Return to Racing Roots

Malcolm Smith once described a recurring nightmare he had when he suffered from a fever, long before the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famer became mononymous “Malcolm.”

Between the ages of 5 and 13, as he lay sweating in bed, Smith found himself riding a motorcycle on a dirt oval. Riders passed him on each side. He couldn’t match their pace.

Then, suddenly, he died.

“And that,” Smith said, “is why I never raced flat track.”

A racing dream also haunts my sleep. I am scrambling to finish some task—replace a spark plug, buckle my boots or adjust my goggle strap—before the starting gate drops.

As I throw a leg over my bike, the gate falls. I boot the engine to life and join the field, but I am moving in slow motion. Everyone else is accelerating at normal speed.

These thoughts were running through my mind as I stood in an Indiana cornfield in late October waiting to race in the Ironman GNCC, my first AMA Grand National Cross Country event since 13-year-old Kailub Russell was showing promise in the Youth Mini Intermediate class.

Now, Russell is a 30-year-old multi-time GNCC XC1 champion, competing in his final full season as a professional.

Maybe that dream haunts me because the last time I signed up for a GNCC I literally got left behind at the start.

In 2003, Suzuki let me race AMA Hall of Famer Rodney Smith’s RM250 in the “Industry” class. When the green flag went up and my boot came down on the kick starter, nothing happened.

Kick.

Kick.

Kick.

With Rodney’s giant white AMA No. 1 on the red number plates, I took off dead last into a cloud of dust. And that was the most memorable part of my race.

Seventeen years later, I had stood alone under gray Midwestern skies, wondering what I was doing. “Alone” is just a feeling, because I was surrounded by 946 other competitors, some joined by their mechanics and family members.

One of those riders, Axell Hodges, is one of the most famous dirt bikers on the planet. Fans streamed past him, looking for a fist bump or a photo op.

Hodges, with his undeniable riding talent and 1 million Instagram followers, might be a modern-day Malcolm Smith. The multi-time X Games medalist probably won’t win any ISDE gold medals, but his willingness to try off-road racing is reminiscent of Smith competing five decades ago at the Widowmaker hill climb, just for the thrill of it.

Smith was an influencer before the word became a job title.

But I didn’t want to get caught up in that. Technically, I was competing against Hodges, but I resigned myself to the fact that I would be on a trail ride within a race. He could have the spotlight. I wanted to rediscover the thrill of racing a dirt bike.

The Older I Get, The Faster I Was

I grew up riding and racing dirt bikes, won state motocross titles, competed at the AMA Amateur National Motocross Championship at Loretta Lynn’s, went to college, got a job, started a family, moved around and, through it all, lost my connection to motorcycling.

I have since carved out a niche telling stories about motorcycles and people who race them. So, when an opportunity popped up to enter a GNCC race on a 2021 KTM 125 XC and write about the experience, I initially turned it down.

After all, I am a washed-up, 40-something father of two whose only encounter now with arm pump comes when my kids are fighting in the back seat of the car and I grip the steering wheel too hard.

I do the dishes each night after dinner. All of the athletic tape in the world could not save my hands.

This wasn’t a golden-hour photo shoot, either. The Ironman is the most highly attended GNCC on the schedule. It is 13 miles of Indiana roots, ruts, rocks, water crossings, mud and climbs.

With nearly 1,000 riders in the Sunday morning divisions alone, the course gets ridiculously rough. It is an ambitious event for a return to racing.

I hung up the phone, turned to my wife and said, “You wouldn’t believe … .”

She looked at me with a furrowed brow and called me crazy. She knew better than I did that, deep down, I needed to do this. She knew I wanted to do it, but I just didn’t realize it. Wives are crazy like that. How do they know?

The last time I raced a motorcycle, Facebook didn’t exist, Michael Jordan had just played his final NBA game and two-strokes dominated the starting lines in motocross and off-road racing.

When I arrived in Crawfordsville, Ind., I found no shortage of people willing to offer advice and help me feel comfortable. I chatted at length with John Hinz, president of KTM North America.

“Riding motorcycles is an emotional experience,” he said. “No matter how long we have been away, we remember the smells and sounds from the track.”

Little things, like laminate tear-offs and electric starting, were new and exotic, but when I climbed on the 125 XC, thumbed the starter, knocked the transmission into gear and took off, I experienced a time warp.

It wasn’t the sound of the exhaust that did it for me but, rather, the vibration. Feeling the hum of the engine and the energy through the seat foam and hand grips transported me back to when I raced motocross and hare scrambles in AMA District 14.

As a teenager, I loved that ride from the truck to the starting line, especially with a clean bike and fresh gear. There was something gladiatorial about it, and I was about to experience all of it once again.

Former GNCC winner Mark Hyde brought me back down to earth, however, when I asked what to do about warming up before the race.

“Our window now between warmed up and worn out is so small that we don’t want to chance it,” he said, laughing.

I did a couple of jumping jacks and bounced up and down a few times.

Familiar Feelings

Muscle memory is a real thing. But I know another: motorcycle memory.

Jumping to the end, I didn’t forget how to ride a motorcycle.

At one time, I was a competitive racer. I qualified for Loretta Lynn’s 11 times and held an AMA pro racing license in 1997.

But I knew that if I let myself get into the mix at the start of the race, I would get sucked into a vortex and set a pace I couldn’t maintain for two hours.

So, I let my wave get a few bike lengths out before I hit the starter button. Bringing up the rear, I focused on feeling the bike underneath me.

My index fingers automatically found their resting places on the clutch and brake levers. I did my best to keep the balls of my feet on the pegs, and I stood up and squeezed the gas tank with my knees almost everywhere.

On the first lap, I let everyone pass me. I soaked up the pleasure of riding a motorcycle again. I popped wheelies in corn fields, took the longer, but more fun, lines in the forest sections and waved to anyone I knew on the sidelines.

I had more confidence on the second lap. I picked up my pace, and I passed more riders than I let by.

In the tight forest sections, I came up quickly on big-displacement four-strokes. When they heard the unmistakable pitch of a 125cc two-stroke behind them, I swear they puffed up their chests and said, “No way, kid!”

This was especially apparent when we emerged from the woods, and I had to drag race across the corn and brake late to make a move.

About 8 miles into the second lap, my front tire found a tree root buried at a 45-degree angle from the race course.

The “thud” came fast.

My visor stabbed the dirt before I could even let go of the grips. My right thumb slipped off the handlebar and jammed into the ground.

When I was a child, I scrambled back to my motorcycle as fast as possible after crashes. As an adult, I wanted to evaluate myself.

I slowly picked up the bike and made sure I didn’t block the trail. Straddling the KTM, I opened and closed my hands and knocked the dirt out of the space where the visor meets the shell.

I felt a familiar throbbing sensation in my right thumb. In 1990, I highsided racing motocross and jammed my thumb into a berm. That was my first broken bone.

The pain was the same from 30 years ago, but range of motion seemed fine. I took a couple of breaths and kept going.

The sore thumb slowed my pace, and I had difficulty reaching for the front brake. I was happy when Becca Sheets, the women’s champion, passed me on a long, flat forest section, because I don’t think I had a fourth lap in me.

I could hear most riders inching up on me, so I had time to pull over. Sheets, however, was there and gone so fast I could only mouth, “Wow!” inside my helmet.

At the end of the race, the inside of my left knee was raw, but my hands had only a couple of hot spots. Nothing that scared me before the race—hill climbs, water crossings, roots and softball-sized rocks—was easy, but neither was it torture.

At the finish line, I found the KTM staff, many of whom also rode that morning, including leader Hinz.

I put ice on my thumb and let the soreness take over my body.

We all rode the same course, but each had a unique experience. Sharing that is part of the ride.

I miss that post-ride party. And I forgot that I missed it.

It reminds me of a line Bruce Brown wrote and narrated for the end of his movie, “On Any Sunday.”

“There is something about going riding with your friends, a feeling of freedom, a feeling of joy, that really can’t be put into words. It can only be fully shared by someone who has done it.”

Had that been part of my recurring dream, maybe I wouldn’t have waited 17 years to return to racing.

I won’t wait another 17.

Brett Smith, unrelated to Malcolm Smith, is an AMA member from Baltimore.