Trail Rider Magazine

38 Trail Rider YARD SALE Anna Svagzdys Spring Challenge Redux I survived the NETRA Spring Challenge – again. The 2013 Spring Challenge was my first hare scramble, and though the course and my noble steed have both seen some alter- aons since then, I think I can sll conclude from my 2014 re- sults that I have made some progress. Here's my self-assessment: 1. I sll can't ride rocks. 2. I can ride mud. Usually. Except when I discover a trick rut filled with water that turns out to be two and a half feet deep. (Even that might have been OK, but this parcular rut ended with—you guessed it—a giant, submerged rock. I had to go find an adult.) 3. I'm not bad at starts, and I might even be good at them if I could reliably locate second gear. 4. I need to fix my clutch so I can carry an extra gear through the slow stuff without stalling every 50 yards. That or: 5. I need to become less terrified of the upper end of my 250 two-stroke's power band so that I don't have to carry an extra gear. In the interest of this: 6. I need to buy a new clutch lever, one that isn't so bent that my fingers occasionally slip off it and I whiskey-throle into a tree as said power band kicks in. I'm fine, in answer to your queson, and thank you SO much to the girl who put her own race on hold to li my bike off my neck aer the incident! Regardless of my personal misfortunes, it was a fine day for motorbike racing and the course, though sll challenging, seemed less punishing than the year before. The PSTR guys cut out a lot of the flat, scrubby secon and replaced it with a twisng, almost hilly woods loop that I recognized from 2013 Toys for Tots run. They also routed the grass track straight over a big slab of bedrock, which, over-confident aer racing the PSTR Short Course at the Wareham MX track two weekends before, I actually caught some air off of and nearly went over my handlebars. All in all, the course was about three miles shorter than last year, and it showed—but I didn't miss them. I made three laps compared to last year's one, and though lap mes this year were about 10 minutes shorter on average, I brought mine down by half an hour. Victory! My boyfriend Greg raced this one too, his first hare scramble since shaer- ing his kneecap last May. He had to come in early due to knee pain, which he understandably felt was discouraging—but his lap mes were 10 minutes faster than mine anyway. Keep fighng, buddy, you'll make B class yet! As soon as Greg earns his Doctorate in Archaeology while un- earthing our bikes from the large poron of Massachuses that we brought home with us, it will be me to do the rest of my spring maintenance. My new white plascs also survived the race (structurally—they are of course no longer white), which is an accomplishment for me in and of itself. To them, I'll add a new chain, sprockets and chain guide, new levers, and maybe it's me to get on the phone with Rekluse and get that 800-dollar paperweight working again. Why is it that I tweaked my le leg hing that tree, but my right leg is the one that's sore? Hmm, 30 seconds to re-start the bike, 10 stalls per lap… Shaving 5 minutes off my lap mes by doing LESS work? I'll take it. www.TrailRider.com

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