GNCC Round 1
River Ranch, FL
www.gnccracing.com
This race came only 11 days after the WORCS beat-down I received in California. I jumped at the chance to go along to Florida with Yamaha’s Tim Olson for an off-road doubleheader. Thank goodness we had two YZ250s prepped for serious sand blasting. At this point I already started noticing the big differences in each series.The GNCC series is about as varying in terrain as you can get (next to the National Enduro scene) and is alone in its sheer quantity of participants. It literally blankets the eastern U.S.! The youth racers wake up early and race 90 minutes. C and Industry (that’s me), plus old farts (over 50) race two hours, and the Pro and B classes race for a ridiculous three hours after everyone else has beat the track to hell.The GNCC is a lot like a WORCS race in theory. However, if you hammer down 100 percent in the first few laps, you’ll be left with an empty tank at the finish line. The racecourses aren’t usually single-track but never grow much past two-track-wide, either, so they’re tight enough to rub some lumber with your knuckles. Bottlenecks can and will happen at mudholes, water crossings and hillclimbs–something you don’t have to worry about in most WORCS races. Gas stops are a must, even with bigger tanks, and also in the shorter Amateur classes. Don’t think you won’t need to carry water, either. And grabbing an energy gel at a gas stop will keep you from passing out for a lap or so. All of this is what you have to worry about after you master the dead-engine start. You can back the pace down in hopes of maintaining your energy levels, but try that when you’re being tailgated through palmetto roots and sand whoops. And this is only Florida!That’s a lot to deal with; I don’t care who you are.Bikes take more of a beating in GNCC races, too. More rocks, more trees, more water and more time on the bike make pretty much everything about this series more painful than WORCS. That is except for speed. GNCC races are generally at a slower pace in tighter conditions for longer duration. Which is harder? Hold on, we’re not done yet.
National Enduro Round 3
Alligator National Enduro, Daytona Beach, FL
www.nationalenduro.com
Racing a National Enduro has never been easier. Of course, I’m talking about the format of the event, not the physical feat it takes to race one. These days, the enduro scene is void of complex timekeeping requirements and really only asks for you and your dirt bike.Two days after the GNCC we made our way to the Alligator National Enduro as the unofficial Vet B Yamaha two-stroke media team. The Alligator is notoriously tough with sand whoops and palmettos trying to put you on the ground and ultra-tight pine trees working your hands even with chopped bars. It didn’t disappoint. I bashed trees hard enough to launch me over the bar. And I had my only mechanical failure of this story thanks to a tree attacking my front brake line banjo bolt.Enduro is endurance, plain and simple, combined with real single-track racing. You race in groups of four (taking off each minute) from the start and link timed test sections together with alternating untimed transfer sections. Sounds simple, right? It is, until you get hammering through those timed tests! And even the transfer sections can be brutal. Try a 10-mile transfer through the sand-whooped poky bushes followed immediately by a 10-mile timed test through the same style of whooped-out single-track. Not easy.Every stop on the National Enduro tour has its own unique obstacles and challenging terrain as the race series covers nearly the entire country from Montana to Florida. And if the ground wasn’t competition enough, you can actually race with and against current, former and future enduro champions.As far as seat time goes, nothing is more grueling than the enduro. You’re on your bike all day. (Five-and-a-half hours in Florida to be exact [and that's in the B-class which cuts off an entire timed test].) Brain fade creeps in, and you can’t forget to eat and fill up your drink system at the stops. Enduros give maximum seat time and test real off-road technical toughness. But is that the hardest thing to do in a day?Jesse’s Ticker Count:
What Jesse’s Heart Said While He RacedWORCSDuration of Workout: 1:00:15
Max Heart Rate (bpm): 198
Average Heart Rate (bpm): 179
Calories Burned: 916
Class/Place: Industry-B/1st
GNCCDuration of Workout: 2:26:46.687
Max Heart Rate (bpm): 195
Average Heart Rate (bpm): 172
Calories Burned: 2160
Class/Place: Sportsmen 12-35/10th
National EnduroDuration of Workout: 5:30:00
Max Heart Rate (bpm): 188
Average Heart Rate (bpm): 154
Calories Burned: 4686
Class/Place: Vet B/3rdNational Hare & HoundDuration of Workout: 3:05:00
Max Heart Rate (bpm): 197
Average Heart Rate (bpm): 157
Calories Burned: 2624
Class/Place: Vet B/1st
National Hare & Hound Round 3
El Centro, CA
www.amadirectlink.com
I don’t care who you are, if you race desert races often, you’re more than kind of nuts. The sheer speed, lack of visibility and other crazy fools zipping by you is easily the scariest of all forms of racing–bike, car, boat, plane, whatever. Since I’d never raced one of these before and Destry Abbott is always giving me a hard time about being a wimp, I decided I’d give his series a try. But I would need the right bike to do it on, so I made him bring me another one of his bikes (read about that in the factory bikes story in the July ’09 issue.)Even with the best desert bike in the world, this is still scary as hell. Hare & Hound races go like this: You line up in the desert and practice your start by finding the least deadly line to the beginning of the course. In this particular case, the start was in the only spot in El Centro that had trees and 10-foot-tall bushes. No biggie, I’m sure the guys coming from the left and right will look both ways (yikes!). Then, you line up when it’s time and go like hell for two to three hours when they drop a banner. It’s a dead-engine start which is again a joy to master. Don’t worry, though: It’s always dusty so starts are super important, too.The terrain is frightening with speeds up in the high double digits and grabbing the 100-mph mark on occasion. Your body is forced to stand watch as you rip across lake beds, sand washes and Wile E. Coyote’s backyard with your head over the front fender. That’s the first loop. Usually you’ll get some sections of technical stuff on the second loop when your brain is fried.The idea is to spot the things that are going to be in your front tire before they’re in your front tire. The problem is they’re coming at 60 mph 90 percent of the time. It’s almost no fun at all until it’s over, and then it’s cool.Easily the hardest part about racing a National Hare & Hound is maintaining. You have to concentrate so hard to avoid upcoming obstacles and anticipate turns that you get a little loopy. That’s my theory as to why guys like Destry Abbott and the rest of the professional desert racers are so nice. They don’t know how crazy they really are!So, What’s The Hardest?
I raced the appropriate class for my skill/speed level at each of these events. I used different bikes (although two were YZ250s), but all were suitable race machines for each discipline. Heck, some were the best in the world. And in the end I have to give it up to GNCC racing as the toughest off-road racing in America. Why? Because it makes me almost throw up more than the other races. That’s not saying the others don’t thoroughly kick my ass. But I didn’t want any of them to end sooner than I did the GNCC. Plus, if I add in the fact that most racers and especially the pros have to race an extra hour on an extremely beat-up course, it becomes the clear winner. WORCS races are the most intense. National Enduros are the most grueling. National Hare & Hounds are the scariest thing in the world. But GNCCs are the toughest race.
