Money for ERTA!

Bonebender netted around $2,000 in donations to Earthriders Trails Association (ERTA). Awesome!

This is why I paid my $35 to "race" in the mud last weekend. Always a silver lining.

Stay Dirty.

-Nate

Smithville-3 ; Nate-0

I raced Bonebender on Saturday and while it was nice to get my first race of the season under my belt and out of the way...I've got to say that it was honestly not a good time. While I can't really call it a race (as I was only able to ride about 20% of the time) I did push myself to finish (ie. carrying the mud laden bike). So there is something to be said for that.

I would never bad-mouth a promoter, as I know what it takes to put on a race/event. Fingers don't need to be pointed, but the promoter and the racers hopefully learned a lot.

The race today should never have been allowed to be run, at least maybe not without waiting a few hours to start. It rained too much and there was too much traffic (racers) for that trail in those conditions. The promoter should have not allowed us to be on those trails in those conditions. As racers, though, we should have known that when you drive in a downpour during your entire trip to the race that maybe you shouldn't be out there. I knew that, but I raced anyway and that was my mistake.

I feel for those racers whom this was their first race. I feel for the kid that chose to to skip his prom to drive from St. Louis to participate. Mostly, I feel for the volunteers and the hours that they'll have to put in to repair the damage we did. The money (any profit) will go back to ERTA to help the trails so I suppose that's something.

If you're going to race in similar conditions (I seriously hope you do not) the way to win the day would have been to ride very narrow tires with large widely spaced knobs. This way you increase your mud clearance, which is what killed most of the racers chances (me included) and the narrow tire can actually dig through the mud into harder dirt below. The wider spaced knobs help shed mud to keep the knobs doing their job. Oh, and racing a singlespeed also would help greatly in preventing the mechanical breakdown. At least I got one thing right.

All in all it was a learning experience. Albeit a lesson I learned nearly 8 years ago, but chose to ignore. I just hope others took away similar learning experiences. Oh, and, yes I did have one flat. For those in the know that's pretty good for me at Smithville.

Looking forward to less rain and mud and more dirt and good times in the future. Stay dirty.

-Nate Schotanus