August 2020 -- Vol 4 -- Issue 8 August 2020 | Page 165

On The Pegs VOL. 4 ISSUE 8 - August 2020 165
I was third off the start and Dante was in front of me. I couldn’t really stay behind
him. He was going a good pace, but Toth was a little bit quicker than him. I would
catch Dante in some of the woods stuff and then in the open stuff it was impossible
to ride behind anybody on the first lap because the track baked after the morning
race. That first lap was almost impossible to ride within ten seconds of somebody. I
was literally at a dead stop in some spots on the first lap. I was like, there was nothing
I could do. Just got to let him go. What could I do? Fall down and go back and
fight more dust? So I just bided my time and got into second. Then I just kept biding
my time. I knew Josh was riding good. I wasn’t going to reel him in straightaway. So
I just needed to nickel and dime him and not make any mistakes.
I passed him probably I think about the six mile marker or something like that,
right before the white flag came out. I kind of just got up on him. He was riding
pretty conservative in the fields and I just kind of attacked him and squared him up
and got to the inside of him. Then I went around the outside and I pushed him wide
up in a turn. That way he couldn’t cut back underneath. Like I said, it was hard to
follow people out in the field, so I knew I wanted to get that pass done right there
because there was a bunch of fields coming up after that. So I knew I would drop
back another six, seven seconds if I wouldn’t pass him there. So I got the job done. I
kind of took a break and recovered a little bit. On the last lap I wanted to hammer a
little bit at the beginning to get away. That way I could kind of just take it easy and
cruise into the finish without any pressure. Then I got the pit board that I needed to
save the bike. That’s when everything started falling apart. I looked back and I see
my bike smoking. Literally just four turns after I got the pit board that said save the
bike, the thing just started spitting and sputtering a little bit. I could tell it was not
wanting to be lugged. I lost some power. It was close to giving up on me. I did the
best I could, but I was frustrated mentally. I had to change my riding. I ended up
just making a small mistake and I fell over and I actually broke my shifter off. I was
stuck in second gear, so now I couldn’t short shift my bike and there’s still half the
lap to go. Josh got around me in the field. Like I said, I wasn’t trying hard. I just didn’t
want to rev the bike and I was stuck in second gear. Second gear in a field section,
it’s hard not to rev your bike. So I was literally standing up, cruising around, barely
getting by the lappers. I stayed fairly close to him and I think he thought he had it
in the bag. I wasn’t too far behind him. I was riding my bike such low RPM. He was
behind a lapper and he tried to cut out of the rut and go up the hill early to just get
by the lapper on the last lap. It was literally the last hill we had. I had enough room
to get behind the lapper and take the main line that was faster. I passed him and the
lapper at the same time. It was all downhill from there. n