St. Joe State Park
Park Hills, Missouri

For a value kind of guy like me, the enduro proposition is tough to beat. A full day of riding on marked trails, for roughly the same price as a hare scramble, is as good as it gets. At the Leadbelt Enduro, the C class in which I normally enter was only required to ride 40 miles. The B class would go 72 for the same price, so I signed up for the B class. Little did I realize that, unlike the Illinois and Indiana enduros I was accustomed to, the St. Joe State Park riding area had no road sections to rest and relax. This enduro was 100% off-road.

Like an idiot, I didn't bother to check the start time before I left home. Enduros are always 10:00, right? Of course they are, except the ones which begin at 8:00. I knew something was amiss when I drove my little red pickup truck into the staging area and riders were already leaving the starting line. I was saved only by a fortunate aspect of enduro structure: No mass start. A handful of motorcycles leave the main checkpoint every minute, meaning the start of the event can occur over a fairly long period.

I arrived at 8:10, sprinted to the sign-up area and noticed the promoters had scheduled 55 rows, meaning nearly an hour would pass before all riders departed. I chose row 50, which gave me 35 minutes to set up and get to the starting line. I expected to spend half that time aligning my roll chart with the route sheet. The roll chart would show what mile I should be on at a given time during the race. In another stroke of luck, the club was selling pre-made roll charts at the sign-up table, so I bought one on the spot. As it turned out, my self-made chart wouldn't have worked anyway because I hadn't known the average speed would change several times. All the enduros I'd entered to that point had been a straight-up 24-mph average throughout the whole route. Now I understood why $400 enduro computers were so popular.

With minutes to spare, I arrived at the starting line. Next problem: My clocks were off. By the time I'd made it to signup, the keytime clock, sometimes known as the master clock, had been ferried away by the promoting club, most likely to a checkpoint in the woods. These were the years before smart phones provided every rider with a 100% accurate time of day. At old school timekeeper enduros, all timing was tied to a single digital clock, usually duct-taped to a stake or a tent post somewhere near the signup area. One must find that clock, or be forced to rely on other sources for keytime. My source was a club guy near the scoring table, who helpfully provided the time from his wristwatch, set two minutes behind the keytime clock.

I didn't know this, of course, until my eyes found the numbered flipchart at the starting line. Row 53 should have departed at 7:59 a.m. on my two time-adjusted clocks (when you're using $4 Walmart clocks to keep time, you must have a backup). Instead, my clocks read 7:57. I had no time to properly adjust the clocks after row 53 sprinted off the starting line, and none of the resets would allow enough time to adjust them later. My only hope for good timekeeping would be mental math, and I never was much good at numbers and such.

Compounding my timekeeping woes were speed averages like nothing I'd ever seen. Some sections were 18 mph another was 12 mph! Was this a race to see who could go slowest? After catching up to a pair of tiny motorcycles, I remembered the youth and women classes, who would only ride about halfway through the first loop. Speeds were lower here to accommodate these riders. For me, this was tricky. The course ran through long established public areas of St. Joe State Park, where heavy ATV traffic created wide trails and high speeds. I'd never been in a position to keep up with an enduro speed average, let alone exceed it. With greater penalties for arriving early to a timed checkpoint, I spent much of the first 20 miles straining to read a blurry, bouncing roll chart and odometer, and then mentally adjust the mileage for my bad clocks.

At the 20 mile marker was a gas stop, where I had sent one of my fuel jugs on a truck which was supposed to deliver it to that spot. The jug got delivered, along with another 200 or so exact replicas. Apparently I was supposed to have taped my row number somewhere on the jug, so it could be sorted. Mine landed in a group of random jugs of people like me who missed the riders meeting and didn't read the printed instructions. In a stroke of genius, I had wrapped a distinguishing band of yellow duct tape around the handle. This narrowed my search to about 25 jugs. All I needed now was to locate the one with the leakiest spout. When I did, my tank was full, my engine dripped with a coat of fresh premix, and my work here was finished.

Following the gas stop, the speed average increased to 24 mph for the remainder of the 40-mile loop. The C class race ended at the staging area, while the A and B classes would go back out on the same loop again. All I did during the 24 mph sections was race through the rocks as fast I as dared. The long loop utilized a large portion of the non-public area of St. Joe State Park, on trails less established and slightly less rocky. Certain sections were new, unadulterated trail, which by the time I arrived was not so fresh anymore. Even so, the old growth forests were unlike anything I'd ridden back home in Illinois. The trails didn't have to be cut through thickets of endlessly intertwined bushes and brambles and vines. Club members could simply staple brightly colored arrows to trees and let the racers do the rest. To ride here, one could simply point his bike in any direction and make his own trail. I was amazed...this was glorious.

The euphoria of rocky singletrack began to fade around mile marker 50. After three long hours of riding, my lower back was ready for a break. At the end of each timed section, the resets were barely long enough to get me back on schedule, let alone rest. A reset was supposed to be a lifeline of sorts, a magical, instant transportation into the future and an opportunity to relax and catch my breath. Not so, these Leadbelt Enduro resets. The best I could do was sprint from the end of one timed section to the beginning of the next, and be ready to race almost immediately.
The St. Joe terrain was surprisingly diverse, considering its location in the lower half of Missouri. The park was an old lead mine, long since abandoned and donated to the Missouri state park system. The mining process left the property with an odd combination of sandy flat areas surrounded by hilly forests. In some areas, the soil in the woods was a heavy clay base topped with loose rock. Scaling hills was an exercise in momentum, beginning at the bottom with healthy speed and ending at the top with a burst of throttle. Any loss of inertia on the upside of a hill would be punished with a helplessly spinning rear tire, churning through baseball-sized rocks. If my momentum didn't carry me all the way up, I dabbed with both feet, pleading with my 300EXC to find traction.

At a brief reset in the second loop, I was lucky to discover a loose rear brake pivot bolt before it fell off, which marked the first time I'd ever used the tools in my fanny pack for anything other than un-sticking the bike from mud holes. These minor, mid-race maintenance issues were becoming a pattern I'd eventually start taking seriously. After hearing a number of similar stories, dirt biker Bill Steele suggested I develop "a pre-race maintenance program, like checking for loose bolts."

A light afternoon shower came and went, leaving the rocks extra slippery but keeping me cool. By that point, though, I needed more than a cold rain. The gas stop at 60 miles was welcome relief, but I had serious thoughts of cutting out early. I'd never been so exhausted at a race with decent weather. Over time I would discover the term "bonking" as most appropriate to describe my condition after the gas stop. Like a bad relationship, the energy just picked up and moved out. My body was able to push through to the 72 mile marker, where the B-loop mercifully ended, but once I parked the bike at my truck, I could not physically move. All I wanted was a soft bed.

Collapsed in the back of my truck, I marveled at the returning A riders, already done with their long, rough 80 miles. These Missouri boys were tough dudes. If they were fatigued, they concealed it well. I on the other hand was not tough, but I wanted their energy and was willing to work for it. On the drive home, I planned and plotted and resolved to reshape myself into a rider who can blitz through 5 hours of St. Joe State Park and take on a triathlon afterwards. Or maybe just a round of competitive Scrabble...whichever.