ECEA Round #3 South Penn June 1st Race Recap!

Round #3 of the ECEA Harescramble Series was held this past Sunday by South Penn Enduro Riders in Franklin County, PA. Unlike last year’s dust bowl, Mother Nature blessed us with just enough rain on Saturday which made for near perfect racing conditions on Sunday. The track was awesome to say the least. Just the right amount of grass fields, technical hill climbs, rutted out mud pits, tricky off-cambers, man made obstacles and plain old tree rooted trails through mid-PA’s finest forests.
Right off the start I got a good jump and was 4th into the first turn. We weaved in and around some grass sections and then headed into the woods. The first woods section was pretty slick; the dirt was clay-like. I’ve been working on getting my first lap time down by two minutes so I was flying around pretty good. Whelp, I went down in probably about the first 5 minutes of the race. There was a stretched straight away in the woods and I went flying down it and then notice that the track made a 90 degree turn so I over shot the turn and was a bit heavy on the front brake which eventually slid my front tire out from underneath of me. I quickly got back up and knew that I had tons of time to make this early in the race. I just concentrated on pushing as hard as I could for as long as I could, until I had nothing left. After the first and second lap I had the track figured out so I could push really hard. About the third lap I picked up a spot and continued to push ahead. I felt really good and I knew that I couldn’t make any mistakes if I wanted to try and pick off another position. There were a lot of spots on the track where you could go really fast, and then there were times when you were riding on the edge of a cliff or spinning your wheels over tree roots while trying to keep momentum for an uphill. Bottom line is that this track had everything and I was having some fun out there. I saw DHaggs Sr. out on the trail about 3/4ths of the way through the 2 hour race. It wasn’t long after that, that I realized how hard I have been pushing since the beginning of the race. It was at that point where I started to feel the heat factor. Now that I’m writing this I realize that I noticed how humid it was and then it was only a few turns and it all slipped my mind and I was back on the gas again. On the next lap I managed to finally catch up to another rider in my class and make the pass on him making anyone who was in front of me incentive to ride faster in hopes that it would be another position. If only I hadn’t gone down in the first lap I would like to have seen how much closer I would have been to the front of the pack. I’m learning that it’s a very fine line between riding faster and riding scared, but that’s what it’s going to take to get used to riding at that speed for the whole race. The final time through the scanner we managed to get 7 laps out of the course and I came across the checkers in 6th place. I’m super happy with my efforts and hope to be consistently in this spot in the pack each race.
DHaggs Sr. put in an A+ effort on Sunday despite his demanding schedule last week, not to mention his boss cracking whip on him at work on Saturday. Clearly his boss pays no mind to Pitman Jimmy B, who also fills his duel roll as team manager, when he made numerous calls demanding a well rested rider for Sunday’s races. His late race fatigue would cause him the get squirrelly in a deep ravine which made him hit a tree pretty darn hard. DHaggs Sr. was okay, his bike – it’s wounded.
Thanks to Pitman Jimmy B for making the trip, taking some pictures and giving assistance where needed.
For the next race we are headed all the way up to Elkland, PA for the 2nd Round of the AMA National Harescramble Series which will be run in conjunction with the PA State and NY State Harescramble Series. It’s going to be AWESOME!
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