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Message: [QUOTE="Timr, post: 182756, member: 16236"] Excellant point Jon, burning the first check is definately not the way to start off an event. Just ask any number of guys who burned the first check yesterday in Clanton. As always, you really need to be on your toes. I didn't say that I would leave the reset early in this situation, but I am trying to point out to the inexperienced enduro rider when and why a person might leave a reset early, like 3-4 minutes early. What you could do is ride up to a couple of 100ths of a mile before the first possible and then pull over off the trail into the woods. MAKE SURE THAT YOU DON't SEE A CHECK. By the time you see a check, it's almost too late. So, pull into the woods and shut off your bike. Then, listen to see if you can hear voices. Wait for the bikes that are on time to roll around the corner and listen to see if it sounds like the came to a stop or did they stay on the gas. If they didn't stop, then proceed with caution. Or, you can leave the reset a little hot, like 45 seconds hot and ride to just before the first possible and then slow down and look. If you see the check, you better be able to ride very slowly until you clock says zero. If you don't see a check, go fast until just before the next possible and repeat the same process. This is know as "riding the possibles." The distance between possible check locations changes based on the speed average. Sometimes the possibles can be a far apart as .5 miles. If you can give yourself an extra minute to get over a tough obstacle like a fallen tree, a tough uphill, or a mud hole, you might come out of a section with a zero or a lower score than if you just went in right on time and tried to stay within your minute. Another point that we've talked about before is for B & C riders to enter into Emergency (tie-breaker/green & white flags) checks early in the minute like at :02 when the check is placed at the front of a test section (this is a "going in" check). The thinking here is to forget about trying to get a perfect zero at :30 and already be 30 seconds into your minute when you can go in at :02 and potential not drop a whole minute at the check at the end of the section. Lemming, I'm sure that that's what the rule book says, but at this race, I guess they didn't follow the rule book to the word. There was a reset at 2.5, and I'm sure that it was put there for the very reason that I stated above. Of course, if someone would've protested the check's placement, and the reset, I'm sure that it would've been thrown out. However, nobody protested it. As you well know, it pays to know the rules. The rules are not always adhered to by the promoting club. Another AMA rule that goes unprotested in SERA is the marking of mileage at all turns along the course. To paraphrase the rule book, mileage must be marked at all major turns along the course, and must be noted on the route sheet (not the roll chart). Terry Cunningham brought this to my attention at one of our races about 5 years ago. In SERA, nobody uses a route sheet. Not a proper route sheet where every turn and known control is marked. A few years ago, Masterlinks provided a roll chart that had all of the route sheet information imbedded into it. I found this to be very helpful. You could determine if a section was made up of mostly dirt roads and jeep trails or if it was all single track woods. It provided even more information to study before the race and you could figure out where the tests were going to be and how long they were going to be. It was fun to know what was coming up when rolling the chart along in it's holder. [/QUOTE]

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