Vonski
nothing to see here...
- Location
- Payson, Utah
While a lot of you were at the Rhino Rally, we were a little further down south for the BITD hare scramble. By we, I mean Myself and Sam Chesnut (he used to work at Teraflex before moving to WA. about 10 years ago). Anyway, its a moto-only event that covers mostly singletrack with some wider trails and washes mixed in. The start, finish, and pits are in the middle of two approx. 20 mile loops going in opposite directions. One is more slow and technical and the other it faster and more open. Both sides count as 1 lap for a total of 3. So, I rode my side 3 times and Sam rode his 3 times.
Of course, helmet cam footage makes it look pretty flat and easy, but there are a lot of opportunities to mess yourself up, break chains, bend rotors, and take out tires. The worst is getting tagged by cholla cactus with needles having fish-hook like barbs that you have to pick out with tweezers or pliers. The trails Sam rides in WA. and Canada are super technical and he rarely gets out of 3rd, so he took the tighter loop and I took the more open loop. Unless doing an ironman class, you can have up to 3 riders on your team rotating through all the loops, and most of the 8 teams in our class had 3 riders. Its been 5 years since I've done this race and this is Sam's first BITD race, so we entered the Open AM class.
On the first loop, some course markers got plowed out and scattered, sending me and bunch of others behind us off course, so I lost 10 minutes searching for the course in a crazy amount of dust. Once back on course, I did some catching up but there were still a couple teams ahead of us by the time I handed the bike off to Sam.
Long story short, the bike ran great with exception of the suspension being way too soft, slowing us down in the rough stuff and whoops. 4 hours and 50 minutes later, we came in 2nd by just 8 minutes, so if you take into account the 10 minutes getting lost and the 30 seconds the 1st place guys started ahead of us, we would have beat them by 2 1/2 minutes. Oh well, that's racing... we had a great time and plan on going back next year in the expert class (both us and the 1st place guys have now been booted out of the AM class).
FWIW, my GoPro is on top of my helmet and Sam's is off to the side. I suck at video production, so hopefully the quality didn't suffer too much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ncx9cuYoEc
Of course, helmet cam footage makes it look pretty flat and easy, but there are a lot of opportunities to mess yourself up, break chains, bend rotors, and take out tires. The worst is getting tagged by cholla cactus with needles having fish-hook like barbs that you have to pick out with tweezers or pliers. The trails Sam rides in WA. and Canada are super technical and he rarely gets out of 3rd, so he took the tighter loop and I took the more open loop. Unless doing an ironman class, you can have up to 3 riders on your team rotating through all the loops, and most of the 8 teams in our class had 3 riders. Its been 5 years since I've done this race and this is Sam's first BITD race, so we entered the Open AM class.
On the first loop, some course markers got plowed out and scattered, sending me and bunch of others behind us off course, so I lost 10 minutes searching for the course in a crazy amount of dust. Once back on course, I did some catching up but there were still a couple teams ahead of us by the time I handed the bike off to Sam.
Long story short, the bike ran great with exception of the suspension being way too soft, slowing us down in the rough stuff and whoops. 4 hours and 50 minutes later, we came in 2nd by just 8 minutes, so if you take into account the 10 minutes getting lost and the 30 seconds the 1st place guys started ahead of us, we would have beat them by 2 1/2 minutes. Oh well, that's racing... we had a great time and plan on going back next year in the expert class (both us and the 1st place guys have now been booted out of the AM class).
FWIW, my GoPro is on top of my helmet and Sam's is off to the side. I suck at video production, so hopefully the quality didn't suffer too much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ncx9cuYoEc
Last edited:
