Back Mountain June 22nd Race Recap!

Round #7 of the Pennsylvania State Championship Harescramble Series was held this past Sunday in Dallas, PA by the Back Mountain riding club. The forecast called for 50% chance of showers in the morning and thunderstorms in the afternoon – it didn’t rain once, as a matter of fact it was sunny all day. When we rolled through the gate in the morning I asked one of the workers if they had gotten any rain last night and he went off on this big story and at the end of it he said, “uh, maybe a little this morning when I was taking the dog out.” Well I don’t know what his definition of a little is, but we noticed real darn quick that it poured.
We rode down to the starting line and it looked like a big mud pit. The starting line was that really soft mud where you just sank, which made for funny starts because you would hear everybody’s bike rev but then their engines would bog down once they started to get some momentum. That’s what I heard from Pitman Jimmy B anyway because I didn’t get to hear any other lines take off since I was in the first one. The PA State Series doesn’t run a separate Pro line so 250 A class and the Pro class were all on the same line. I’d be lying if I wasn’t a little intimidated when I looked to my left and right and realized that I was on the line with riders like Ryan Rodgers, Andrew DeLong, Jason Sipes and Eric Rodgers. At that moment I just decided to go as fast as I could for as long as I could and when I couldn’t go any faster I would just try and stay with one of these guys. Well that thought lasted to the first turn where I was taken out by another rider who fell down, and by the time I got up I was dead last. I quickly picked my bike up, kicked it, and pinned it into the woods. It was then when I realized just how much rain they got over night. The woods sections were like riding a bike on an ice hockey rink. The announcer at the start did say to everyone that, “everyone here is going to go down today, it’s the guys that go down the least that are going to win,” boy was he right. Beside the first turn fiasco, I went down twice more throughout the 2 hour race. The woods were almost unrideable, there were people down everywhere. First lap I just hit all the main lines because you really had no choice. As the race went on you had an idea of what was coming up on the track so you really had to think ahead of what was coming up so that you could get yourself in position to take a certain line. You couldn’t just fly up to a section – nobody was flying in the first place – and see a good line and then try and take it. There was one part of the track, the section where they ran you real close to the river, where you could hook up well because the soil was softer and a bit sandier. Then there were field sections that connected the woods and they were perfect! I really like how they switched up the field sections from years previous. It was on the 4rd lap when I saw DHaggs Sr. out in the field. He pushed consistently throughout the whole entire race despite the ruthless conditions. I really felt like I was going slow through the woods, I mean there really was no other way to go. In the beginning of the race I was watching guys trying to pin it and they were wiping out all over. In the field sections I tried to go as fast as I could to try and make up some time. I was getting discouraged in the beginning laps of the race but then when I came around for the 3rd lap the scanner said I was in 7th place, I guess everyone was going slow, or they were trying to go to fast and crashed them selves out of the race. Regardless I was determined to put my head down and push and keep racing the track because that’s really what everyone was doing, it was a test of survival out there. I continued to push and made some small mistakes but I kept my momentum which was so important in a race like this. There were so many lines out there and everyone was so muddy it was hard to make anyone out, so if I saw you in front of me I just decided to assume that you were in my class. Again like always at Back Mountain I never got a white flag for the last lap so when I came around after my fifth lap I got the checkers and the scanner read 5th place! My best finish yet this year and I was more than happy with the results. I don’t know why but I always do better in the races that are technical and so physically demanding. Sometimes I think heart and effort make up for some of the experience that I’m missing since most of these guys have been doing this their whole lives.
DHaggs Sr., like I mentioned above, rode consistently and aggressively for 2 hours holding on to the 5th place position in a stacked field of competitive riders. Pitman Jimmy B put in a good days work as well, and he even managed to scrape the mud off the bikes at the end of the day. He will be missed next weekend at one of the biggest races of the year.
This weekend we are taking a well deserved weekend off because I think that being on the road and racing so much is slowly wearing on the team. I’m a bit banged up myself so a weekend off will do good and that way we will be rejuvenated for the Somerset GNCC which we will be heading to in two weeks.
I would like to Thank my Sponsors: DHAGGS Harescramble Racing, MSR Racing, Scott Powersports, Kenda USA, DP Brakes, Scott USA, TAG Metals, Decal Works, Twin Air, IMS, Devol Eng., FMF, TM Designworks, Cycra Racing