WoodsChick
Member
- Apr 16, 2002
- 35
- 0
had high hopes for the 4-Hour Team GP at the Eddieville Motorsports Park in Goldendale, WA this year. Last year my 2-months-pregnant teammate was just slightly slower than me and we still managed to win the women's class by the huge margin of 3 laps. This year Cindi Roberson and I were teamed together as the Enduro Chicks, seeings as how that's pretty much what we are. I've done exactly 1 GP in my life and I won it. Perhaps I should have quit while I was ahead? Cindi raced the D36 enduros for several years, winning the B-Vet class one year and the B-200 the next. She's also a pretty fearless hare scrambler. It doesn't really need to be said that she's faster than me. We were feeling pretty good about our chances of doing well, providing neither one of us did anything stupid.
The night before the race one of the other women racers ambled by our pits and stopped by for some friendly pre-race chit-chat. Seems she was a GP rider in the OMRA series that runs at the Eddieville track, and she was currently #2. She wanted to know who we were racing with. Uh...each other, we told her. She got a little cagey when asked who she was racing with. She said there was another woman that was about her same speed that she was thinking of hooking up with, but that there were 2 "really, really fast gals" that were there and they didn't know who was going to end up riding with whom. It seemed like a no-brainer to me to put the 2 really, really fast women together. And that is apparently what happened. One of them was the #1 GP rider in the OMRA series and the wife of an AA rider. Don't know anything about her teammate other than the fact that she was probably about 15-20 years younger than me and Cindi.
Ok...so the 2 old enduro riders (on 125 and 200 2-strokes) are up against the local hot-shoe youngster GP riders (both on big 4-strokes, I think) on their wide-open horsepower-hungry home track. No problemo, right?
I'd ridden the track last year, and Cindi had never been there. I'd told her it was nice and loamy, not a speck of dust for miles, killer traction, nice old-school MX track with no serious jumps or whoops. She instantly thought me a liar when she arrived. The Pacific Northwest has been mired in a drought this season, and its effects on the track were immediately apparent. Also, there was not one but three sets of whoops on the track. Big wide bike swallowing whoops, little sharp tightly-spaced whoops, and semi-huge pointy oddly-spaced whoops, none of them rideable by mere mortals such as ourselves. Add to that this was my very first ride on my new clutch and way-overdue new top end and well, the MX play day on Saturday was quite the adventure. I just figured something was going to end up broken before the race was over, and I was hoping Cindi was up to the task of finishing without me. She looked like she wanted to kill me after our first lap around the track.
I'd talked Cindi into starting the race, using the argument that the faster rider should go out and put us ahead, then I'd try to keep us in the game til it was her turn again. I mean, she's the more experienced racer, right? In reality, I'd had my fair share of fun with the 40-rider gate MX start directly onto the MX track last year, and felt that she deserved to have the same opportunity this year. Joke was on me, though, as it was a dead-engine start in front of the gate with a right-hander right out onto the fastest section of the GP track. Damn... Not only did they save the MX track for last this year, but they ran it backwards. We'd ridden the MX track the day before the race, but now that it was backwards it felt totally different. I was actually getting lost in my mind, not remembering where I was. As if it mattered...
Cindi wheelied all the way up the start straight and somehow ended up in the first turn in a solid 3rd place. She maintained that place through quite a few turns until the riders disappeared up the hill and out onto the back section of the course. I ran back to the pits and tried to relax before it was my turn to take the reins. Cindi put in 2 solid laps, each lap was about 6 1/2 miles, and came into the pits grinning ear-to-ear, looking like she was having a ball, and giving me the thumb's up. After my first lap, I concluded that she must have been faking it just to get back at me for making her start :laugh:
My lap started fairly well. Coming out of the pits we had the option of hopping right onto the biggest set of whoops and riding as fast as possible, or staying on the flat section right next to it and maintaining the pit speed limit of 5mph, only hopping onto the track after the whoops. I figured I couldn't roll the whoops that fast, so I chose the flat section. The back section was totally different from last year. Gone was all the hero dirt, and in its place was dust, hard-pack, super-slick mud bogs from over-zealous watering, lots of deep sandy-like wide open whoopy sections with tire tracks going every which-a-way, and humongous braking bumps everywhere. There were still some confidence-inspiring berms that were fun to roost and rail through, but they weren't fool-proof like last year. Sometimes they'd hold you, sometimes they'd just disappear in a fluff of brown as you slid wide right through them. My clutch and motor were working flawlessly, and it was...uh...exciting trying to hold on in the fast wide-open stuff. It's been awhile since the CR would float the front wheel effortlessly in the high-speed chop. (I'm embarrassed to say how many hours were on my previous piston.) After getting the card punched that was attached to the scrunchy on my left arm as I finished my first lap, I mentally thanked Cindi for saving me from the Iron Man class. What was I thinking?? :coocoo:
My 2nd lap felt much better. I was starting to remember certain sections from last year, and the elevator shaft drop-offs weren't sneaking up on me any more. I had much more confidence and was actually having fun and riding hard instead of wondering how I was going to survive 3 1/2 more hours of hell. The jumps were actually becoming real jumps, and I even passed a few riders. Got passed by a lot more, though. At the end of my stint, I pulled into the pits, came to a stop with my left arm up in the air, and our crack pit crew of Lorena and Theresa Harrell took care of the rest. Cindi got the scrunchy on her arm and was off in a flash. I had a nice cool wet towel for my face, grapes and ice water for my thirst, and a chair in the shade to rest in. Life doesn't get much better.
The rest of the race was just a blur of laps, and watching the riders come through the scoring check.
Cindi and I did 2 laps per stint, and our pit stops were very quick and efficient. We could have done more laps in a row, but we figured with our quick stops we were better off being fresh for our laps. I had 2 moments on the track, but neither one resulted in a get-off. I got seriously out of shape on the high-speed sandy stuff and ended up with my hips up against the bars and me looking right at my front number plate. The numbers were upside-down. But the dirt gods were smiling upon me and I managed to get back in the saddle and ride it out with no damage done. The other time I just went into a turn at the end of a long straight a little too hot and couldn't quite negotiate the fluffy berm. I ended up out in the weeds, bouncing through unseen rocks and other various and assorted obstacles. I managed to find my way back onto the track before the death-defying drop-off came into full view.
I passed a gal lying on the ground in the bottom of one of the drop-offs, her bike facing towards me. I slowed and asked if she was ok. She gave a thumbs-up so I squirrelled my way to the top and carried on. She wasn't there the next lap so I assume she got herself together. There weren't really any turn workers out there, so if you did have a problem you were kind of on your own. There were sweep riders that would ride a lap or 2 every now and again, but it felt much more like an enduro rather than a MX race in that regard. I saw a kid on a CR80 parked on the side of the track. He was waving wildly at all the riders, but he was standing on his own 2 feet so I avoided eye contact and kept going. Racing's racing, after all. Good thing, as I later found out he just couldn't get his bike started.
I thought for sure I'd see more of our crowd out on the track, but I only saw Gary, Cindi's father, a few times, and I think I saw Robert pass me in the fast stuff. I'm not sure though, because he was going so fast that the big number on the back of his custom-made nameplate was all just a blur. Judging by the wild style and reckless abandon, though, I'm pretty sure it was him. Ol' Gary was reverting to James Bond tactics with me on his butt through the whoops, throwing out oil spills, smoke screens and razor-sharp tire-flatteners. Well, ok... we were cheating and taking the far inside line where the whoops weren't so...whoop-like, and Gary clipped the blue garbage can and it landed right smack in front of me, forcing me out into the blender-zone. And this is after he made me work my butt off passing him the first time! I stalled my motor coming into a downhill set of braking bumps and he motored on by me as I kicked the CR a few times. I finally got him in a wide-open section and then I never saw anyone I knew again.
Cindi went out for our last stint with 25 minutes remaining on the clock. I knew she'd be able to get 2 more laps in, barring any on-track disaster, giving us a total of 14 for the day. After the clock expired, riders were funneled into a single-file line that took them up to the scoring trailer. Riders turned in their scrunchies with the punch card attached, the scorers would count them and ask the rider if they agreed on the number of punches found, and then they'd write it down. Last year we had fanny packs with transponders, but since the track was littered with fanny packs, I guess they thought this was a better idea. It worked pretty well.
Cindi and I felt pretty good about our effort. We had 14 laps, one more than Leann and I had done last year, neither one of us had hit the ground all day, our bodies and bikes were still in one piece, we gave it all we had, and we'd had a good time doing it. We had to wait a little while for the results, but since we'd both been passed by one of the "really, really fast gals," there wasn't a whole lot of suspense in regards to who the winner would be.
We finished in 2nd place :| The winning team, OTBG #2 (the hosting club was the Over The Bars Gang, hence the team name) also completed 14 laps, but had finished their last lap before Cindi. We were both disappointed at first. Cindi is the consummate competitor, always in it to win it, and I certainly didn't drive 1,320 miles just to finish in 2nd place. But after getting our big purple trophies, and letting the events of the day sink in, we realized we had done pretty well considering the competition and our complete lack of GP experience. The fact that we completed the same amount of laps as the winning team was the saving grace in our defeat. We're woods riders, and we kept the GP specialists honest in their own back yard.
Besides, a trophy for one's birthday never hurts, even if it is only 2nd place :nod:
An older aerial view of the track, it's much better now:
http://www.overthebarsgang.com/EVpic.htm
WoodsChick
The night before the race one of the other women racers ambled by our pits and stopped by for some friendly pre-race chit-chat. Seems she was a GP rider in the OMRA series that runs at the Eddieville track, and she was currently #2. She wanted to know who we were racing with. Uh...each other, we told her. She got a little cagey when asked who she was racing with. She said there was another woman that was about her same speed that she was thinking of hooking up with, but that there were 2 "really, really fast gals" that were there and they didn't know who was going to end up riding with whom. It seemed like a no-brainer to me to put the 2 really, really fast women together. And that is apparently what happened. One of them was the #1 GP rider in the OMRA series and the wife of an AA rider. Don't know anything about her teammate other than the fact that she was probably about 15-20 years younger than me and Cindi.
Ok...so the 2 old enduro riders (on 125 and 200 2-strokes) are up against the local hot-shoe youngster GP riders (both on big 4-strokes, I think) on their wide-open horsepower-hungry home track. No problemo, right?
I'd ridden the track last year, and Cindi had never been there. I'd told her it was nice and loamy, not a speck of dust for miles, killer traction, nice old-school MX track with no serious jumps or whoops. She instantly thought me a liar when she arrived. The Pacific Northwest has been mired in a drought this season, and its effects on the track were immediately apparent. Also, there was not one but three sets of whoops on the track. Big wide bike swallowing whoops, little sharp tightly-spaced whoops, and semi-huge pointy oddly-spaced whoops, none of them rideable by mere mortals such as ourselves. Add to that this was my very first ride on my new clutch and way-overdue new top end and well, the MX play day on Saturday was quite the adventure. I just figured something was going to end up broken before the race was over, and I was hoping Cindi was up to the task of finishing without me. She looked like she wanted to kill me after our first lap around the track.
I'd talked Cindi into starting the race, using the argument that the faster rider should go out and put us ahead, then I'd try to keep us in the game til it was her turn again. I mean, she's the more experienced racer, right? In reality, I'd had my fair share of fun with the 40-rider gate MX start directly onto the MX track last year, and felt that she deserved to have the same opportunity this year. Joke was on me, though, as it was a dead-engine start in front of the gate with a right-hander right out onto the fastest section of the GP track. Damn... Not only did they save the MX track for last this year, but they ran it backwards. We'd ridden the MX track the day before the race, but now that it was backwards it felt totally different. I was actually getting lost in my mind, not remembering where I was. As if it mattered...
Cindi wheelied all the way up the start straight and somehow ended up in the first turn in a solid 3rd place. She maintained that place through quite a few turns until the riders disappeared up the hill and out onto the back section of the course. I ran back to the pits and tried to relax before it was my turn to take the reins. Cindi put in 2 solid laps, each lap was about 6 1/2 miles, and came into the pits grinning ear-to-ear, looking like she was having a ball, and giving me the thumb's up. After my first lap, I concluded that she must have been faking it just to get back at me for making her start :laugh:
My lap started fairly well. Coming out of the pits we had the option of hopping right onto the biggest set of whoops and riding as fast as possible, or staying on the flat section right next to it and maintaining the pit speed limit of 5mph, only hopping onto the track after the whoops. I figured I couldn't roll the whoops that fast, so I chose the flat section. The back section was totally different from last year. Gone was all the hero dirt, and in its place was dust, hard-pack, super-slick mud bogs from over-zealous watering, lots of deep sandy-like wide open whoopy sections with tire tracks going every which-a-way, and humongous braking bumps everywhere. There were still some confidence-inspiring berms that were fun to roost and rail through, but they weren't fool-proof like last year. Sometimes they'd hold you, sometimes they'd just disappear in a fluff of brown as you slid wide right through them. My clutch and motor were working flawlessly, and it was...uh...exciting trying to hold on in the fast wide-open stuff. It's been awhile since the CR would float the front wheel effortlessly in the high-speed chop. (I'm embarrassed to say how many hours were on my previous piston.) After getting the card punched that was attached to the scrunchy on my left arm as I finished my first lap, I mentally thanked Cindi for saving me from the Iron Man class. What was I thinking?? :coocoo:
My 2nd lap felt much better. I was starting to remember certain sections from last year, and the elevator shaft drop-offs weren't sneaking up on me any more. I had much more confidence and was actually having fun and riding hard instead of wondering how I was going to survive 3 1/2 more hours of hell. The jumps were actually becoming real jumps, and I even passed a few riders. Got passed by a lot more, though. At the end of my stint, I pulled into the pits, came to a stop with my left arm up in the air, and our crack pit crew of Lorena and Theresa Harrell took care of the rest. Cindi got the scrunchy on her arm and was off in a flash. I had a nice cool wet towel for my face, grapes and ice water for my thirst, and a chair in the shade to rest in. Life doesn't get much better.
The rest of the race was just a blur of laps, and watching the riders come through the scoring check.
Cindi and I did 2 laps per stint, and our pit stops were very quick and efficient. We could have done more laps in a row, but we figured with our quick stops we were better off being fresh for our laps. I had 2 moments on the track, but neither one resulted in a get-off. I got seriously out of shape on the high-speed sandy stuff and ended up with my hips up against the bars and me looking right at my front number plate. The numbers were upside-down. But the dirt gods were smiling upon me and I managed to get back in the saddle and ride it out with no damage done. The other time I just went into a turn at the end of a long straight a little too hot and couldn't quite negotiate the fluffy berm. I ended up out in the weeds, bouncing through unseen rocks and other various and assorted obstacles. I managed to find my way back onto the track before the death-defying drop-off came into full view.
I passed a gal lying on the ground in the bottom of one of the drop-offs, her bike facing towards me. I slowed and asked if she was ok. She gave a thumbs-up so I squirrelled my way to the top and carried on. She wasn't there the next lap so I assume she got herself together. There weren't really any turn workers out there, so if you did have a problem you were kind of on your own. There were sweep riders that would ride a lap or 2 every now and again, but it felt much more like an enduro rather than a MX race in that regard. I saw a kid on a CR80 parked on the side of the track. He was waving wildly at all the riders, but he was standing on his own 2 feet so I avoided eye contact and kept going. Racing's racing, after all. Good thing, as I later found out he just couldn't get his bike started.
I thought for sure I'd see more of our crowd out on the track, but I only saw Gary, Cindi's father, a few times, and I think I saw Robert pass me in the fast stuff. I'm not sure though, because he was going so fast that the big number on the back of his custom-made nameplate was all just a blur. Judging by the wild style and reckless abandon, though, I'm pretty sure it was him. Ol' Gary was reverting to James Bond tactics with me on his butt through the whoops, throwing out oil spills, smoke screens and razor-sharp tire-flatteners. Well, ok... we were cheating and taking the far inside line where the whoops weren't so...whoop-like, and Gary clipped the blue garbage can and it landed right smack in front of me, forcing me out into the blender-zone. And this is after he made me work my butt off passing him the first time! I stalled my motor coming into a downhill set of braking bumps and he motored on by me as I kicked the CR a few times. I finally got him in a wide-open section and then I never saw anyone I knew again.
Cindi went out for our last stint with 25 minutes remaining on the clock. I knew she'd be able to get 2 more laps in, barring any on-track disaster, giving us a total of 14 for the day. After the clock expired, riders were funneled into a single-file line that took them up to the scoring trailer. Riders turned in their scrunchies with the punch card attached, the scorers would count them and ask the rider if they agreed on the number of punches found, and then they'd write it down. Last year we had fanny packs with transponders, but since the track was littered with fanny packs, I guess they thought this was a better idea. It worked pretty well.
Cindi and I felt pretty good about our effort. We had 14 laps, one more than Leann and I had done last year, neither one of us had hit the ground all day, our bodies and bikes were still in one piece, we gave it all we had, and we'd had a good time doing it. We had to wait a little while for the results, but since we'd both been passed by one of the "really, really fast gals," there wasn't a whole lot of suspense in regards to who the winner would be.
We finished in 2nd place :| The winning team, OTBG #2 (the hosting club was the Over The Bars Gang, hence the team name) also completed 14 laps, but had finished their last lap before Cindi. We were both disappointed at first. Cindi is the consummate competitor, always in it to win it, and I certainly didn't drive 1,320 miles just to finish in 2nd place. But after getting our big purple trophies, and letting the events of the day sink in, we realized we had done pretty well considering the competition and our complete lack of GP experience. The fact that we completed the same amount of laps as the winning team was the saving grace in our defeat. We're woods riders, and we kept the GP specialists honest in their own back yard.
Besides, a trophy for one's birthday never hurts, even if it is only 2nd place :nod:
An older aerial view of the track, it's much better now:
http://www.overthebarsgang.com/EVpic.htm
WoodsChick
