On The Pegs March 2020 - Volume 5 - Issue 3 | Page 75

On The Pegs
VOL. 5 ISSUE 3 - MARCH 2020
75
Some of the extreme races to me, and even like watching Romaniacs on
TV, looks sort of masochistic. Do you actually enjoy some of that stuff? Or is
it just the challenge? What is it about extreme racing that everybody’s into?
I don’t know. For me, what I like about it is it’s almost just like a very barbaric
way of racing. You just send a bunch of gnarly guys out into the woods together,
and the last guy standing wins. So, you kind of take the speed factor away a little
bit, but then you add in these other factors like toughness, mental toughness,
endurance, the ability to read terrain… I’ve been trail riding and exploring my
whole life so now it’s like, I get to use all the skills that I had built up that I was just
doing naturally and for fun. So, for me, it’s just a good fit for who I am as a rider. I
like exploring. I love adventuring. Basically, this is exploring and adventuring and
racing in one, for me.
You made an east coast National Enduro last year. Is there any chance that
you’ll do any east coast racing at all this year?
I’m doing the east coast extreme enduros, but I probably won’t do any regular
enduros. They just had me do that just because I happened to be in town.
In what areas do you think you’re a better rider now than you were last
year? Was there anything that you set a goal?
That’s a good question. In fact, coming into the winter I had two main goals and
it was to get more fit, and it was to build my skills in an extreme enduro setting.
If you can get up a hill clean and not have to push your bike up, you can save ten,
twenty, thirty minutes at a time. So, technique on gnarly hill climbs and trials sec-
tions was a big one. So, I’ve been working a ton on my fitness and technical riding
skills. So, underneath that, you have a ton of trials riding and just a ton of extreme
enduro.
Do you set up trials sections there in your backyard?
I don’t have anything in my backyard right now. I have a couple free places less
than thirty minutes away that I go to all the time. I actually do that with Taylor
Robert quite a bit, so that’s good.
What about Mike Damm? He used to be a really good trials rider. You ever
ride with him?
Yeah. I call him Coach. We ride together all the time.