Welcome to Quick Fill.

This unscheduled off time continues as the world progresses through another week of the Covid 19 pandemic, and while this definitely isn’t fun, it will ultimately give us all a new appreciation for getting to go racing when we do return. We’ve got our fingers crossed that a return to racing happens sooner rather than later, but there are a lot of moving pieces that need to happen before we’re able to just jump into hosting a race. It looks as if this pandemic will wind down on a state-to-state basis, and while it looks like a return to racing could possibly come within the next several weeks, it’s up in the air as to where exactly we will be racing.

Obviously this is an ever-evolving situation and if you’ve been keeping up with the Race Leadership Team competition bulletins, you’ll know we’re planning on several dates, just the locations are yet to be announced. We’re getting closer to putting the finishing touches on that, and have been in discussions with landowners and county officials in various areas. We are very hopeful to return to racing on that May 16-17 date, with a location currently in the works. Nothing is set in stone yet and there are a lot of details to work out, so stay tuned because as soon as we have something official, we’ll let you know.

Until then, we’ll just have to keep doing what we’re currently doing. Yes, we know it’s no fun to sit on the sidelines and wait for things to return to “mostly normal” but this situation is entirely out of our control. GNCC Racing brings large numbers of people to communities and before we just decide to go racing, we have to make sure the leaders of those communities will allow it to happen. Imagine how upset you would be if you travelled all the way to an event, just to be turned around and sent home. We don’t want that to happen, and we want to maintain a good relationship with our community partners. So, just continue to bear with us and we’ll do our best to get back on the track as soon as possible.

Enough of that, let’s talk about other happenings in the world of GNCC Racing! Unfortunately, it’s incredibly quiet. Everyone is kind of doing their own thing at the moment, but it does seem like there’s a good bit of riding going on, and it looks to be done in a pretty sensible fashion. Out of the various social media clips I’ve seen from guys like Kailub Russell, Johnny Girroir, Adam McGill, Jojo Cunningham, just to name a few, it looks like these guys haven’t been doing anything crazy… Just good old-fashioned riding!

I actually did some riding the last couple of weeks myself. A couple of weeks ago I was pretty much out of my league with a bunch of really fast guys like Barry Hawk, Cole Whitmer, Alex Patterson, Triston Landrum, Cope Beckert and Brady Myers. Luckily, Ohio’s Tyler Smith came with Triston and didn’t smoke me quite as bad as those other guys, but yes, he was still way faster! Thad Duvall even came out to help Brady with some bike setup and looks to be healing well, so this extra time off will ultimately help Thad immensely.

We went down in the woods, and I ended up pulling a little Larry Loopout move on a hillclimb. It’s been a long time since I’ve done something like that, but I’m glad those guys all got a good show and even an off-day of riding beats sitting at home. However, last weekend was a lot more successful for me. My wife, Kayla, and I made a trip to my parent’s house in North Carolina… Now, before anyone chastises me for breaking any sort of travel ban, I do want to clarify that we fueled up before leaving Morgantown, drove straight to my parent’s house, then fueled up before we left and drove straight back. Last year Kayla and I got married in January and I didn’t get to visit with my parents again until Christmas, so don’t be hatin’, trips home are hard to come by!

Anyway, when I mentioned to my parents that we planned to come for a visit my dad asked if I wanted to do some riding. Naturally I was all over the opportunity. So, on Saturday we drove across town to do some riding on a private piece of property. I had ridden this property a few times in the past, but it’s probably been nearly 10 years since I’d been out there, but it was an absolute blast! I chased around my dad, plus his buddies Keith Bennett and Allen Wood on some excellent single track that I left thinking ‘man, I wish this was my backyard!’ These guys have all done their fair share of racing over the years and while they all seem to lean more towards a dual sport ride these days, I wouldn’t bet against these guys on a tough track like Snowshoe or The Mountaineer!

Thinking back on it, I kind of rode with a wide variety over the past couple of weeks. From a former top talent like Barry Hawk, to young up and comers who are blazing fast in the A ranks with professional aspirations, then onto some guys who probably have more riding experiences than most all of those other guys combined, and still just enjoy going for a trail ride. I’ve had a real blast the past few weeks, and to be honest, riding with all of these guys was some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I wanted to share that story with the hopes that some of you will read this and think about the riding you’ve been doing, and I hope that it’s not became routine. I hope that you’re still able to enjoy every minute of it and that elevating it from riding back to racing will be fun. Like I said earlier, at the very least, this pandemic can serve to make us really appreciate the opportunities to go racing.

It may make us even appreciate the bad days of racing. And speaking of bad days of racing, this week’s edition of Behind the Bars highlights one of the days that turned out to be not the best day of racing. The 2010 Steele Creek bike race was one of the most dramatic races of all-time. It seems like Steele Creek really produced some of the biggest storylines in the last 20 years of GNCC Racing. From the 2005 windstorm that forced the cancellation of the bike race, to the epic battle down to the final corner in 2007 with Barry Hawk and Glenn Kearney, then another epic battle to the wire in 2011 between Josh Strang and Charlie Mullins.

However, one of the most dramatic came in 2010. The rains began falling ever so slightly at the beginning of the PM bike race. It never rained very hard, other than just for a few moments, but that slow, steady rain would really begin to affect the track as the race wore on. Eventually, one of the bigger hills on the racecourse would become impassible and unfortunately it sat in a bad spot where it wasn’t feasible to reroute the track. With the course blocked and nowhere to go, the race was called with about a lap and a half remaining. The results of the race were reverted to the previous lap, and Josh Strang came away with the overall win over Cory Buttrick while Kailub Russell would claim the XC2 win that day and finish third overall.

Jason Weigandt and I sat down with Josh and Kailub for this week’s edition of Behind the Bars. The proved to be yet another exciting episode as both of these guys remembered the race really well, and they had some great insight into the events of that day, and just racing in general. Once again, the show is right here in this edition of Quick Fill, but if you want to catch it later or watch past Behind the Bars episodes, check out the Behind the Bars page HERE on the GNCC website.