Race: The Highland Challenge
Where: Johnson City, TN
Date: 3-17-2002
The Highland challenge race on March the 17th (St. Patty’s day) was actually on a pretty challenging motorcross trail outside of Johnson City, TN. It was EXTREMELY muddy that weekend. This course wasn’t rock or your typical hard-packed dirt – it was red clay, which becomes extremely sticky when wet.
Saturday afternoon, I arrived just as pre-registration for the race was opening. After registering, changing into my riding clothes, and putting my bike together for my pre-ride, several friends from Nashville wheeled my direction, covered from head to toe in mud and with a look of disgust and exhaustion on their faces. Before I could even ask them how their pre-ride went, they began to give me advice not to pre-ride and just to race the course blind to save myself the trouble of spending most of my evening cleaning mud from my bike and myself. So, I took their advice and instead of riding the course, I rode the gravel road that lead into the motorcross park, just to spin my legs.As if the course wasn’t wet enough, it poured another 2.5” on the course that Saturday night.
It felt like the toughest 6 miles (yes, that's all we had to race was 6 miles after they had to alter the race loop about 10 times) I've ever done. Well, it wasn't the most tough, but the 3 mile loop felt like 6 miles. I had to stop at least half a dozen times to dig the sticky mud away from my bike so that I would at least have enough clearance for my tires to roll.THEN to top that - half way around my second lap, I flatted (my rear tire). As soon as I felt it, I thought to myself "is it worth the time (not knowing how far or close back my competition was) to stop and change it or do I just finish the race on the flat?" Knowing that it would take more time to change it, since I'd have to clear the mud from the tire and since I had to run most of the slippery, slimy hills anyway, I kept going.
Of course, don’t get me wrong. Everyone, including myself, still had a great time racing. And this is a race that none of us will ever forget - that's for sure. It was more muddy and slippery than the NCS race Snowshoe last year, if you can believe that!!!