ccdhowell
11-30-2008, 11:09 PM
The ATVCCS raced it's last race of the season this morning at Lilly Creek about 9 miles southwest of Pittsburg, Texas. It rained all day on Friday, was cloudy all day Saturday, but thankfully the wind picked up and it wasn't too muddy at all. We practice on Saturday mornings and I found the track muddy, very muddy, but not a technical track, I liked it and was looking forward to a great race on Sunday.
Nine riders lined up in my class for the 9am start. 100 yard dash and a 90 degree right hander then into the woods, I was in 6th. I felt good, pushed hard looking to put into practice what I had learned at the MX school I took two weeks ago. There weren't many choke points in the woods but there were a few and I got stacked up at the first one and didn't have the momentum to get me through the ruts, I high-centered and became the bottleneck myself. I took two tries to free my Raptor that cost me maybe two minutes. I pushed hard to catch my class, I had dropped to 9th in class by then. On the first lap I saw one of my class mates off to the side, a-arms torn-up pretty bad and near the end of the woods section there was another class rider off to the side. That means I'm up to seventh. Our course was a woods section(maybe 8 miles or so) and an open MX type section in a big pasture. think MX style jumps and tabletops spread out over a pasture about 300 acres big with fast sweepers and straights connecting the jumps. I was looking to make up ground here. I stopped in my pits to change gloves and my wife said the main group was only about 2 minutes ahead of me. I left the pits at full throttle determined to catch them. Well three corners later, on a nice left hand sweeper, pinned in third, I over slid the rear, caught an edge and rolled my quad about 5 times. I knocked the hell out of my head, the quad landed on my hip on one roll, pulled my groin, hurt like hell, so much for catching up. A couple spectatiors helped me get up, upright my Raptor, bend my bars back straight; it took maybe 3 minutes for the Raptor to refire and I was off again. Kinda funny now but I don't remember the MX section of the track, I remember going through the scoring shoot thinking I must be stupid, but I'm taking another lap. The second lap was uneventfull, I pushed as well as I could, but my hip was hurting pretty good and I couldn't stand in the attack position and absorb jumps well. I rolled most of the jumps on lap two and sealed my 7th place finish. The second class racer that was broken on the first lap had fixed his machine and was trying to limp another lap and steal my points, the second lap left him in the dust, er mud and finished as well as I could.
The Raptor ran great with the stiff MX shock settings that I got at the school two weeks ago. The faster you went the smoother it got and the Raptor turned better than it ever had. I was very pleased and will leave it like it is for winter practice. Actually I'm planning on sending my shocks off to Race Tech to get a gold valve rebuild.
Happy off-season guys. Time for a thourough look at my Raptor to see what I bent today, maybe the steering stem looks bent. I'll look at it later, I'm laying in bed right now, my wife's unloading the trailer and i'm trying to figure out if I'll be able to make it to work tomorrow.
And for those of you that may not be racers, yes it was worth it.
:beer , Chris
Nine riders lined up in my class for the 9am start. 100 yard dash and a 90 degree right hander then into the woods, I was in 6th. I felt good, pushed hard looking to put into practice what I had learned at the MX school I took two weeks ago. There weren't many choke points in the woods but there were a few and I got stacked up at the first one and didn't have the momentum to get me through the ruts, I high-centered and became the bottleneck myself. I took two tries to free my Raptor that cost me maybe two minutes. I pushed hard to catch my class, I had dropped to 9th in class by then. On the first lap I saw one of my class mates off to the side, a-arms torn-up pretty bad and near the end of the woods section there was another class rider off to the side. That means I'm up to seventh. Our course was a woods section(maybe 8 miles or so) and an open MX type section in a big pasture. think MX style jumps and tabletops spread out over a pasture about 300 acres big with fast sweepers and straights connecting the jumps. I was looking to make up ground here. I stopped in my pits to change gloves and my wife said the main group was only about 2 minutes ahead of me. I left the pits at full throttle determined to catch them. Well three corners later, on a nice left hand sweeper, pinned in third, I over slid the rear, caught an edge and rolled my quad about 5 times. I knocked the hell out of my head, the quad landed on my hip on one roll, pulled my groin, hurt like hell, so much for catching up. A couple spectatiors helped me get up, upright my Raptor, bend my bars back straight; it took maybe 3 minutes for the Raptor to refire and I was off again. Kinda funny now but I don't remember the MX section of the track, I remember going through the scoring shoot thinking I must be stupid, but I'm taking another lap. The second lap was uneventfull, I pushed as well as I could, but my hip was hurting pretty good and I couldn't stand in the attack position and absorb jumps well. I rolled most of the jumps on lap two and sealed my 7th place finish. The second class racer that was broken on the first lap had fixed his machine and was trying to limp another lap and steal my points, the second lap left him in the dust, er mud and finished as well as I could.
The Raptor ran great with the stiff MX shock settings that I got at the school two weeks ago. The faster you went the smoother it got and the Raptor turned better than it ever had. I was very pleased and will leave it like it is for winter practice. Actually I'm planning on sending my shocks off to Race Tech to get a gold valve rebuild.
Happy off-season guys. Time for a thourough look at my Raptor to see what I bent today, maybe the steering stem looks bent. I'll look at it later, I'm laying in bed right now, my wife's unloading the trailer and i'm trying to figure out if I'll be able to make it to work tomorrow.
And for those of you that may not be racers, yes it was worth it.
:beer , Chris