Issue link: http://trailridermagazine.uberflip.com/i/215244
YARD SALE ROOKIE'S RECAP I By Anna Svagzdys finished out my first season of racing—and first full season of riding a dirt bike—at the Barnes Way hare scramble last Sunday. I'm a little bummed—first of all, it's a long time until the NETRA Winter Scramble, and secondly, since I'll no longer be a rookie from here on out, I'll have no excuse for my poor performance. That said, my game has been slowly improving and I will not miss the days of being a total newb. For those of you who are not total newbs, you are probably no longer awed by simple revelations such as being able to steer and go up hills at the same time, but the shock is still fresh with me. Basic bike handling skills— what a novelty! The season didn't go off exactly as planned: Greg, my boyfriend and personal off-road Obi-Wan Kenobi, had a serious crash in May and both of us missed much of the season's racing. The Saturday before Barnes Way was the first time in about six months that we got to ride together, Greg on his brand-new KTM 250 XCF-W and me on his old 250 XC (I stole it from him while he was too injured to defend it, but since it made a large contribution to the injury in question, he wasn't terribly upset about this). He asked to ride ahead of me so that he wouldn't have to stop short if I crashed or slowed down in front of him—his left leg still can't bend all the way, or hold much weight. I agreed, not because I planned on slowing down or crashing, but because if he crashed, I wanted to be there to lift the bike off him. But he did fine, making a full lap of our friend Bruce's technical, 2.6 mile loop with hardly any 30 Trail Rider trouble. Afterwards, he complained about not being able to go very fast—of course. "Whenever I turned around to see if I should wait for you, you were right there waiting for me," he said. "It was like opposite day." "You were only holding me up on the downhills," I reassured him. "You should be happy—even on one leg, you're still faster than me." That said, I certainly haven't gotten any slower out there. Thinking back to the last time Greg and I raced together in May, I get a sense for how far I've come. At Tuxedo Ridge, I was ready to cry from exhaustion literally within a quarter-mile of the start—I had a hell of a time with hill climbs and took the smallest trail junk as an excuse to fall over. Even casual riding was stressful, tiring, and frequently resulted in breakage of parts for the bike and universal bruising for me. Although I didn't actually place better at Barnes Way than at any of my other races, I spent the vast majority of it perpendicular to the ground and rolled up to the checkered flag with enough energy—if not nearly enough time—to do another lap. The consistency part of the game is coming together—maybe next season I'll be able to work on speed. One thing is for sure—I'm hooked. There has been, as I told Greg on our way back from the bar the other night, "a noticeable diminuendo in Haterade between myself and the machine," and as riding gets funner and less frustrating, those "Is this really worth it?" moments get fewer and further between. I'm looking forward to putting on the spiked tires once the snow falls and to trying so score some points in the women's class next season. Did I mention that I made it through both the Dam Good and Barnes Way hare scrambles without having to replace any plastic on the bike? That's right, people—I mean business now. www.TrailRider.com