have hoped for in June.
After signup we watched the last of the ATV racers cross the creek just before the scoring
trailer. The riders were only moderately muddy, which suggested a relatively dry course. The
practice lap confirmed this, although a few mud holes were scattered throughout. The first half
of the 10-mile course was bike-only singletrack, some trails freshly cut and most very tight.
Along with paper-plate mile markers stapled to trees, the course workers added encouraging
paper-plate messages like "Got Arm Pump?" and "If You Can Read This You Might Want To
Start Using the Throttle." This part of the course seemed never to end, and as the miles
passed the paper-plate taunting became bolder. While I cannot confirm this, I believe one
message read "Trees Are Moving Faster Than You."
After bouncing off nearly every rock and tree in the practice lap, I had my sights set on
nothing more than finishing in the top half of the Vet class. Like the '02 Marshfield race, I
didn't feel like I ever found my groove. Earlier in the week I had replaced the Brembo master
cylinder with a Nissin (Honda-style) and added sintered metal front brake pads after Kahoka
chewed up the old ones and asked for seconds. The sintered metal pads had not yet broken
in and are less "grippy" to begin with, so the faster, more open part of the course gave me
plenty of sphincter-tightening moments. Back in the pits, I topped off the gas tank and lined up
next to K-Ruck #94 on the starting line.
When the 15-second board dropped, I kicked the engine to life and saw K-Ruck blast off
beside me. He was a good 5 feet ahead of me before I could even let out the clutch, which I
promptly dumped like an 11-year-old learning to ride for the first time. The bike stalled, took
two kicks to re-fire, and I was dead last heading into the first turn. The course began with a
short grass track, where I passed one guy, then a high-speed section next to the pits. Just
before we entered the woods, a guy went down while braking around a turn. Two down, ten to
go.
Inside the woods, I made some progress despite the lack of passing opportunities. A couple
miles into the course was a tricky step-up on a small hill, infested with roots and rocks. This
spot had given me fits on the practice lap and was now holding up a number of riders, but I
avoided the bottleneck by taking an alternate line to the right. After that, traffic thinned out. In
these instances, coming back from dead last, I generally have no idea what position I'm in or
how many guys are ahead of me. Near the end of the tight singletrack, I advanced on Neal
Soenksen and his familiar all-gray KTM. Neal always sets a fast pace, so in catching up to him
I figured I was finding my groove. For the first time in racing history, I had actually made a
mental note of a passing opportunity during the practice lap, at a point where Neal and I were
rapidly approaching. One squared-off corner later, the pass was made and I pushed ahead.
In the second half of the course, I blazed through the ATV trails and caught up with Tom
Eidam, Senior class fast guy and MHSC scorekeeper. As I approached him, Tom collected a
nasty bark sample, bounced off a tree and crashed hard ("Scared the s--- out of me," he
would say after the race). He gave me the thumbs-up sign and I charged onward. As I came to
the final creek crossing before the scoring trailer, K-Ruck was pulling into the scoring lane.
Beyond the trailer the course continued straight and K-Ruck inexplicably turned right, victim of
a navigational error. I passed through the grass track where the race had begun and met up
with him where the pit area started. The fair racer that he is, Kevin let me by and unbeknownst
to me, I was now leading.
During the second lap I put a few seconds on K-Ruck and kept riding hard, figuring the other
fast guys in our class were still ahead. The two largest mud holes in the first half of the course
were deepening, but still passable. In the second half I dumped the bike around a corner and
tumbled down a hill, but no harm done. I remounted and finished the lap in the lead position.
On Lap 3, Kevin caught back up to me near the end of the singletrack. The course dropped
us down into a wide-open quarter-mile stretch of pasture, where I slowed to pull out a small
tree branch lodged in the pipe. Kevin flew by and I followed him for the remainder of the lap.
The two of us were running strong, but lurking behind us and setting a blistering pace were
Elston Moore and Steve Crews.
On the final lap, I waited for an opportunity to get around Kevin and found it at a creek
crossing in the singletrack. The main trail went wide right to avoid some tree roots on the
opposite creek bank. On the practice lap I had tried the straighter line over the roots, but
didn't think it was any faster. Even so, I gave it a try and squeezed in ahead of Kevin where
the trails converged. After another mile or so I couldn't hear him behind me. In a section of
winding grass track I looked back and saw who I thought was Kevin just emerging from the
woods, maybe 10 seconds behind. In the last high-speed run through the pasture, I let off a
bit to take a drink from my Camelbak, and got passed by...Kevin? In stealth mode, he beat me
to the woods and I followed him for several miles. I had one last passing opportunity in mind, a
creek crossing that had been slightly re-routed. I figured Kevin would take the safe line to the
left, and I'd charge through the more risky (but shorter) main line.
I never got the opportunity. In a run through a dry creek bed, I let the back wheel slide out on
a side hill and Kevin was gone. After that minor fall, the front brake assembly became loose
around the handlebar, thanks to a lack of Loctite on the bolts that clamp it tight. While the
brake was still usable, it didn't exactly inspire confidence in the higher-speed ATV trails.
Around the 8-mile marker I heard the unmistakable buzz of a small bore engine, gradually
closing in on me. Closer and closer it came, and I had a suspicion it might be Steve Crews, a
Fredette-like freak (and I mean that in the best possible way) who can ride a KDX200 very,
very fast. I held him off until the last creek crossing before the scoring trailer, where he did a
kamikaze charge through the creek and beat me to the scoring lane. We congratulated each
other, and soon after Elston Moore came through, followed by K-Ruck. Somewhere in those
last couple of miles Kevin dropped his bike, dropping from 1st to 4th. I felt his pain after the
race when I realized I gave up the win in the last 100 feet, which reminded me of how I felt
when Matt passed me in the last 300 yards of the Sedalia race in 2000.
Even so, it was a good ride, more fun than the Bush twins, and I was shocked to see my name
in the #11 spot in the overall standings. The Vet class placed four riders in the top 20, a
testament to our competitiveness. Doug Stone took the overall win, followed closely by Steve
Leivan. Tom Eidam recovered from his bark sampling and won the Senior class. Matt equaled
his best finish in the Open B class, taking home the third place trophy.
June 15, 2003
Taylorville, Illinois
1st in Vet A (4th overall)
Sounds pretty impressive, eh? It's not, really, when you consider that I was the sole member
of my class and only 22 guys showed up to race. I continue to be confounded by the
organization of District 17 hare scrambles, as there were two AMA-sanctioned races
scheduled on this day (the other in Northern Illinois). When two clubs have to compete for the
same set of riders, nobody wins...but I digress.
The South Fork Dirt Riders hosted the race on their club grounds adjacent to Route 104 and
easily accessible from I-55. If you are fascinated with electrical power generation (and who
isn't?), the road to South Fork passes through Dominion Energy's Kincaid power plant, a
1,108 mega-watt coal-fire-breathing mass of concrete and steel. The club's name is derived
not from the famous cattle ranch in Texas, but from the South Fork creek that borders the
property. A nicely constructed motocross track is the center point of the gently rolling property.
Each year I try to take in a couple of D-17 races to hone my mud-riding skills, and South Fork
did not disappoint. The thick clay soil inside the woods was still wet from a few inches of rain
the previous week, but wherever the sun was able to shine, the clay was dusty and hard as
concrete. A pre-race walk through most of the course revealed surprisingly wide, fast trails in
open woods and grass tracks. Ruts and depressions in the hard clay were filled with standing
water, most of it crap-brown and smelly, the kind even your dog wouldn't drink. The creek had
risen just above its banks and was encroaching on the trail in several places. In one spot, the
trail appeared to continue following the creek, but sparsely placed arrows pointed left to avoid
a deep, water-filled hole. Anyone missing the turn was going for a swim.
With so few riders, the start was only two rows, one for the trail riders and another for
everyone else. I took a wide line into the first turn and was about mid-pack through a half-mile
of grass track. Several man-made jumps made things interesting before we turned into the
woods. The trail was sloppy, but the tightly packed clay was difficult for the rear tires to chew
up and no significant ruts developed. Passing opportunities were ample as we followed the
creek. In one of the few "virgin" sections of woods (about 100 yards in total) I managed to clip
a tree with my handguard and crashed, nearly damaging a highly sensitive area of my body
with the end of the handlebar. I remounted quickly but the small group I had followed was long
gone.
We exited the woods on a very rough, high-speed section of the property. The hard clay was
causing an abnormal amount of headshake in 5th gear, the kind where you wonder if you'd
still be on the bike if not for the steering damper. As we re-entered the woods, I caught up to
one of the guys I had followed before crashing. He missed the arrow directing us around the
deep water hole and took a plunge, his race surely over on the first lap (a few laps later I saw
a Suzuki turned upside down near the water hole, having water drained from the engine,
apparently victim #2).
The last section of the course was basically motocross in the grass, with some medium-sized
jumps that would have been fun if not for the landings. This part of the course I had not
walked before the race and after the first jump wished I had. I launched the bike over the
center of the jump and was shocked to see a large water-filled, deeply rutted mud pit in the
landing zone. RC could have cleared the mud pit with ease, but I landed in the center and
somehow kept the bike on two wheels. The next two jumps were more of the same, but I went
wide left and missed the worst of the mud landings.
In about 12 minutes I had completed the first of what would be many laps around the course.
With such a small turnout, the trails stayed in decent shape and I did my best to clear out the
water-filled ruts. In the open areas, some of the stagnant pools of water had been baked by
the sun long enough to be warm as I splashed through. The next hour went by quickly and I
began catching up to the trail riders. Passing was very, very easy. On my last lap I came up
on a guy laboring through a slimy mud hole, his back tire spinning aimlessly, no momentum,
and both feet hanging out for balance. Nine years ago, almost to the day, that was me. I did
my first race on Father's Day in 1994. As I flew by this struggling rider, I had a thought: I've
come a long way, and it sure feels good.
