That’s right I decided to take one more crack at a hare scramble. I wasn’t happy about not finishing the last one. I could live with not finishing the first one. Since it was so dang hard, that it took Luis 2.5 hours to do just one loop. The second one though, I wasn’t happy with my poor judgement. I just have just thought about finishing and not about trying to keep up with the two girls up front. This time I was going to use good judgement.
I made the trip from SLC to home on Thursday. I spent Friday at home cleaning up, changing oil and air filters on the KTM, and dialing into work. Saturday, I packed up the trailer and I headed to the WeBe Race at Pajarito. I mean who wouldn’t want to ride around there on a dirt bike??? Pajarito ski area sits above Los Alamos. It’s a really steep mountain too. It would be the first time they would be there, so even though I wasn’t feeling great. I was going. I would have liked to do the practice loop on Sat, but I just wasn’t able to drive up late friday. So the race would be the first time I saw the course.
I found a nice lil parking spot that was level and not too far from the registration trailer. I took Sable for a long walk and got myself signed up for Sunday.
I didn’t think about taking pictures during the race. I kind of wish I had. The views from the course were just awesome.
The start was on the slope in front of the lodge, with a long up hill run to the first turn on the right. I had a bit of trouble with the first stint into the trees, along with I don’t know how many others. I just waited until they were all through. Then I headed up. I still can’t get over just how much easier it is to ride this KTM than it was to ride on the husky.
I actually, clipped along at a decent pace until I hit the first really long rocky climb. There was a guy stuck in front of me, so I had to wait for him to move. At that point I was a bit stuck too. I love that WeBe has people watching in lots of places and that they are willing to help you out of messes. The one that helped me this time, help get the bike down toward the bottom of the hill so I could make another run up. I really need to learn how to wheeling the bike up and pivot it like he did. LOL. The best part was him saying you got this.. now let me hear you yell out that you’ve got this!! I did and I did.
I took my time, and I enjoyed the sights. I tried really hard to stay out of the way of those really racing. Most everyone I came across was really helpful and kept checking to see if I was alright when I was stopped. I even had a chat with one guy who was limping a bike with a flat back to the pits. I can’t say that I raced that day, but I didn’t actually finish an endro race this year.
My take a ways from this were that, Hare Scrambles are fun. If I’m going to try them again, I really need to work on developing my skill set some more. I’m also going to need to work on the fitness level if I want to actually treat them like a race.