Jimmy Jarrett has been around for years in the GNCC world and this year, he might be having his best year yet. One of the older guys to still be racing, he's holding his own in the bike XC1 pro class and has finished on the podium four times this year. Heading into Snowshoe, he is motivated to bring home a Championship for Kawasaki.

You've had some good years, and this year you've been on the podium four times, do you think this is one of your best years?-I would say one of them. I have good races and then I have bad races. I need to cut those bad races out to be in championship contention. But, I would say this is one of the best years I've had.

I've heard people say you don't train as hard as other riders, can you defend yourself?
I hate when people say that now because when I was younger I didn't know how to train and I just rode. Then, when the Europeans came over, we were going fast for 3 hours. This year I've been training as hard as every one else. It just sucks that I have that reputation. No one can seem to look past it. But the last two years I've been training just as hard as everyone else. So definitely, I've been training.

So how did you finally learn how to train? It's funny because I'm still learning. I worked a lot with Lori and Rodney Smith.

I've heard they're butt kickers! (Laughs) They're not that bad. There's a right way to train and a wrong way to train. Everyone's different. There's no one training method out there that works for everyone. I've learned a lot the past few years working with Kurt Casselli. Whatever he has me going on is working so I'm sticking with that. Paul Whibley will ride like 6 days a week and my program; I don't ride that much, maybe like 2-3 days a week. It's just everyone is different.

So what does work for you? I do a lot of cycling and a lot of heart rate training. I'll change the levels of where I want my heart rate from day to day. I do a lot of sprints and motos, but not killing myself motos, just a few a day. That's all it takes for me. I've been riding forever so it's not like I need to learn how to ride. I don't use a lot of energy when I ride. I just have fun.

So do you train with Whibley? No, like I said he has his program and I have mine. We do ride a lot together. Whenever we do ride it usually is together. As far as cycling and stuff we kind of do our own thing.

You've pretty much had to build this team from scratch with Whibley, what was that transition like for you? I've been riding for so long and I've had sponsors pretty much all career. That part of it was  was pretty easy to bring those guys on board especially with mine and Paul's results over the years.  Paul and I didn't do everything. (Team Manager) JT (Bennett) did a lot of it to get the GEICO thing rolling, my hats off to him and Gretchen for what they did--especially with Kawasaki for jumping in. It's really taken off and I think the team is really happy. The team has worked really hard to get to where they are right now. It was kind of scary at first, but it really comes down to riding a motorcycle every Sunday.

It's pretty much two teams right now, Suzuki and GEICO Kawasaki battling for the Championship, is there some extra incentive to beat those guys? No, I never really had any motivation to beat them until last week and that whole situation. (laughs) That was pretty crappy and I was friends with Josh and Charlie and after that whole thing,  I wasn't in it for the championship and I didn't care who won it, because we were all friends. Now I definitely have the motivation to beat that team. Like I said, I didn't really care who won but things definitely changed and I want Kawasaki to win the championship now.

Most of the guys you raced with coming up in the ranks, are done racing. What's your key to holding on? I don't know. I told myself a long time ago, I'll keep going until I'm not having fun anymore. I'll have a bad race when I'm struggling and I wonder why I keep coming back. You know, new people are coming back and there are new challenges. There are not too many people ... Me and Barry (Hawk) and the few races Jason (Raines) shows up to.  I guess we are still holding it down for that generation. My whole family is at the races. I'll keep doing it until I'm not having fun anymore.

But for right now, you're definitely having fun. For sure. I'm having fun.

So Snowshoe is coming up. Are you ready? That race can either go really good for me or really bad. With the weather that changes things a lot and this high-stakes purse they're throwing out at us. It will be the same guys battling. I wish they would make it tough like the first couple of years. It's a pretty cool race. I guess we'll see how the weekend goes.

Are you still planning to come back next year? Oh yeah. For sure. I think pretty much everything is still set for next year so I'm looking forward to that. Sponsors will kick in a little more and I think it will be a lot better for our team. We are still fighting for this championship.