Park Hills, Missouri

The annual Leadbelt Enduro nearly killed me last year with 72 miles of rocks, so naturally I decided to do it again in 2000. I'd taken a few weeks to rest after beginning the season with a string of 5 consecutive Sundays of competition. The slowdown was a chance to mend some lingering bumps and bruises and I used that time to better prepare for the Leadbelt. This included pre-registering by mail, downloading the route sheet from the BlackJack Enduro website, crafting my own roll chart with all the resets and speed changes, and finally, showing up on time for the start of the race.

The BlackJack series prefers to start its enduros early, so my day began with a 5:00 a.m. wakeup and wheels on the road by 5:30, which probably set new record time for dragging myself out of bed, loading the truck and pulling out of the driveway. I'd planned on racing with Matt Sellers, but a job-related conflict kept him away. The day before, he was kind enough to go for a ride at St. Joe State Park, where the course was already marked inside the public area. Matt had scouted the arrowed parts and called me that night to offer insights such as "the trails are fast" and "watch out for the rocks". With that secret intel, I was sure to do some winning on Sunday.

At 7:00 a.m., a large poster board in the signup tent showed all rows and riders, with my name written in on row #4. I'd requested that row, thinking the course would be somewhat broken in by a dozen or so riders ahead of me, but not yet chopped up into a rough mess. But at that point nobody else had chosen any rows ahead of me, so I mentally prepared myself for clearing a path for all others and losing sight of the marked trail now and then.

Physical preparations, other than dressing myself in the appropriate riding gear, were fairly minimal, thanks to the folks at BlackJack offering up the route sheet in advance. At other enduros, I'd stand in line to register and then spend a half hour marking up my self-prepared roll chart to account for mileage resets and other important route information. Then I would search for a trailer filled with jugs so I could refuel at a remote gas stop, with said trailer often as far as humanly possible from my truck. I'd return from this marathon walk, only to realize I'd forgotten to set my watch to keytime and trudge back to the registration area.

Not so at the Leadbelt Enduro. Pre-registration sped up the signup process and by some minor miracle I remembered to bring my wristwatch to the big tent. No gas trailer was needed, since the course was set up as one long loop, ridden twice. A gas available area was a short walk from my truck, in case I needed a splash of premix within each loop, but there really wasn't a need to haul fuel anywhere. St. Joe State Park was ideally setup for an enduro, and my race preparations were mostly stress-free.

With one exception.

The other, more important physical preparation was related to my hyperactive colon, always ready to blow on race mornings. This condition continued for several years without so much as a passing thought of visiting a GI doctor or modifying my regular diet of Mountain Dew and Pop Tarts. On this morning I worked through the situation, as I usually did, inside a tiny, stinky enclosure, dressed in full riding gear. Now I was ready to race.

At the starting area, my group of 3 riders was the first to be released into the course at 8:04 a.m. One rider was competing in the 250B class and the other was entered in a class which would ride just one loop. When the course officials signaled our start, I set a casual pace for the initial 15-mph average speed. These were the heavily traveled areas of St. Joe State Park, where ATVs had widened the trails and speed was easy to find. The first few miles, but for a minor crash, were easy and relaxed. Dry conditions had left the trails a bit dusty, but at this point I wasn't dealing with riders ahead of me kicking up a dirt fog. I had all the clean air for myself.

The speed average jumped to 18 mph a few miles into the course, where I was forced to ride more aggressively. Past experience suggested 18 mph was attainable in this terrain as long as I kept the bike on two wheels. And for the most part, the bike remained upright. I still had some miles ahead of me on the beat-up ATV trails, where I twisted through the rocky two-track. I'd ridden all these trails many times, usually keeping my eyes open for oncoming riders around blind corners, but today I had no such worries. The park was only open to racers.

When the speed average increased to 24 mph about halfway through the first 40-mile loop, I charged through the woods as fast as I could make my KTM go. The course had now crossed over into the non-public area of the park, where the trails became narrower and less defined. This was not exactly Illinois-style woods, where a machete or hacksaw is often required to make a trail suitable for dirt bikes, but tree branches slapped against my goggles more frequently and I struggled to read the arrows.

Around this point in the race came my usual epiphany: I should buy an enduro computer! This thought usually followed a series of checkpoints followed by resets, where I rested for a short while and then had to decide when to get moving again. I could return to the trail ahead of schedule, under the assumption the woods would be narrow and twisty and I couldn't possibly maintain a 24-mph average inside the woods, and by the time a secret checkpoint appeared around a blind corner, I would have ridden just slow enough to get myself promptly back on schedule and "zero" the check. Or I could wait until my roll chart said it was time to go, and risk being late to the next check because it was placed far down the trail and I couldn't keep up with the speed average. Oh, the calamity of it all! As if riding the motorcycle weren't difficult enough. I convinced myself enduros were invented by slow riders who happened to be very good at math and used that advantage to level the playing field. Why else would anyone care how closely a rider was able to follow an average speed?

This, of course, was neither here nor anywhere else another sane human would care to visit, since the rules were the rules. But regarding my original thought: This was where I felt an enduro computer might be rather handy. I could enter speed changes and resets and technology would tell me if I was on schedule, early or late, usually with an LCD screen indicating "+" or "-" for "early" or "late", respectively. My low-tech setup had me constantly glancing at a handlebar-mounted roll chart holder, with a printout of numbers almost always too small to read while the bike shook like 300cc two-strokes do when ridden across rock quarries. Then I had to fixate my eyes on the mechanical odometer and then cross-reference that reading to a similar number on the roll chart, then cross reference again to my pair of $5 digital clocks from Walmart (gotta have backup), duct-taped to the handlebars. Was I early or late? That's all I wanted to know. This led to mental discussions about the value of enduro computers, all while I was supposed to be focusing on making my motorcycle go fast in the woods. Back at home, I would always balk at the $400 or so price tags, then dutifully assemble my old school timekeeping at the next enduro.

Back on the race course, at each checkpoint I eagerly watched as the timekeeping crew handwrote numbers on my fender-mounted score card. Ideally, they would write a "4", meaning I was on time. This didn't always happen, of course, but what they did write was usually within a few digits of my row number. These trails were fast, and I felt good about my riding. At the mileage resets, I'd roll forward the odometer and find myself with generous amounts of time to rest. This was a pleasant change from last year's Leadbelt Enduro, where I was lucky to have any rest at all. Was the course that much more open and fast, or was I simply riding better?

While pondering this question, my goggles rubbed against a tree branch, which pulled off one of the covers holding the roll-off tape for my vision system. For a short while I raced down the trails with a 10-foot clear plastic streamer flowing in the breeze. Eventually the roll-off tape finally hooked onto something stationary, and with a slight jolt the streamer broke free. On a dusty course with few riders ahead of me, the roll-offs weren't really needed anyway.

After a 20 minute break at the staging area, I set out for the second loop. The fast riders in the A class would complete the full 40 miles, but the B riders were cut off about 27 miles in. The speed averages were different on the second loop, with no 15-mph cruises through the public area of the park. But this time around, the B riders would be spared from a rocky section near the end of the loop where I had struggled in the morning. By now I was already fatigued and ready to call it a day.

Back at the truck, I pulled the scorecard from my front fender and did some quick math. My score was 21, the lowest I'd ever carded at an enduro. After congratulating myself for a minute, I remembered my Murphy's Law of off-road racing: When I ride well, so does everyone else. This was confirmed a couple weeks later as I reviewed the results online. I finished a respectable 3rd in class, out of 10 riders, but most of the scores were similarly low. The overall winner dropped a mere 6 points and the fastest riders had to regulate their speeds, even in some of the 24-mph sections. The 2000 version of the Leadbelt was, indeed, a fast one.

It was also a fun race that didn't pummel me so much as the year before. I was finally catching on to the mystery of timekeeping and limiting the mental mistakes which elevate guys and gals to good enduro riders. The route was set up with timed checkpoints after every reset, to keep riders honest, and I was on time for every one. That was a good feeling. Another good vibe was a shot from local photographer Gary Brady, who made me look fast across an open field. This was the first professional photo I'd ever seen of myself in action, and I was simply mesmerized by the image. I would have cleaned the bathroom of Mr. Brady's studio with a toothbrush, had that been the going price for a print. Fortunately, all I had to do was send him some money, and a crisp 8x10 image showed up in the mail. I still love that photo.