Day 115 - Nitro Arenacross Mesquite Texas

My friend Kevin talked me into entering the Nitro Arenacross event in Mesquite Texas. The track prep couldn't have been better, though I was definitely intimidated by trying to learn the rhythm section with only 5 minutes of practice time. I knew I had to dig deep and get the courage to hit those jumps or get mowed over by others who were braver than me. This video was compiled from practice, heat races and main event footage in two classes; bark buster and 450 beginner where riders from the 250 beginner and 40+ are also mixed in with me. I blew one start by making the newbie mistake of being too close to the gate and in the main event I overshot one double and got to kiss the earth because of it. The hardest part of my day was sitting still for 5 hours in the cold stadium and then jumping on the bike at 9:30PM to race though it was a blast and I am glad I did it.

[@blakedennis2559]

Man this looks difficult but fun. I’m thinking of trying it this year...

[@jtbrower]

It was something that I am glad I did because I walked out without injury but the difficulty it presented was different than I expected. Sure the track itself had challenges, but what was truly challenging was only getting like 3 or 4 tiny practice laps before you start racing. On top of that, the racing event for participants is spread out over a long day from registration earlier in the AM to what I remember turned out to be my last moto was starting around 10PM. So you go from practice and heats early in the day to potentially they can put your race heats at the end of the night (after all the crowd would rather watch the pros than us). So I was sitting in the stands with my friend watching everyone else and then it was like someone walked into my living room while I was laying on the couch and said, "Dude someone is challenging you to a race outside your house and you have 5 minutes to get your heart and mind ready!". LOL. To make matters worse my friend who talked me into it separated his shoulder right before I was going on and he was my mentor in a way because he is a much better rider than I am. As for the track itself, and the event as a whole, man is it fun and they do a great job of putting this event together. All the stuff I said is merely a perspective of a guy in his mid 40's trying to learn this stuff! Before you do it, get some practice somewhere where they have steep jump faces in rhythm sections that are close together. That truly is the most challenging part for us beginners. If you slightly over-jump one (which is super easy) you land on the face of the next and bad things happen quick. That happened to my friend and me as well. When I saw the pros doing them they were landing so that their rear tire would actually clip the next jump vs trying to get both front and rear over the next jump. It seemed that this set them up better for the next face. Of course they were tripling through instead of doubling if I remember correctly. Looking back, I cannot believe I did this LOL! You should give it a go!