Dumb and dumber!
By TMX Archives on 15th Mar 05
Sometimes something that starts out as a good idea can sort of snowball out of control and end up down in the deepest depths of dumbness. Sometimes something that starts out as a good idea can sort of snowball out of control and end up down in the deepest depths of dumbness. That's what happened here with this little feature.The original plan was to get Geoff Walker to ride his long-term KX250 at Wirral Off-Road's Tough One enduro. But Geoff was too scared to entertain the idea and quickly blagged a trip to the Sixsixone factory in California to avoid even being in the country on the same day. Wuss.So being someone who's willing to take one for the team so to speak, I delegated myself to ride in his place - on his bike - and then came up with the master plan of racing the Innovate Motorsports NEC supercross the night before. I must be stupid, pure and simple. Who else would be dumb enough to think they could ride a supercross one night and an extreme enduro the very next day?No one else thought it was a good idea - especially Geoff who was worried about his long-term test weapon getting trashed before he'd gotten the chance to ride it properly. But things were already in motion and there was no backing out...There was one small problem to overcome though and that was having no bike to use for the supercross. I thought it was a good plan to ride a 250F but unfortunately I didn't have access to one. In the end Marshfield Kawasaki dealer Motoxtreme stepped up with the loan of a newish KXF - thanks guys!While bikes were sorted I was far from being fit for riding. I hadn't even touched a bike since before Christmas but then luckily a call came from out of the blue and I found myself heading Stateside for a week at an MX Heaven boot camp.That didn't quite go to plan though. Chief coach Stefan Elvin came down with a killer cold and was stuck in bed all week but I still got three quality days riding in at Elsinore, Perris and MX Heaven's own natural, outdoor style circuit.Elsinore and Perris are both SX style tracks - full of rhythm sections and big jumps - so I felt quite well prepared for riding at the NEC. But - unusually for me - I was wrong and my American experience wouldn't really cross over to supercross on this side of the Atlantic. More about that later...In the week running up to Painfest - as this exercise in stupidity will be known from this point on - I had a large dose of jetlag. A hectic schedule at work and a long day down Bristol way collecting bikes didn't help me catch up on sleep so by Painfest Eve I was pretty darn knackered. But at least it helped me get a full night's sleep and stopped me from lying awake and thinking about the races ahead.After dreaming of sweet supercross victory, waking up and wiping the dribble from my chops and then feasting on cornflakes I set off to the NEC with little Laura Ward riding shotgun. Laura had come along to offer moral support and lug things - she's a good little lugger is Laura.We arrived at the NEC after taking a slight detour and I headed in to sort out my entries. I got a bit excitable and entered both the 125 and Open Pro classes as I was still slightly pumped from my return visit to MX Heaven and was looking forwards to riding a well built technical track within the confines of the NEC arena. But my excitement kind of dropped down a few notches when I actually saw the track.Now I know that the same promotions team have a hand in running the Pontrilas round of the British championship but the last thing I expected to feast my eyes on was a mini version of the Herefordshire circuit complete with fuel-tank deep ruts and little in the way of airtime.But it's the same for everyone I guess so I unloaded both bikes and tried to mentally prepare myself for riding deep ruts instead of daunting rhythm sections. With the clay being so tacky I also made the decision to take the headlights off the enduroised KX and run that puppy in the Open class to give the borrowed KXF a little rest.My two six-lap practices went as well as I expected they would considering the state of things. I also made sure to practice my starts as getting out of the gate on the slot-car style circuit was gonna be very important come the evening's heat races.A quick change around in the schedule of events meant that instead of the normal British supercross style of heats, semis and an LCQ - and a final if you're fast enough to make it through - there would just be a pair of heats, semis and some sort of grand final. The strange thing about it all was that riders running both classes could qualify for the final twice and the lack of LCQs meant that a quality rider could possibly go out after a crash or something in the six-lap heat.Anyhoo... My first race of the night was the 125 heat race. I got a decentish start down the outside on the KXF then got taken down from behind in the tiny doubles section, got up, rode round, finished last. Great.At least there was still the Open class to go at... Cracking start, screwed up the doubles, made a pass, threw the bike down the track in the whoops twisting the bars in the clamps. Race over. Great.So seven laps of supercross action and my night of racing was done so I refitted the headlight to the KX and Gareth Edmunds - the prettiest mechanic on the UK enduro scene - straightened the steering and fitted some new tyres and mousses ready for the carnage of the Tough One.I stayed around to witness Monster Mark Hucklebridge finish ahead of Ryan Voase and Neil Prince in the Masters final then loaded up the dbr van and tried to track down a hotel mid-way between Birmingham and Oswestry.But just before I left the NEC car park, rotund Ray Chuss gave me the great news that there was loads of snow over Shropshire way but there was no sign of any by the time I'd got to Telford which seemed like as good a place as any to hole up for the night...Day two of Painfest dawned and the overnight snow I'd been promised had not materialised which could only ever be a good thing. The sun was out and if it hadn't been around minus 3,000 degrees I'm sure birds would have been singing and little bunny rabbits frolicking on the lawn of Telford's Travel Inn. Of course, I was thinking about things other than birds and bunny wabbits - my mind was firmly focused on the Tough One. I'd already heard that normal Wirral Off-Road events were pretty hard going so the Tough One was likely to kill me and possibly Walker's bike too.In fact, the last time I'd done anything involving a bike at Nantmawr Quarry I'd left early with broken forks and that event was innocently called Pedalhounds (a downhill mountainbike race). So what chance did Wakker's KX have of surviving a two-hour race called the Tough One.I knew the dumb ass was gonna be *****d off with me anyway - one of the last things he said before jetting off with his cowardly tail between his legs was "make sure you run the puppy on Shell Optimax blah blah blah". Hmmm, if anyone knows of a Shell petrol station on the route between Birmingham's NEC and Nantmawr Quarry please write in and tell me because I couldn't find one. BP it is then!So with a quick stop for fuel and Jaffa Cakes thrown in I soon found myself at the gates of Nantmawr Quarry, stuck in a queue full of paying punters. Late, as normal, I had no time to do anything but mix my gas, fill her up and get the bike through scrutineering before dumping the rest of the gas, some tools and spare goggles in the pit-stop area.I legged it back to the van and threw my kit on, downed some water and made for the start area with minutes to spare. The first familiar face I bumped into was GH Awning's Richard 'Biddy' May who took one look at me kitted up and said - "you're not?" "Er yeah." "Have you seen the course?" "Er no."That was a lie. I had in fact had a sneaky peek at one section of the course with Laura - an unrideable looking pile of rocks on a small off-camber hillside - which I'd had to leave her at the top of because she was too scared to walk down. "It'll be fine," I assured Biddy who was still looking at me slack-jawed like I was some kind of idiot. Geeeeesh, looks like that could make a guy paranoid!Prince Jonty of Wales sidled over with his collection of Canons slung about his person, grinning like a maniac. "What do you reckon then?" asked Edmunds while weighing up what possessions he'd be able to prise from my bleeding corpse later as he casually snapped some pics for publication in dbr. "Looks pretty tough," I replied, trying to act all cool before adding. "It should be fun."And if I hadn't survived the two-hour race those would have been my last words for no sooner had I lied through my teeth to Jonty the call came up for all riders to warm their bikes up. From this point I was on my own - even the pit stops at the Tough One are rider-only affairs with no outside assistance allowed.For a laugh - and oh how hilarious it was - pre-race favourite David Knight was to start five minutes behind the other pro-class competitors to give them a chance of grabbing the 250 up for grabs for leading at the end of the first lap and the first hour. As the hooter hooted signifying the start for the pro class riders Knighter had to put his boots on and fit both wheels into his 250 KTM before setting off.David's big brother Juan grabbed the Pro-class holeshot as the Experts - and me - awaited our start while little Knighter slid on his size 13s. I was still kind of watching David's progress when the hooter went off for my start (bet you haven't heard that excuse for getting a poxy start before) and by the time I'd jumped onboard the KX and fired her up I was in the back half of the pack.But as it turned out we weren't really going anywhere...By the third turn I was stuck in a traffic jam and when I cleared that one I was stuck in another within another 100 yards. And I was still stuck in the rock garden when Knighter caught us - I was half expecting him to have a top secret route through the bushes but he just sat and waited like everyone else while the marshals helped extract an upside down Gas Gas from between two rocks.There was no way I was gonna let Knighter slide past me in the queue but even though I left the rock garden in front he didn't have to wait long to get in front of the #32 mobile roadblock. A coming together with a rather solid tree left me on my back and while I was restarting the dbr KX the D3 KTM went screaming past. Oh well.So within a fifth of a lap I'd already been stuck in traffic twice, crashed once and been passed by someone who'd set-off four minutes behind me - it was gonna be a long two hours.But as the pack spread out a little the course became easier to read and more fun to ride and the going was very varied. From rooty woodland sections to flat-out grassy fields the Tough One course had it all with a few unexpected treats thrown in - like the tyre section.The tyre section had me psyched out from the moment the guy in front of me slid out head-first into the bushes. That didn't help my confidence one bit and nutting myself on the tank the next lap didn't help much either.The other man-made section - the logs - started off okay but got slippier as the event went on. But the toughest bits of all were the natural sections - the real steep rock and root-strewn climbs and descents that quarries are generally full of.At around the halfway mark Laura signalled it was time for a pit stop by showing me a single raised digit. I think she was telling me an hour was up anyway...My pit stop was amazing. Even F1 mechanics would have been wowed by the speed at which I refuelled the green-meanie, downed half a litre of Evian, hawked up a green-meanie of my own before slipping on a fresh pair of Smiths. With that I was gone in a cloud of two-stroke smoke and off on a mission to try and make up some places.The course was at its easiest around this time, I'd found some cunning lines and there was still some grip on the banks. The tyre section was still freaking me out but even that was nowhere near as scary as seeing Vic Noble's head pop up from behind a rock every now and then as he took a picture. I even threw my goggles at him one lap to try and make him stop but he was having none of it.With time running out I was actually starting to enjoy myself, the course was beginning to flow better and I was beginning to relish that monkey-butt sensation and the way in which the same branch would whip my left nipple in exactly the same place lap after lap.As much as I was beginning to enjoy the brutal going one hill was beginning to cause me and - most others - problems. There was pretty much no soil left on the climb and if you didn't get over the root step at the bottom smoothly you were pretty much condemned to being pulled up by the throng of willing spectators.In fact, what turned out to be my last attempt at this hill really screwed me over as I got stuck for a good while and lost a few places trying to get the KX to the top. While I was stuck Knighter lapped me again which basically cost me an extra lap - although to be honest I was secretly pleased the torture was almost over when I finally crested the summit.Finishing off the lap at cruising pace - what do you mean it looked just as fast as all the others? - I'd done what I came to do, which was try my hand at two totally different types of racing and come out of the experience in one piece.At the finish I bumped into Britain's biggest and daftest FMX rider John Pearson. John's the first British rider to successfully land a back-flip and he was riding the Tough One on a Husaberg 550 with supermoto gearing - it's little wonder he reckoned it was the hardest thing he'd ever done.As it turns out I finished as 17th Expert (beating John by four laps - take that Pearson!) in the Tough One with 11 laps completed - that's almost as many laps as I'd managed at the supercross the day before but less said about that the better!