Millville Hare Scramble
Im still trying to figure out how this happened exactly....I was thinking yesterday...Last time I really rode a dirt bike (outside of a few easy laps around our short track course) was I believe 2011?....I think. Whatever, in dirt biking years, might as well be 76 years ago.
So little background....I used to ride with my college friends Mike and Justin (aka murph) often before I found mountain biking. Then we all got married, had kids and dirtbiking is one of those thinks that its hard to find time for. Mike and Justin still have bikes tho...(mike owns 7 still actually)...I sold mine back in like 2013 and bought a mountain bike with the money. In the years since, Justin bought a stumpjumper and has ridden with me a few times....Mike races street bikes (although his are 2 stroke full on race bikes) so he has always ridden a road bicycle to help him train. Like a month ago I grabbed both my scalpel and my trigger and took Mike to ringwood for his first mtb ride. We ended up doing almost 3 hour sterling out and back loop. As I expected, mike did great...had a great time and now he wants to get an mtb...So this has all worked out nicely. Anyway, so last week we were together at Murphs 40th bday party and his/mikes wife were encouraging them we need to take a day and go do some riding.....I found this funny, my wife seemed to have the complete opposite reaction
. My wife is used to my days racing at E-town....which is just a completely different activity then riding dirt bikes in the woods....Like going for a ride at Stephens vs doing the red hook crit... Its not the same and not even comparable levels of danger. Anyway, so the seed was planted....However I figured we would just go to our old spot in PA, just tool around. Mike on the other hand wanted to go check out this hare scramble in Millville...While I thought this would be ridiculous after not riding a bike in about 7 years...somehow im like fuck it, lets go.
step 1, find gear up in the attic....my moto jersey dont fit me anymore (im way too skinny now), so i busted out my mtbnj DH jersey...
Bob LOVES my Steve Mcqueen tld helmet
Mike packs up our three bikes in his big diesel truck and we make our way to Millville.....So since I dont own a bike anymore, Mike is lending me his old 2003 KTM SX 250. I have ridden it a couple of times...never liked it for a few reasons.
1. he cuts the bars and makes them way more narrow then my MX bikes were (but ill probably not remember this)
2. its a 250 2 stroke mx bike that is insanely snappy...Its like like the complete opposite from my old 450 in terms of power delivery...I mean im sure I would get used to it, but not what i wanted after not riding for 7 years...I would have loved a nice 125 or 250F yesterday.
3. its big and heavy
So we get there at like 9....We planned to just race the C class, 40+....even then I was sure I would get killed out there, but really the only point to this day was to have fun and not die. Placing in a race wasnt even on the radar...BUT....we got there too late to do the C class, so instead we had to do the A/B race....Little background on what a hare scramble is if you dont know....Its actually alot like a mtb XC race. You start on the MX track which is lets say 1 mile in length, then you head into the woods and in this case do about 6 miles...so lets say its a 7 mile loop total...race is 2 hours long, as many laps as you can do...In my group its A/B, so imagine all cat 1 and cat 2 classes racing together...In A and B there are a bunch of subgroups...We race B-40+ "Senior". They send every group off in 1min intervals....They say go, you have to start you engine and fly. So much like any XC race with this format,...Pros go first, by the time the last cat 2 people get going, pros will soon be lapping them.....This has me a bit concerned as I know in B class I will be pack fodder putting at best.
Anyway...so we get there, unload bikes, get numbers, etc....Mike owns 7 motorcycles, 6 of them are 2 smokers.
I got on his KTM, fired it up...try to remember all of the little things..."oh ya...left hand clutch, right hand front brake, right foot rear brake, left foot shifter"....1 ride around the pit and it kinda came right back to me..funny how that works
So we line up and im thinking.....this is like doing a DH race after not riding a bicycle in 7 years...just hop on the bike, go...Man, this is going to be wild. Wave after wave goes off and I cant help but notice how this is totally unlike an moto-x start...where there are 40 bikes on the rev limiter...a wall of noise that is just insane...This is complete silence.
Start give us the signal, I kick, bike fires...let go of the clutch and were off.
I spend the first few minutes on the mx track trying to remember how to ride this thing before I get into the woods were it will be muddy, slick, full of holes and ruts/roots.....
We hit the woods and as expected from the early race and race yesterday its a mess of ruts, holes, mud, etc.
and mud
and more mud
Hey good thing I have like 50 HP to power me thru this muck, but its the riding and body movements im trying to remember.
As expected, within 5 min the leaders of the AA group are now coming up on us at what seems like super sonic speed...we move over and try to stay clear as best we can.....Its challenging bc with the course so rough and full of ruts im just trying to pick lines and not crash....you cant really go slow, you have to just go...then worry about people coming up on you. 10 min in and my arms and legs are screaming, course marshals yelling trying to redirect you around deep holes, trying to wrestle this 250lb, 50HP beast. There is ALOT going on......My brain is just stuck in buffering mode trying to process everything. Eventually you forget, block out the noise, focus on lines, turns, and working the clutch. Im doing ok, starting to remember how to set myself into DEEP ruts, although leaning back and powering thru whoops took a couple of laps to start remembering.
We had a plan to try and just ride together but the traffic is making that hard. Mike and I stopped a couple time to wait for murph who was struggling with a trials tire on his bike...NO traction like at all.
some parts of the course were great...very few tho
After 3 laps and maybe 30-35 min im like there is no way im going to survive for 2 hours of this lol...If we had raced C and I wasnt concerned with getting in peoples way, it would be much easier....moving over really made it hard to find a groove. But whatever im out here already. So I keep going, eventually we get split up after i accidentally sunk my bike in an unmarked mud hole. I have to go around someone who crashed, unfortunately the line I chose took me into this DEEP hole...the bike went in and just stopped.....Thankfully this eager group of like 12 year old kids came running over to help me get it loose...It was suctioned into the mud so it took quite and effort. Got rolling again....Next lap the shifter on the bike comes loose and its now stuck in like 4th gear....So I pull over and im trying to fix it, eventually a marshal comes by with a 10mm ratchet and I get it working...I was telling about how I got stuck in a hole...he then told me about how his some just told him about how they got to help this old guy get his bike out of the mud lol.
Anyway, I catch back up with Mike and we all ride together for a bit...back out on the mx track
more pics...to be continued