Tebbetts, Missouri

Over the years I've found certain race venues frustrating for their ability to trick me into making dumb mistakes which cost me large amounts of time, or leave me unable to finish. The Tebbetts round of the Missouri Hare Scrambles Championship gets under my skin in a different way. Nowhere else can I ride with relatively few mistakes and still finish poorly.

It's not the terrain. Tebbetts has trees, hills, rocks, creeks and all the typical features of an off-road race course. The difference lies in the spacing of the trees: Far enough apart to make hand guards an optional accessory. Trails change direction sparingly and with little fanfare. In Illinois, Tebbetts would be classified as a Grand Prix, a sort of crossover between old school motocross and woods racing. Here in Missouri, it's just a hare scramble. Tebbetts is an exercise in holding open the throttle, which makes it a race for speed freaks. Missouri has many.

I, on the other hand, still have a bit too much Illinois in me. In my second full year on the Missouri hare scramble circuit, I sought comfort in narrowly spaced trees, mud ruts and slower speeds. The pace at which the natives could ride a course like Tebbetts was a mystery I didn't see myself solving anytime soon.

Another unhelpful aspect of this race is its place on the calendar. July is hot in Central Missouri. Humidity can make a warm day hot and a hot day miserable, and Tebbetts was approaching last year's Kahoka race on the misery scale. I realized the only way to prepare for this kind of heat was to get hot during the week. My mountain bike was an excellent tool for this and was used heavily leading up to this race. I'd drive straight home from work and jump on the bike for an hour or two before the sun disappeared. Earlier in the week, one of my training runs had me riding down Manchester Road in St. Louis, within sight of three animated bank signs showing temperatures of 98, 100 and 101, in that order. I didn't feel like death on two wheels, so I knew it wouldn't be the heat slowing me down at Tebbetts.

Matt Sellers, my now-regular riding buddy, joined me for the race. We had become fast friends over the past year, sharing rides to and from races and trail rides in Missouri and Illinois. A Missouri native, Matt was at home in fast, rocky terrain like Tebbetts. He could usually put some distance ahead of me in these conditions, which is how the race played out at first. But today's sweltering heat would prove there's more to racing than twisting the throttle.

Side by side on the Open B class starting line, Matt and I surveyed our competition. Row after row of riders, aligned across a wide pasture and desperate for shade, baked in the midday sun. Not a cloud or a tree or even so much as a bush offered shelter. The fortunate ones brought along friends and family, who joined the riders on the starting line while waiting for the race to begin. Water bottles were exchanged, shade umbrellas were opened and quick bites of protein snacks were offered. Matt and I had none of this. Worse yet, I was paying a price for my frugal nature. I'd discovered that prices for the most expensive riding gear -- boots and helmets -- were considerably lower if ordered them in solid black or white colors. I had chosen a black Shoei helmet and black AXO boots. I didn't need to wear my helmet on the starting line, but those black boots baked my feet to medium rare.

Finally, the green flag came out for the Open B class. Matt jumped out ahead and quickly left my sight, while I navigated a grass track laid out with large amounts of yellow caution tape and wood stakes. Grass tracks at the beginning of hare scrambles are designed to put space between riders before they enter the woods, and this track was very effective at spacing me all the way to the rear of the Open B class. Like rocky trails, grass tracks were out of my comfort zone. I had no place to practice for this type of riding and even if I did, I found the tracks uninteresting and probably wouldn't have practiced much anyway. So I suffered through a blur of bike after bike flying past, as if I were pedaling a mountain bike through the pasture.

I did not see Matt again until the race was over. I did not see most of the rest of my class until I'd reached the finish. On the other hand, I did see riders from rows behind, steadily approaching and passing at speeds I could barely believe were attainable for intermediate-level racers. I was further humbled by the motocross track, a narrow affair laid out among tightly spaced trees. Last year I felt this was possibly the trickiest track on earth, with jumps set up between trees growing ridiculously close together. There was, quite simply, no room for error. A small mistake could send a rider airborne into a tree.

This year the track had been widened a bit and more jumps were added. The up-and-over fence crossing remained part of the course, with each attempt putting some fear in me. If I stalled at the peak and fell over, would I land on the fence, and if so, would a jolt of electric current set me into a panic? Luckily, I didn't have to find out.

The infamous creek bed, a staple of the Tebbetts course, was again available for misadventure. At Missouri hare scrambles, it's fairly common to be routed through the center of a small creek and find it covered in a variety of rocks, some dry and others wet and slippery. Uncommon for this race was its distance. The creek bed may not have been a mile in length, but it felt that way. This was a seriously long run through loose rock. As the laps wore on and the bikes followed similar lines, the rocks became a series of deep whoops. This year I had an advantage: the Scotts Performance steering damper. This expensive little handlebar-mounted device kept my front wheel tracking straight through the rocks, with less physical effort. On each pass, I kept my KTM 300EXC on two wheels.

Through each lap, I searched for speed. I studied the riders passing me, especially the Pro riders lapping me near the end of the race. How could they react so quickly to the countless obstacles, big and small, which could end their race badly if they steered the front tire a half-inch in the wrong direction? I had no answers.

One mystery I did solve at Tebbetts was how to avoid heat exhaustion. The mountain biking in ridiculous temperatures had paid its dividend, as did packing my Camelbak with as much ice and water as the bladder would allow. Like a Christmas miracle, I finished the race without a hint of fatigue. Back at the truck, I was surprised to see Matt loaded up and dressed in street clothes. How in the world had he finished so far ahead of me? He quickly explained the heat had taken its toll and he bowed out after three laps. My fourth lap put me two spots ahead, in 8th place, but I was less than satisfied with such a poor result.

Someday, I would figure this out, and that day couldn't come soon enough.