Lebanon, Missouri

There is no defending a B class title.

So I declared in the offseason, after a successful run through the 2002 Missouri Hare Scrambles Championship (MHSC). I could move up or move out of Open B, but I would not return to the class in which I’d competed the past 4 years. Certain colleagues suggested a self-promotion to the A class, which would secure a 2nd row start for every race. I liked that idea, but I’d earned only enough points to finish 49th overall last season. A top-25 overall finish would have required me to move up, and I wasn’t even close. Unworthy, I told myself.

Thus began a season racing the Vet class. In the MHSC world, Vet riders are at least 30 years old and have bashed trees long enough to prove what it takes for longevity in off-road racing: Unusual bone strength. Some had grown up racing in the woods and competed at high levels, yet remained quite speedy in their mature years. Others simply relied on wisdom and a stubborn refusal to slow down. Either way, they all hauled like a FedEx truck on Saturday, endured pain like MMA fighters, and finished races as reliably as Briggs & Stratton engines. This, I declared, was a worthy move.

Another move for the 2003 campaign was a different bike. The old one, an ancient 1999 KTM 300EXC, joined my garage the same year I first contested the Open B class. Four years and 4,000 miles later, if this machine ever had a soul, I’d surely crushed it. Someday I would make it pretty again for a new owner, but for now the retired bike sat idle, replaced by a younger model. The new 2002 KTM 300MXC was an eBay find last summer, brand new and reasonably priced at a dealership in Denver. All I had to do was get the bike home, which turned out to be one of the few instances my traveling banker career saved me money. Every July my employer forced me into a windowless conference room for two days of meetings in downtown Denver, followed by 18-holes at a local golf course. But this time, rather than jet to the city with the rest of my St. Louis colleagues, I arranged a long road trip with stops at bank customers along the way. And just like that, my trip to retrieve the new motorcycle was paid for.

Seven months later, the 300MXC had been properly thrashed with offseason visits to St. Joe State Park. The previous weekend, MHSC #9 Lars Valin showed up at St. Joe and suggested we practice together on a sand track. Lars and I became regulars in the Missouri hare scramble scene at about the same time, and our trajectories could not have been more opposed. In consecutive years, Lars advanced from the C class, then B, then A, and finally AA. I started in the B class in 1999 and, essentially, never left. Meanwhile, Lars had risen to a consistent MHSC top-10 overall finisher and raced as a club rider in the previous year’s International Six Days Enduro (ISDE) in the Czech Republic. On the sand flats of St. Joe, he showed me what it takes to compete at his level. Needless to say, I wasn’t close. Trailing Lars around a half-mile, whooped-out track only humbled me, and I twisted my knee trying to keep up.

But the sand track flogging was good practice, and on this cloudy, chilly Sunday morning I would need it. Missouri had sustained one of its snowier winters of late, with a thin white layer dusting the ground as I left my house to meet up with riding buddy Matt Sellers. At the staging area we arrived to plentiful parking, thanks to the ATV races now held on Saturdays. The quad riders would endure no more 8:30 a.m. start times, and the bikers wouldn’t rush to squeeze in practice laps. This was a win for all.

My sighting lap helped sort out the usual arm pump, and as a bonus I was able to test my sore knee (it was ok). I clung to hope that the new bike’s rock-hard seat would finally loosen up a bit (it didn’t), then topped off the fuel tank and cruised to the open field where the starting lines began to fill. The Vet class was placed deep within a mass of riders freshly out of hibernation, excited and anxious for the new season. Matt lined up a few rows ahead with the backside of his helmet barely visible in the Open B class. An army of spectators and support crews paced the spaces between rows, offering greetings and jokes and casual banter while riders nervously fiddled with gloves and goggles and checked and rechecked handlebar controls and warmed up engines. The aroma of oil-burning two-strokes overwhelmed the several-acre starting area, and finally the course marshal motioned for silence.

With a wave of the green flag, the 2003 season erupted with the fastest MHSC riders weaving through a series of grassy straightaways and turns. These men were all sorts of aggression and confidence, engines pushing to redlines and rear tires spewing turf onto a crowd of spectators. Half a minute later, all were out of view, and the next line of riders readied for departure. In one-minute gaps, row after row repeated ever-slower versions of this dead silence followed by a noisy crisscross toward the woods. I focused on Matt Sellers battling for the holeshot with MHSC #191 Karl Harris, losing out just ahead of the first turn and seeing nothing else of Karl until the finish line two hours later.

Two more rows departed, and then my new cohort launched into the Vet class season. All eyes focused on loamy soil where grass had held root just minutes prior. My sprint to the woods ended in typical mid-pack fashion, proving yet again how little a motorcycle matters when one has not mastered the technique of a dead engine start. Perhaps in the distant future, after I’m gone of this earth, two stroke dirt bikes will come with electric starters and no one will ever have to fear a hare scramble starting line like me. For now, not even a new motorcycle could propel me to the front of the pack. I recognized only the KTM of #94 Kevin Ruckdeschell in the distance, along with a number of others whose bikes and gear I hadn’t yet memorized. All rode fast and aggressively through the brown and gray foliage.

This determined pace, so early in the race, wasn’t entirely unexpected. In years past years I’d seen plenty of Vet riders crack the top-20 overall. I knew outright passing, the kind where one rider out-brakes another or dives to the inside apex of a corner, would come with high risks. I’d have to locate better lines through tricky spots, and I found one after a wet sprint through an open pasture. Just inside the trees, I squirmed my way around a pair of riders at a slick, muddy section. The woods then revealed MHSC scorekeeper Tom Eidam running well in the Senior class. He sensed my desperation to catch the Vet class leaders and allowed me by, only to repass a couple miles later when I tangled with another rider. With most of the pack still grouped together tightly on the first lap, all the energy and risk and effort of these multiple passes went wasted. I lifted my bike upright, threw a leg over the concrete seat and prepared to pass them all over again.

Near the end of the first lap, a few choice lines and mistakes by others put me back in front of the group I’d let by with my demoralizing fall. With those riders in my rear view, the trail mostly cleared of traffic and I could finally ride at a full-on race pace. Thanks to the Legendary Leivan’s, the family of dirt bikers who run the Lebanon event, I could charge through the rocks and tree roots with little worry of missing a turn or risking decapitation from a wayward tree limb. The elder Frank and his son Steve, the multi-time and defending MHSC overall winner, had planned the course to ensure dirt bikes would flow nicely through the woods. In Missouri terms, this means a healthy menu of rocks mixed in with hills and creeks and Ozark dirt. Rough, naturally, but not punishing.

In this green-free patch of Laclede County earth, bikes continued to spread apart throughout the second lap. Passing became easier, though every so often I’d find myself stuck at the rear of a freight train of riders struggling through a tight section. For those familiar with old-growth forests of Missouri, one might wonder how these woods, especially in early spring, could ever be too dense for one dirt bike to move past another. To put it simply, it’s the ravines. At this stage of the race, freight trains usually collected where the trail coiled through the bottoms of the narrow little valleys, where the only way around another rider was to climb up the side, mountain-goat style, and from an elevated perch, attempt to squeeze past. With jagged rocks poking out the sides of the ravines, it was a recipe for an ugly crash that could take me out and entangle other riders too. So I followed, impatiently, and sprinted ahead when the trails opened wider.

I’d moved up three spots by the end of the second lap, checking through the scoring chute in 2nd place. Class leader Robbie Jo Reed had put a full minute between us, probably by avoiding some of the many rocks I’d smashed with my front tire. One small boulder bashed my rear brake rotor guard with enough much force to knock it off the brake caliper carrier. On these trails smoother is usually better, and I was a case study in how much more effort it takes to kiss the tire against every other stone on the course. But the new bike ran flawlessly through all of this abuse.

Just over an hour into the race, I caught up to Matt Sellers and then came into lapped traffic from the starting rows behind me. While slower riders moved aside without needing encouragement, a fantastic thought burst into my mind: Maybe they hear me coming. Just like Pro riders lapping me in a national race, perhaps the C class riders were aware I was approaching quickly and took evasive action before I had to plan my way around. I flew by the slower riders with a feeling of elation. Like freshmen on the first day of high school, they knew when to move out of the way. And then karma put my big head in the place it belongs: I planted my front wheel squarely into the face of a cantaloupe-sized rock, deflected into the path of a small tree, and watched from the ground as all those riders passed by.

Humbled again.

After the scoring lane to end my third lap, my watch showed I was just over 90 minutes into the race. A quick 4th lap might squeeze me through the RFID scanner with just enough time for a 5th lap, but fatigue and mistakes would make this my final run through the course. At the 7-mile mark, Brandon Forrester caught up to me on his way to the overall win. He would be the only AA rider to lap me, and just like I said after running the mile at the 1984 Iroquois County Grade School track and field championship, “At least it was only one guy.” Chris Nesbitt would cross the finish line in 2nd place overall.

As much as a 5th lap would have satisfied my need for speed, my backside was happy to see the checkered flag at the scoring trailer. Robbie Jo Reed added another minute to his lead and took the Vet class win, followed by me in second place, 27th overall. I considered this a successful race, but the stock seat would have to go. Missouri was just too rough.