Casey, Illinois

I call it The Look. It’s a certain facial expression – eyes wide, mouth agape – directed toward a dirt bike returning home without color, caked with mud and lacking any identifying characteristics. In the car and truck world, one might say the Cornstock 100 cross country race left my motorcycle murdered out, or so dark and badge-less only the keen eye of an experienced dirt biker could recognize the make and model. During and after the drive back from Casey, Illinois, The Look came from kids in cars, passersby in the Hardees parking lot and my neighbor’s son-in-law across the street.

In years past, what happened in the messy, muddy woods was known only to racers or spectators willing to walk, climb and slide their way into the trees. Most others surveying the aftermath could only wonder how the motorcycles became so divinely dirty. In the 1980s and 1990s, a few lucky ESPN viewers might watch a camera crew trudge onto the trails of a national enduro or hare scramble, where Larry Maiers or Dave Despain narrated the action for the Motoworld program. Only by chance did anyone catch scenes like this, usually at home after the bars closed on Saturday night, where a college student might wind down by tuning into the Eastern Sports Network and seeing into my world on any given Sunday. Today these exploits are slightly more accessible through grainy, low resolution helmet camera footage emailed from person to person in massive video files. At some point technology may permit the rest of humanity a peek into the domain of woods racing, but today was not that day. My Kawasaki KX250 remained a mystery shrouded in a crusty enigma of thick, black Illinois filth.

Fortunately for those who enjoy tormenting themselves on dirt bikes, our world includes land privately owned by likeminded enthusiasts who sink their hard earned wealth into off road facilities which might pay the bills and leave a few extra dollars for food and shelter. Lincoln Trail Motosports (LTM) is such a venue, offering a regionally superior motocross track and enough surrounding woods to host a regular schedule of hare scrambles. Today, LTM pulled out all the stops with a unique off-road endurance race. The Cornstock 100 was billed as the first annual endurance event of its kind, its race flier describing the affair as “100 miles of tight, technical woods, hills and hollows, motocross and grass track, creeks and fields plus tons of fun.” The last part might have been accurate if not for a couple inches of rain in the days leading up to the race. At the riders meeting, the trail boss announced a shorter 80 mile course (10 laps) or 5 hours, whichever came first. A shortened event, reduced in time or distance, meant only one thing: Suffering.

LTM’s property could certainly cause some hurt even in the best of conditions. One of my earliest attempts at hare scrambling came here on a sunny spring day in 1995, during which fatigue and distress inspired a new mountain bike. Pedaling over the streets and trails of Momence, Illinois, I strengthened my legs for the physical load of piloting a dirt bike for two hours in the woods. Return trips to LTM involved less suffering, but on this day, no amount of training would spare riders from the torment of soggy trails. In the staging area, I slopped through muck to sign up at the motocross track, then sloshed across a small portion of the trails and found exactly what I expected: Mud, and lots of it. This was 100% Illinois.

There would be no practice lap, for which few tears were shed. An 8-mile menu of wet clay would surely have added 15 pounds to the KX250, and I needed to set out lean and mean. The course began with a 300-yard sprint across an open field, now drying out a bit from healthy sun and a steady breeze. This left me slightly hopeful, right up until the green flag waved us into the field. My class, Vet A, was assigned to the first row along with 25 or so riders competing in the various A classes. We dashed to the first turn, where the long run-up offered warp speed for those brave enough to twist throttles to the stops. Five hours (or 80 miles) is quite a lengthy race, and probably not the kind won by a holeshot in the first 10 seconds, so I backed off and let the fast guys lead. The terrain after the first turn promised a grass track, thusly awarded only to the first three or four riders. The green surface mostly disappeared by the time I arrived, leaving a mud track for the rest of us. My optimism disappeared as quickly as the green on my motorcycle.

I jockeyed for position behind fast guy John Yarnell as we entered the woods and dropped into a narrow creek. The curvy channel led us single file through the shallow stream, where a motorcycle ahead drenched my goggles and 25 bikes splashed most of the trickling water onto the creek bank. After arrows pointed up and out of the stream, the whole line of us waited for a checkpoint manned (or womanned) by a kind lady completely unfazed by utter chaos. One by one, we paused while she placed marks on our fender-mounted scorecards.

Back on higher ground the mud seemed manageable, but this was pure deception. In these conditions, first arrivers see an entirely different trail than the dozens who follow. We would skate through the first lap mostly unscathed, then suffer like everyone else through miles-long 6-inch-wide furrows. Even now, potential trouble spots were obvious. Further downstream of the narrow creek we’d ridden single-file, a crossing had already developed deep ruts after only a dozen or so riders passed through. Another creek crossing, part of a trail shared with Saturday’s ATV course, developed a two foot vertical wall of mud on the opposite bank. I popped the clutch to lift the front wheel and quickly found the KX250 almost as vertical as the mud wall. Going nowhere, I jerked the front wheel back into the water and searched for an alternate route. Ten feet to the right, an easy path led me out of the creek.

John Yarnell and the rest of the lead pack left me while I fumbled through the creek crossing, but two miles later I found John hopelessly stuck at the bottom of a ravine. I safely navigated down and through, scaling the opposite slope and parking the KX250 against a tree. Carefully stepping back down into the ravine, I assessed the mess into which John had put his own KX250. The rear tire stuck out a few inches above the mud, while the rest of it lie somewhere beneath the surface. No matter how we tried, the wheel wouldn’t budge. One of John’s Illinois buddies arrived on scene a couple minutes later, and between the three of us, we turned the motorcycle 90 degrees and set it on a course further down into the ravine. John fired up the engine and, with help from the spinning tire, we pushed the bike out of the muck.

I climbed out of the ravine and continued while John caught his breath. The effort left both of us winded, but I soon recovered and found my groove as the trail alternated between woods and grass tracks. The sloppy motocross course took us through the final half mile of the lap, where a rider on a Honda CRF passed me like he’d just discovered the McRib was back. Speed was his undoing at the next corner, his bike sliding on its side and resting at the face of a jump. The rider separated and skated entirely off the track. As I passed by, he climbed back onto the track as his Honda continued to idle perfectly through the whole ordeal.

Mud or no, my speed over the track probably matched a typical motocross pace for this un-motocross rider. It’s just not my thing. Never one to embrace airtime, even on the driest of tracks, I rolled over most jumps and passed through the main checkpoint, glad to be rid of it. Assisting John Yarnell put me well back in the Vet A standings, but the first lap was the easiest.

Lap two highlighted what the B and C classes faced after the first row tore up the course. Wherever the sun couldn’t reach the ground, long ruts slowed my progress. In sunnier areas, knobby tires churned up the mud and helped dry it out. The woods trails followed a similar pattern of single rutted paths atop a ridge, then 20-foot drops straight down to the bottom of narrow, V-shaped ravines, where I could choose from half a dozen deep ruts to set up for an immediate climb back up to the top. My mind flashed back to Dirt Rider magazine and its technical advice for this type of obstacle, in which the writers located a professional factory-sponsored individual with skills matched by approximately 4 other people on earth. A photographer would shoot a series of images while this expert navigated a ravine (usually of the style found in the western United States) and quote the rider as he described what he was doing. “Just before you get to the ‘V’, pop a wheelie and give it gas when you hit bottom”. Yes, of course. While the front wheel is pointed 45 degrees downward towards a “V” no wider than my KX250’s wheelbase, just pop a wheelie at the perfect moment and all will be good. I could only imagine the broken lower vertebrae as my motorcycle slammed into the opposite face at about five G’s.

A less aggressive technique yielded a few close calls and had me struggling through most of the ravines, but the big fat Michelin S-12 rear tire chewed its way to the top of every hill. On this second lap, only a 16-inch log blocked my progress in the woods and I performed a graceful ground slide just before the motocross track. Otherwise I’d made it through the worst of the second lap with no major incidents.

While restarting the KX250 after my slide-out near the motocross track, Missouri Hare Scrambles Championship (MHSC) regular Dwayne Parish caught up and challenged me while we finished our second lap. We slid around the track together, reminiscent of our days competing in MHSC’s Open B class. Like me, Dwayne put a priority on MHSC events but was always up for a new challenge outside of Missouri.

With sixteen miles in the books, I set out for a third lap and churned down the narrow creek where two dozen riders first filed through nearly an hour ago. The tiny stream now followed a single rut to the exit point and then the amazingly relaxed checkpoint lady marked my fender card again. In my few roles as a checkpoint worker, I’d never felt anything close to a sense of calm, with all the screaming engines and impatient racers mostly annoyed for having to slow to a stop, simply confirming they’d followed the arrows correctly. If this woman felt anything similar, she hid it as well as a World Series of Poker champ.

A few minutes later, with a quick tap of the rear brake pedal, I knew my race was over. Mud had turned the brake rotor into a grinding wheel, scraping off every last bit of pad material. Newly installed last night, the brake pads were now destined for the landfill and my pace slowed to a crawl. On a drier course I might have managed with only the front brake, but sliding down slippery hills without full stopping power tends to tighten the sphincter a bit past its limit. On a steep descent with a hard left turn at the bottom, I prayed the front wheel wouldn’t lock up and wash out. I begged checkpoint workers for tips to navigate around upcoming obstacles and practically walked the bike down some of the hills.

During the second half of the lap, the KX250 finally found a hill it couldn’t scale. When I lost all traction, I stepped off the bike and snarled as it fell over with the seat pointed toward the downside of the hill. No amount of effort would upright the bike in that position, so I dragged it back down the hill for a second try. A different line took me to the top, where I tiptoed into more ravines and arrived at a series of creek crossing near the end of the course. Spectators viewed the action along the banks, a sure sign of potential problems for riders and entertainment for onlookers. A friendly guy pointed toward a rut up the opposite bank, but I decided to charge through with another line I’d used twice before. A couple hundred other motorcycles had now dug out the rut deep enough to uncover a tree root, which I smacked with the front wheel. The KX250 slowed quickly while my body remained in motion, causing what is known in the motorcycle community as a “tank slapper”. For those unfamiliar with the term, it involves fuel tanks and testicular pain.

The lap ended once again at the motocross track, where I called it a day and packed up for home. Many others had already made the same decision, all of us loading up motorcycles lacking definable colors, driving home and spotting The Look from many a confused passerby.