On The Pegs May 2018 - Volume 3 - Issue 5 | Page 74

On The Pegs exactly what to do and how to get the job done. Just working with him on pretty much everything has helped me learn what needs to be done and what I should not do, or how hard to push, when to take it easy. What have you brought home from that? What are you doing regularly that he taught you to do on a week- to-week basis? It’s a lot of stuff that you would ex- pect and that I did in the past. Just I guess the way of going about doing it. Like riding and training. Just doing it correctly, I guess. What about the extreme races? Is that something you like? Yeah, I enjoy the extreme races for sure. It’s just a good change. It’s weird, going to a race like that and the speeds are just so much slower, but the ter- rain is way more technical. I really enjoy riding that stuff. I’m excited to get on a two-stroke soon, one of the new TPI bikes and start practicing some ex- treme racing, getting ready for Tough Leg Roar and TKO. You are a little bit taller than most of the guys, at 6’2”. Is your height an advantage or disadvantage? It’s definitely an advantage, especially in the extreme stuff. When GNCC’s or national enduros, any other racing gets technical, I always have the ability to paddle my bike up a hill or through a rock garden or anything. But it definite- ly helps even just the way I can move my weight more and weight the bike differently. So if you use the height to P 74 your advantage, it definitely helps out. What do you do as far as setup? Do you set your bike up differently? I pretty much set my bike up the same as anyone else. I don’t really think it’s good to kind of adapt the bike to make it taller, just because how they’re manufactured that’s the best way. So I find it is best for me being tall, I just run my bike like a person who say is 5’8 or 5’10 around that height. I run it the same. You and Josh Toth are sharing a house. Is there some kind of rivalry between the two of you? I don’t think there’s any rivalry. We’re pretty good about it. Growing up rac- ing against each other we always were battling. It’s been good. No rivalry. Just when it comes to the race, we obvi- ously both want to win and do our best, but we’re not going to do any- thing personal or anything like that. We train during the week and ride and everything and have fun. I think it’s good because we just push each other to be better. Hopefully we’ll keep going doing how we’re doing, and we’ll both be one, two in the series and just push each other to the top. I think when America first found out who Ben Kelley it was at Six Days in Spain. Yeah, Josh and I both did really well, and our other rider, Jason Klammer. We ended up third that year as a club, Trail Jesters.