The Snowshoe GNCC
June 24 - Snowshoe, West Virginia
A lot
happened between the last race in Sparta and this race in West Virginia.
Fred Andrews was gracious enough to offer up a KX250F to ride for the rest of
the year and it was an offer I couldn't pass up! I only had a few rides on
the bike before we headed to West Virginia but I still felt I could put in a
good showing. There were a lot of rumors going around about how tough this
race was going to be and it really lived up to the hype! It was originally
planned to be 100 miles but was changed back to the standard 3-Hour format with
the Racer Productions crew realized how tough...perhaps impossible...a 100 mile
race under those track conditions would have been.
The area itself was totally unique as a race location and unlike any race I've been to before. The pro pits were located in a parking lot directly across from the resort village itself! You were just steps away from hotels, restaurants and retail stores. There was even a Starbucks!
The only problem with having a race like this on top of a mountain was that there was no place big enough for a traditional GNCC dead engine start! Therefore they lined us up on the street and waved us off on 5 man rows every 5 seconds. It was pretty crazy but it seemed to go off well. Since not everyone was lined up together they simply adjusted your overall time at the end based on where you started.
Being 5th in points, I was lined up on the first XC2 row behind the top 20 XC1
riders. I was a little bit relieved to know that even if I totally blew
the start I'd at least be in the top 5! When the race began I tried to
take it easy on the pavement going into the first turn but still got on the
brakes a little too hard and slid some. After the first little section
near the top of the mountain the track started heading down a lot of really fast
open roads. It was dusty so it seemed like everyone was content to play it
safe and wait until we got to the woods. We had started so close to the
XC1 riders that we also had a few of them to contend with. After a few
miles of pretty open terrain, we hit the woods and it was not pretty! The
morning bike race and previous days ATV race had obviously taken a toll on the
mountain. It was a struggle to make it cleanly through some of the
obstacles on the first lap! It's not that anything was outrageously steep
or rough, it was just all very slick and muddy. It hadn't rained a drop
the entire time I was there so I knew this ground was not going to dry up
anytime soon! Apparently there were underground springs all over that
place and will always turn the ground into a sloppy mess. I tried to push
through it but lost a good bit of time when my chain derailed in one of the
sections! Thankfully Fred and some of the other Kawasaki guys were nearby
and we were able to get it back on without losing too much time, but it still
dropped me several positions early in the race that I'd rather not have lost!
At the conclusion of the first lap I was barely inside the top ten but was confident I'd still be able to move up as long as I got through the sections cleanly. Unfortunately that's much easier said than done on a course like that! The bottlenecks that formed at some spots were unbelievable. Riders were just totally exhausted at trying to manhandle their bikes around the course and could do nothing but just sit and try to gather up enough strength to push on a little farther.
As the laps went by I think everyone had their problems. At one point I had found myself a little closer to the front and was able to get in right behind Rodney Smith leading to the infamous uphill (if you raced then you know which one I'm referring to). I was hoping to be able to get with him and stay consistent but halfway up the hill a lapped rider rolled down into my line and caused me to lose my momentum. After a fair bit of pushing and pulling (with some help from some awesome spectators) I finally made it to the top. Needless to say, Rodney was long gone!
And that pretty much summed up how the rest of the race went for me! I'd ride a little then get hung up a little. When the white flag came out and I rode through the pits I took a quick glance over to the Village and saw some people kicked back in a reclining lawn chair sipping on what looked to be a Starbucks Caffe Latte, (although it might have been a Caffe Mocha). Had I known how terrible my last lap would turn out I would have stopped to join them for a drink. Hindsight is 20/20, though, and for some reason I chose to continue on with the race. Bad call! I ended up getting stuck a few different tmes with the final time being buried up so deep that I had to walk down the trail and find some officials to help dig me out. I came into the final check so late that I'm pretty sure I woke up the scoring crew. They tried to play it off but I caught one of them yawning when I asked if it was still Sunday.
You can check out other pictures from the race here:
http://www.georgiaoffroad.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=23041
http://www.gnccracing.com/quickfill/062807_QuickFill26.cfm
and a video here:
http://www.racerxfilms.com/archive.aspx?ft=F (Premiere date 7/5/07)
