Hollister West Coast Hare Scramble, Honey Lake WORCS

By Brian

Forget flowers- coming into round two of the West Coast Hare Scrambles, it looked like April showers were going to make for some good racing. The race was held at the legendary Hollister Hills. This place has it all for off-roading: big hills, rocks, fire roads, single track and some good moto. They even used to run the United States Grand Prix on the motocross track back in the 80's.
     I was counting on a good start since the track was not laid out that well. There were a lot of dusty bits on all the fast roads. Also, the field was really stacked, so it would have been nice to start up front. Well, what I'm getting to is, I did not get that good of a start. Dead last to be exact. I had my work cut out for me. I made some aggressive passes on the first lap and worked my way into the top ten by the end of the first lap. I was working through the pack pretty well, thinking I was going somewhere, until Kyle Summers went blowing by me.  
That kid was hauling the mail. I was out there chicken wingin' it. Without the sponsor support I've had in recent years, it's been harder to make the time to ride and train. My tongue hit the floor around the two and a half hour mark. My assault to the front halted at fifth place. Not very good for the series champ at his home race.
     The training I have been getting in is some soccer. I grew up playing soccer as a boy, and now play on a team with my brother, mom and dad. It's good fun and it gets the heart rate up. Unfortunately, I injured myself at a game and was forced to miss round four of the WORCS with separated ribs. I rested up, as that's all I could do. Round five at Honey Lake was only three weeks away.
     Honey Lake went as well as I could expect. After my rib injury, I only made it back onto the bike the week before of the race. The conditions at Honey Lake were nice. Some good weather made for good racing. The track consisted of a good moto track with some fast, rocky roads. It got really rough with lots of high speed chop. I got a mid pack start, and got tight right away. These WORCS guys' speed is so fast right off the start. I definitely need to work on my sprint speed to get faster and be more relaxed. I ended up getting fifteenth, making a pass on the last lap to get in the money. Well, at least my sign up money.
     I was really disappointed in my riding and am looking forward to getting up north to Washington. Hopefully, we get some Northern Pacific rain and some good tree riding. I've been spending a lot of my time doing  riding classes and coaching a couple kids. It's really fun teaching the kids. There's so much more information now, compared to when I was growing up racing. I really like passing this information on. I can remember racing my first pro race, not even knowing who Scott Plesinger, Scott Summers or Rodney Smith were. Completely lost, I still ended up eighth overall.

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