Since my dreams of following in David Knight’s footsteps were shattered decades ago, when I started riding dirt bikes, I have come to the hard realization not to quit my pencil pushing day job, as I will likely never make it out of the “see” senior class except to the “see” Super Senior Class – did you notice what I did there? “See” just seems so much more advanced than “C”. So I have decided to explore a new awesome pre-race ritual/preparation. You might wonder what said ritual is, and I guess I could share…beers and extra sweet shots of Baeren Jaeger that glue your esophagus shut if you don’t swallow quickly. The nutritional value of the honey in that stuff was my secret weapon for this Sunday’s NETRA King Philip enduro in Wrentham, MA. The trick to this was simple…drink enough shots the night before so you can enjoy the motivational and flavorful aroma of this Monster the next morning when you bend over to buckle your boots….awesome. I’m actually thinking of producing an infomercial for this. Anyway…this was only my 2nd ever East Coast enduro as I am usually busy wrenching for my son on weekends, so I really didn’t fully grasp the concept of the Brand X style time keeping, but it really didn’t matter. I won’t bore you with a lot of detail, let’s just say that section 1 came and went and I yard saled/sailed 3 times. The grass track (the only dirt all day J) and the Baeren Jaeger did not work in unison at all. After that things came together pretty well (turns out it wasn’t foggy for anyone else)…The more I rode the better it got for me and I seemed to be able to find a decent rhythm even through the nastier stuff. Now, for my Midwestern friends that claim to like rocks…don’t kid yourselves….you might like a rock, or gravel, or Bourbon on the rocks, but you definitely do not like rocks. This thing felt like a 60 mile rock garden. Some of this stuff was more technical than anything I have ever ridden and I had a blast. I am eternally grateful to my buddy Gerry who recommended that I install a trials tire for this race – a first for me - and while I think part of my 3 grass track soil samples can be attributed to this tire and my lack of understanding how it would turn, for the rest of the day I felt like I was cheating. It reminded me of the “sticky” stuff I drank during my intense race prep the night before…by the way, if you are looking for the same type of race preparation I went through, I suggest you contact Ted & Cindy Rummel, they run the Baeren Jaeger training program (BJ training program…google it!). After a little bit of miscommunication between check workers at the end of the day, they sent a bunch of us “See” riders back to our trucks telling us we finished and did not have to ride the last section (same as this morning’s first section) again. I was ok with that, but was kind of bummed too as that section beat me up and I wanted redemption. I went back to the truck, changed and had just sat down with a cold drink (BJ recovery program) when Phil the trail boss came by and said they screwed up and we need to ride the last section after all. Good thing I trained hard the night before…I was ready. I geared up again (eew – that stuff smelled bad) and went back out and this time the grass track lost and I won…until they ended up throwing that section out at scoring anyway – too confusing. My TXC 250 ran awesome...no complaints. Perfect bike for this event. From this future “Super Senior” (invest in the future!) to the KPTR: Thank You! Awesome event, well run. Nice job Phil M. Oh, and to the doode that did the awards – try sounding it out next time…W-O-L-F-G-A-N-G….
How are things in the 860? "My TXC 250 ran awesome...no complaints. Perfect bike for this event." Of course! Sounds like you had a good time overall. Sucks you had to dress out again. But, at least you won. Right? I had no idea they did anything like this up in Wrentham.
