by: Jared Bolton
Thursday, January 31, 2019 | 2:55 PM
Welcome to Quick Fill.
The winter break is beginning to wind down as everyone prepares to get back into the swing of things heading into the 2019 season. For some, racing has already begun, and for others there may be some off-season racing coming soon. For others, round one of the 2019 GNCC Racing season may be their first round of racing for the year. No matter what category you fall into, you’re surely ready to get back into the swing of racing and the good news is that we’re going to be kicking that off in just three weeks!
Last weekend our friends with SETRA hosted the Burnt Gin Hare Scramble down in Sumter, South Carolina. This has been a pretty popular event for racers from across the east coast for many years and this year was no different with more than 205 big bike racers tackling the sandy terrain. Evan Smith would come away with the overall win ahead of Ryder Lafferty and Craig Delong while Thorn Devlin and Zack Hayes rounded out the top five overall. Also notable to GNCC fans was Jason Raines who won the 30+ A class and finished a solid 14th overall.
The AMA National Enduro series will open up their 2019 season this weekend, also in Sumter, South Carolina with the 50th annual Sumter National Enduro. Steward Baylor will be looking to defend his enduro crown while a number of other riders, including Grant Baylor, Evan Smith and others. The Sumter round always draws a pretty large turnout of riders and while it looks like a few riders have shifted their focus elsewhere for 2019, this round will likely still generate some great racing. I’m headed down Saturday morning and will do some “racing” of my own. I got lucky and ended up on row 11, so it should be a pretty good ride but there’s no doubt I’m going to get absolutely smoked in the Open A class due to my “seefood – see food and eat food” diet this winter, and a lack of talent to begin with.
Things have been relatively quiet on the GNCC front lately as most folks have settled into their winter routines and are just simply getting ready to go GNCC Racing. We do have some cool pre-season video footage coming up soon as our buddy Mason Rader has been down south catching up with some guys who are training in the sands of Florida and other southern states. We’ve teased some of that on social media the past couple of weeks but will have a lot more coming soon, so stay tuned because there’s going to be some cool stuff to come from that.
The GNCC track crew and event staff just went though OSHA, CPR and First Aid training this week, which I would recommend to anyone. It definitely couldn’t hurt to be trained in CPR and First Aid; even if you THINK you know what to do, proper training will help you to assure you know what to do if the need ever arises. Also exciting is that we received our first batch of equipment for the 2019 season. Our friends at Yamaha have us set up with Yamaha Vikings for 2019, and we also have a few Yamaha Grizzly ATVs that will be used by the track crew as well.
This means it’s almost go-time, and just like every racer, the GNCC staff needs to get their equipment ready to go as well. Next up will be the KTM motorcycles used by the track and TV crews and we’re expecting those any day now, so I’ll be busy in the garage once those show up. I’m definitely no world-class mechanic, but when the new bikes show up each year, that’s when I jump in and give the guys in the garage a little relief by getting most of those machines ready to ride.
That’s going to do it for the intro this week. We hope you have a great week and get to do some riding. If you’re headed to Sumter and see me walking around, feel free to say hi!
Catching Up With Ken (Ken Hill)
There it is folks, winter has arrived and I didn’t even have to go outside to know it! I merely logged on to social media and I had an array of photographic images that told me everything from how cold it was, to what many of you look like dressed in layer after layer of warm clothing and even a few items posted that I can’t even talk about! The point is, if you view or observe the power of social media you can tend to follow the group, or allow ourselves to be led by others. This is powerful stuff. That power can be harnessed and used for the benefit, or detriment on a myriad of topics. Are you thinking ‘No Way’? I can point just to politics and the power of social media, public perception and on and on, so no isn’t the answer.
Why bring this up? Well, maybe we can all work together this year to help each other by making sure we use social media to promote not just the series and our sponsors but how about ramping up our efforts to support the areas we are racing in? Years back when someone at a hotel or a restaurant would ask me what was going on I would explain to them about a race being in town. Now, I can tell them to punch GNCC in any search box to get the skinny on what we do! I don’t just leave it at that but its just one small way to get someone looking at what we do.
Some towns we go to each season really do make efforts to welcome us. Steele Creek always has town decorated here and there with “Welcome GNCC racers” banners and on their signboards. It wouldn’t be too hard for us to add a hashtag or tag those places we visit during our time in their town or city that will help direct traffic to them and in turn back to us. Just #ironman works but adding #crawfordsville #indiana now tightens the noose on the very people we want to attract to the races. Lets give that a try and see if we can start at the easiest level to do some promotion and see if we can’t move the ball down the field.
Ok, so that’s my idea for a “thing” in 2019 but wait, there’s more! No not really, I try and limit myself to one idea every few weeks so I don’t get run down. I do want to touch on something I was once told and that was this: “If you are not failing at one thing each year than you probably aren’t trying enough new things”. Now I haven’t been able to form a direction to take that in to a racing program but I do apply it to my life. It could be that at times we grow complacent and stick to what we know or think we know and have a come to Jesus moment when we realize we had been making big mistakes and overlooked them. If you’ve never found yourself in that type of position than congrats but for the majority of us living life wide open sure allows huge gaps that allow little things slip through the cracks and by the time we figure out the issue we have wasted a season.
For a racer, that’s wasted time, energy and money gone, never to be recovered. Discounting a learning curve and adding in a set of riding skills that have to be developed over time for an up and coming racer allows almost zero wiggle room, so there really is no place for waste of anything. I think several top riders may have seen this picture develop as the rise in riding schools has been growing every season for several years now and a few of those who are attending or being coached are having results that prove in theory it is a sound practice, money for results.
Of course attending doesn’t automatically equal you will turn into a winning machine but its another area in your program that might teach you a few things you’ve been doing wrong. Be it riding style or physical training right on down to bike prep. I don’t promote any schools but it is worth you looking into. Maybe it is not a school you need but just a reminder to take a break, recheck your program and be open to changing things as you see fit that will get you on the box or back home with your sanity!
Ok, so that’s like two issues down and I still have a cup of coffee to finish, amazing what sub zero temps will do to motivate one to stay inside and type instead of going out to de-ice water buckets and get chores done. In all seriousness, be safe out there in this cold and be extra careful on the roads. I know things are getting heated down south as I have been in contact with several riders who are nearing completion of their programs as we close in on the opening round. No big secrets to let out but news is coming out here and there. That is all from me this week, as always be safe in all you do and may God continue to bless us all!
Looking Back on 2018 Part Eight (Jared Bolton)
We continue our look back on the 2018 season with round eight in New York with the Tomahawk GNCC. This event was added to the GNCC series in 2015 and has been a fairly popular stop ever since with a good sized crowd of racers and spectators alike. This year’s event brought some great racing and pretty good conditions in what had been a slightly wet 2018 GNCC Racing season thus far.
Saturday’s ATV race would begin with the same story that had become the norm in the 2018 GNCC Racing season, as Walker Fowler would control the race from the get-go. However, this would not be a runaway performance, as Chris Borich would stalk Fowler lap after lap, checking in just over one second behind for the first three laps of the race. Meanwhile, Jarrod McClure was putting in lap after lap of consistent riding, contending for podium finishes.
With just a couple of laps to go, Fowler would pull a pretty good lead on Borich and on the final lap, Brycen Neal would put on a charge and make his way around McClure for the third place position. In the end, Fowler held on for the win ahead of Borich and Neal, while McClure and Cole Richardson rounded out the top five. I feel like I haven’t mentioned Adam McGill much the past few weeks as he suffered some tough luck at a few points in the 2018 season, but he was able to hold on for a respectable sixth place finish at Tomahawk.
On the motorcycle side, the Tomahawk event has a pretty unique history with the series. Chris Bach claimed his first-ever GNCC win at the inaugural Tomahawk in 2015. Josh Strang claimed the 2016 Tomahawk and Thad Duvall took the 2017 win. This means Tomahawk had seen a different winner each year of the event and the 2018 version would see yet another different winner. However, the route to getting to that win was slightly different than what we had seen up to this point in the season.
For the majority of the past two seasons, both Kailub Russell and Thad Duvall have typically been outside of podium contention in the opening laps of the race, then worked their way into the lead around the mid-way point of the race. However, at Tomahawk, Kailub Russell would jump out front from the opening lap and hold the lead throughout the entire event. While many expected Thad Duvall to be the one challenging down to the wire, this race it would actually be Trevor Bollinger who would pace Russell throughout the entire event. Each lap they would come through separated by just a couple of seconds! All the while, Duvall would run in a consistent third place spot just around 20 seconds or so behind the top two riders.
When the checkered flag flew, Kailub Russell would become the fourth different winner in the fourth edition of the Tomahawk GNCC. However, he had to work for it as Trevor Bollinger would cross the finish line less than one second behind Russell to take the second place position. Thad Duvall would end the day in third place while Josh Strang and Ricky Russell rounded out the top five overall.
Next up would be the toughest event of the season at the Snowshoe GNCC in West Virginia. Check back next week as we’ll dive deep into the happenings from Snowshoe Mountain and see one of the biggest turning points in the hunt for a GNCC National Championship.