Reply With QuoteAt 7:01 the first row left, and the start of the course came right by the trailer. I started getting dressed while watching the first rows go out. Ivan Ramirez came by looking like a man possessed and it wasn't even a special test section.
I rode on minute 41 while the rest of the Utah guys were back on minute 58 due to the late entry. There were supposed to be four guys on my row but one didn't show up, so I rode with George Pennington and his son Tyler from Colorado. George is a pretty fast guy and I thought maybe I'd be battling with him during the test sections, but they both let me take the lead every time.
My minute came up and we hit the trail. What ensued can only be described as the most fun epic trail I have ever seen. The dirt conditions were perfect... it had rained pretty hard a week or so before the race, and all it took was a couple rows of bikes to get down to the good stuff. It was a little soft, so the corners already had perfect berms formed. Despite 160 bikes going through before me, the trail held up phenomenally well. Some braking bumps formed and there were a few whoops here and there, but for the most part it was simply perfect.
Loam, sweet loam
I had never ridden a National Enduro (restart) format, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I didn't have a watch and I didn't bother writing down the time schedule since I had no watch to compare it to. I figured I'd just ride kind of fast and see what happened. It ended up working fine, the club used flip cards at the start of the test so you knew when your minute was up and you didn't even need to know what time it was.
About three miles in I came around a corner and a competitor was there telling me to slow way down. I did and I saw that there was a downed rider off the side of the trail. I rode by real slow and couldn't really tell what was going on but he looked like he was unconscious. I didn't really understand how you could have a problem there, it was an easy and fun trail but you couldn't go fast enough to have a bad get-off that would hurt you. Unfortunately it turns out the rider, Desmond McDonald, suffered an apparent heart attack and passed away while riding. I didn't know him but he sounds like a great guy who really loved the sport. There is a tribute thread for him on the advrider forums. Rest in peace Des.
At the first test I lined up with George and Tyler, and when the flip card went my bike took awhile to start. I took helmet cam footage and you can hear me yelling at it on the footage. Got it going and took off, and just started making more mistake than the last 3 races combined! Blowing corners, getting off balance, it was ugly. I thought I could hear George right on my tail so at a corner I looked back to see if I should let him by but he wasn't there. Unfortunately while looking back I rode right off the trail and crashed, and as I was picking myself up he went by then. I got going again and I guess I needed to get the crash out of my system because I rode much better after that. George let me back by on a short road section and I finished the section 7 minutes off of key time.
Team Green Kawasaki (Destry Abbott, Taylor Robert, Justin Soule, and the legend Larry Roseler) were on row 38, 3 minutes in front of me. At every test when there is a reset I got to see them and watch their line start the test. It was pretty sweet to watch 4 super fast guys battle it out bar to bar in Baja, for the 2 seconds you could see them at least. At the second test we talked to Destry and found out that each of them had dropped about 3 minutes in the 1st test, which means it took me 4 minutes longer than them to complete the test. I am still blown away at that, it wasn't that long of a test and I really can't fathom doing it 4 minutes faster than I did.
Test 2 was fast and super fun. I felt good and was determined to put in a more respectable time and really hit it hard. A short way in there was a hard left that I thought looked kind of weird, it just seemed out of place. It immediately went up a difficult technical wash and I passed 3 guys in it who were struggling, only to come out on top and see no evidence of trail whatsoever. I rode around for a bit looking for ribbon before turning around. Turns out the trail didn't turn left there it all, it kept going straight. I have no idea why it had been burned in so hard to the left, but as a result I lost a bunch of time there. I did manage to keep it on two wheels in this test so that was good. I can't remember my time here, but I was a few minutes off of key time at least.
We then had a short transfer section to the gas check. My bike started running really poorly and I was afraid I was having an electrical problem but it turns out I was out of gas on the main valve and had to switch to reserve. That surprised me because I normally have a 60 mile range and the loop was only 30 miles. I switched to reserve and everything worked great after that, and I dumped the 2 1/4 gallons in that I had there.
At the start of test 3 I was talking to Taylor Robert and asking him how they did in test 2. Taylor said he dropped 43 seconds, Justin said he dropped 59 seconds. They both took the wrong left turn as well. Unbelievable! They essentially finished on their minute, key time, which means they kept the 30 mph avg in that test. It was a fast test but I would say most of it is impossible to keep a 30 mph avg. There was one long singletrack straight away where you could really open it up but still.... those guys are inhuman.
Now we're on loop 2 and the trail is getting a little tougher. Test 3 was full of rocks and it was hard to keep your momentum in places. I went down in this test again and dropped several minutes. On the bright side I seemed to be keeping a pretty good pace, I was passing 7-12 riders in front of me in every test, some of which had started 7 minutes in front of me, and I had not been caught by any riders that started on the minutes behind me. The Husky team was on minute 50, so even though they were 9 minutes behind I felt pretty good that I could stay in front of them. Some of the tests were long enough that I certainly thought it was possible. Unfortunately I was keeping the streak alive of having some kind of problem in every test.
After test 3 the trail was the best. We got up into the high desert with some pine trees, and the trail flowed really nice and you could keep a good 3rd gear pace on it with some berms you could just huck the bike into.
Front tires do not belong on the ground
Test 4 was again pretty rocky but I felt good until the final corner when I washed out and went down again. Keepin' the streak alive, man! From there we rode a fairly long (comparatively) transfer section and arrived at the second gas check. At the second check there was about a 1 hr reset, where the club fed us lunch. What a sweet race. In line for lunch, the first thing you get is a hot towel to wipe off your face. The next thing you are presented with is a cooler full of beer. Then you have the nice ladies with the club asking you what you want on your sandwich! I tell you, this is the way racing was meant to be.
