This year’s Crawfordsville Grand National Cross Country race was a little different than past years for me because I was given the opportunity to be a guest factory rider for the day for the Husqvarna factory off-road racing team.  It’s a program that Husky has done for all the GNCC rounds this year.  They sponsor a guest rider for the day, on a factory-prepped 2009 TXC 450.  My participation in the program came together late, just a week and a half or so before the race. The whole thing was coordinated by Jamey Holter of the AMA, and Scot Harden of Husqvarna North America.  Apparently, Harden was talking to Jamey a couple of weeks ago at the AMA motorcycle museum and suggested that the American Motorcyclist magazine do an article on the final GNCC round in Indiana, and Jamey recommended me to ride the bike, as kind of a blue-collar weekend warrior AMA member evaluation. 

However it all came about, I’m grateful to Jamey for thinking of me, and of course I can’t thank the Husky guys enough.  It was a terrific experience and something I’ll always remember and it sure made this year’s Ironman special. 

For the past 5 or 6 years, the weather has always been iffy for this event, and this year was more of that pattern.  The area got hit with a lot of rain on Thursday and Friday.  Brent and I left my house at about 10:30 Saturday morning and we drove in steady, but light rain most of the way to Crawfordsville.  But we really weren’t too worried about the weather or the conditions because the forecast for Sunday was sunny and low 60s and we figured the four-wheelers would splash out most of the mud on Saturday and make the bulk of the course rideable for us on Sunday. 

We arrived at the track in the early afternoon and met up with Jamey and the Husqvarna guys as soon as we got parked.  Wyatt Seals is the head tuner for the Husqvarna off-road team and he was our main contact and coordinator for this weekend.  This was the first time I had ever met Wyatt, but I’ve heard his name for years.  He was a top-shelf national factory motocross and supercross mechanic for years, and the last couple of seasons, he’s been working for Husky preparing the bikes and running things for their GNCC effort with Australian Glenn Kearney as his rider.  My first impression of Wyatt is that he’s extremely down-to-earth.  He’s not a blowhard chatterbox or a big self-promoter.  He’s a quiet guy, but very friendly and professional and real salt-of-the-earth.  He could not have been more accommodating with us.  I was a little nervous about the whole program, but Wyatt put me at ease immediately.  He’s got a subdued Southern gentleman quality and confidence and I felt real natural and comfortable around him. 

My other quick impression was just how beautiful the motorcycle is.  The bike I rode was immaculate, as you would expect it to be, but it was just so pretty.  The red and white plastic contrasted handsomely with the black rims and wheels and it’s just a real racy-looking package.  The color scheme reminded me a lot of the red, white and black Harley XR750 flattrackers that Ricky Graham and Scotty Parker raced in the late 70s and early 80s with Klotz/Wiseco sponsorship and colors.  I always thought those Harleys were the raciest looking machines I’ve ever seen, and the factory Husky’s are the off-road brothers of those bikes.

Shortly after arriving and meeting up with Jamey and Wyatt and checking out the Husqvarna tent and the motorcycle itself, we moved the bike out of the general parking area and drove to a cornfield across the road from the track.  There, Wyatt had a little area in mind for our photo shoot.  Jamey didn’t think he would get many photo opportunities during the actual race on Sunday, so he arranged with the Husky guys for us to ride the bike a little bit on Saturday to take pictures and some video.  We found a little patch of virgin woods to play with, and a freshly harvested bean field and that was our photo shoot area.  I was relieved to throw a leg over the bike and at least get a little bit of seat time on it before the race on Sunday morning.  I didn’t get a lot of time on the bike, but it was enough to get a feel for it and remove any worries about racing an unfamiliar motorcycle.

Basically, I rode the bike around in circles in this little patch of virgin timber while Jamey snapped pictures.  He had me jump over some logs and go around corners and pop some wheelies.  From all the previous rain, the soil was quite slick once I burned through the top layer of grass.  And because of that greasiness, I experienced my first and only real embarrassing moment of the whole weekend.  I came around a corner in second gear and the front wheel hit a patch of grease and got away from me.  I wasn’t going fast at all when it happened, but the front wheel skidded and put me head-on into a tree.  I absolutely center punched it.  I didn’t crash, but the pretty Husqvarna and I sure came to an abrupt stop.  Of course, Wyatt saw the whole thing and I cringed in embarrassment.  I wanted to hide underneath the bike.  Fortunately, I was going slow enough that the impact didn’t hurt anything on the motorcycle, and Wyatt didn’t seem to care at all.  He giggled about it.  But for me, it was a little humiliating to slam into a tree during the photo shoot, but as my dad says, “You’ll have that in a big job.”  Jamey’s only disappointment was that he didn’t capture my magical moment on film.  It actually happened during the video portion of the shoot, but he didn’t have the camera on me at the time. 

After the photo shoot, Jamey did a video interview with Wyatt and me, and that wrapped up the main events for us on Saturday.  Wyatt asked me if I wanted anything changed on the bike, specifically handlebar and lever position and I told him everything felt fine, and he laughed and said he’d see me first thing in the morning.

For those of you who haven’t seen Jamey in action doing his thing, I have to say I was real impressed.  He’s a true journalist pro, and I’m not just puffing him up because he’s my buddy. 

After parting ways with the Husky crew, Jamey went back to town to check in to his hotel room.  Brent and I stayed at the track for a while longer, walked through all the vendors and checked out the sights, and then Erik and Eric arrived, and we met up with them and shot the breeze while they parked and set up their campsite for the night.  Apparently, they had planned to do a road bicycle ride in the morning before heading from Erik’s house to Crawfordsville, but Cheatwood was too late for the bicycle ride, so he drove all the way from Naperville in the opposite direction to Marseilles for the pleasure of driving over with Erik!  But I’m sure Erik appreciated it.

Shortly after we hooked up with them, darkness set in and Brent and I drove in to town to pick Jamey up for dinner.  It was too cold and damp for me to camp.  Brent and I camped at the Super-8 in Crawfordsville. 

Sunday morning and back to the track for the big race.  Admittedly, I was nervous on Sunday morning.  I’ve been racing a long time and ridden a lot of different bikes and I normally don’t get that nervous.  But it’s not everyday I get to ride a factory-prepared Husqvarna, or any motorcycle that doesn’t belong to me, so I was a lot more nervous than usual.  I didn’t want to do anything stupid and crash it, and I also didn’t want to go so slow that I embarrassed myself.  But Wyatt and the rest of the crew were real soothing.  They told me to just have fun, enjoy the fresh air and not worry about a thing. 

On the starting line, I had 3 or 4 guys in red Husqvarna polo shirts hovering around me, asking if I needed a drink of water or anything in the world.  It was neat.  I felt like a big-time racer, but I have to say, I’m not used to getting that much attention!  As the national anthem was singing, I felt as though the clock turned back 20 years and I was lining up for a pro dirt track national again.  That same old feeling hit my gut.

The green flag waved, motors fired and we all launched for the first turn.  The Husqvarna fired effortlessly for me on the line, thanks to the electric start, and I got a competitive start.  The first turn was a left-hander, and I went to the outside and left the gas on and passed a few riders to improve my start.  At that point, all my nervousness evaporated and it was another motorcycle race. 

My goal for the first lap was to make it through without any incidents, ride conservatively and familiarize myself with the motorcycle and the track.  And that’s pretty much what I did. 

The course was standard GNCC fare.  It was a little less than a 10-mile loop and it had everything in it.  Fast field sections, lots of steep hills, off-cambers, creek crossings, ditches, ravines and even some true singletrack.  The conditions were perfect on 95% of the course with fantastic dirt, faultless traction and no dust.  However, there were a few bad sections on the course, and the bad sections were pretty bad.  There was a muddy canyon that we go up every year, and it was an absolute first gear, dog-paddling bottleneck cluster this year.  There was also a very technical downhill section that was single file, one-lined and we dropped down into a sharp ravine.  Almost every lap, there was a bottleneck at that section with riders piled up everywhere.  A couple of times, I had to sit and wait there for several minutes for it to clear.  It was one-lined, no other way through it, so I had no choice but to patiently wait it out.  There were also a couple of mud holes that got gnarly.  If you picked a good line through the mud pits, it was a piece of cake.  But if you got in the wrong line, you buried the motorcycle.  The problem was that all the lines looked the same, and it was extremely difficult to distinguish between an easy line and a bike burial line.  Spectators were everywhere, screaming at you and pointing to different lines, but I never know whether or not to trust their line selection.  Most of the time, I made it through the tricky obstacles and mud pits with no trouble.  The Husky has a lot of torque and if I hit that stuff with a little momentum, it barked right through it.  The bike amazed me on a couple of hill climbs.  I climbed one hill in particular with almost no run at it in snotty conditions and somehow the rear wheel got a hold of something and I caterpillared up the hill and cleaned it, avoiding carnage all around me.  But I did get snagged at several bottlenecks and lost a lot of time that way, and on my last lap, I picked a bad line through a mud pit and buried the Husky.  I’d still be there if not for some strong young spectators who pulled me out as I gassed it and worked the clutch.

I finished 19^th out of 35 in the Sportsman class, and 130^th out of 465 finishers overall in the morning race.  I think I rode fairly well, and I believe I had the speed to finish top-ten in the Sportsman class.  Some of my line selections and decisions at the bottlenecks cost me.  I rode my slowest pace on the first lap, but it was actually my quickest lap and I was in 13^th at the end of lap one because I didn’t get hung up in anything on that lap.  On my third and fourth laps, I rode my hardest and had my best speed by far, but my lap times were my slowest, due to getting snagged in the bottlenecks and mud pits.  But, I accomplished what I set out to do, and overall, I’m content.  I was tired when the checkered flag came out, but I also didn’t want it to end. 

The bike was very easy to ride and I had no trouble adapting to it.  According to Wyatt, the motor is box stock, just a standard, off-the-showroom TXC 450.  It’s been jetted, but other than that, it’s all stock.  The exhaust is even standard.  Wyatt said they tried an aftermarket pipe on it for a race or two, but it didn’t help anything, so they put the stock exhaust back on it.

The power on the TXC 450 is fantastic.  It’s very smooth off the bottom.  It doesn’t rev as fast as my Yamaha 450.  It has more of an old school thump to the delivery, at least in the lower rpms.  It’s real user-friendly.  It’s linear, no big hits, but it’s very responsive.  The jetting is dead-on, and when you roll the throttle on, it transfers to the rear wheel instantly, but smoothly and predictably.  The power is as good as anything I’ve ridden.

It’s easy to ride, but it’s no baby either.  In some of the faster field sections, I was able to leave the gas on and when you get it in the higher rpms, it absolutely rips!  In one field section, I got it tapped out in 5^th gear every lap and it literally blurred my eyes.  I believe that on top-end, the Husky is competitive with anything out there.  I blew by a lot of riders in the fields when I was brave enough to leave the throttle on. 

I was also impressed with the handling.  European bikes can be a little quirky, but this Husky has handling for the masses.  My opinion is that it’s a very neutral handler.  It doesn’t do anything bad when it comes to cornering and handling.  It’s not the sharpest turning bike I’ve ridden, but it will carve an inside line as well as a typical Jap motocrosser.  It’s also stable at speed.  I didn’t get any headshake with it all day, and I probably should’ve.  In the field sections, there were times I was chopping the throttle going into corners at high-speeds through ruts and braking bumps and not once did the front end go into any kind of tank-slapper.  I didn’t see a steering stabilizer on the bike, so it must be naturally very stable.  The only thing I noticed about the handling is that for me personally, sometimes it stuck too well.  With my dirt track background, I like to slide the wheels a little more than most.  The Husky was willing to slide around corners for me, but it took a little effort and more throttle than I’m used to.  Part of it was the track conditions.  Most of the soil at the Ironman this year was real spongy and tacky from all the rain, and traction was like glue. 

As much as I enjoyed the power and the handling, the feature that probably impressed me the most was the suspension.  According to Wyatt, the bike has stock Marzocchi forks, but they’ve been revalved personally by him and were sprung for my weight.  The rear shock is a non-stock Ohlins unit.  The whole package worked really well; far superior to anything I’ve ridden in a GNCC event.  The course was really rough on Sunday.  With the soft ground, there were really no smooth areas on the whole track.  It was a constant barrage of deep ruts, braking bumps, square edges, chuckholes…you name it.  The suspension soaked up all of it magnificently.  I don’t know how they achieved it, but the bike felt plush on the slower 2^nd and 3^rd gear stuff in the woods, yet it was also aggressive enough to absorb high-speed hits in the field sections.  My stock Yamaha suspension would’ve beat the hell out of me yesterday and I’d be so sore today that I’d be hobbling around like Fred Sanford.  But honestly, I’m not even that sore today after racing in those conditions, and I attest that to the bike’s suspension.  What a difference a properly set up motorcycle makes!  I don’t think it helped my results any, but it sure made a more enjoyable race. 

This event was my first real experience on a Husqvarna and I’m impressed.  I would have no problem buying and owning one.  If I had one snivel about the bike, it would be the weight.  If you look at the Husky 450 motor, it’s a massive unit.  Wyatt says it’s grossly overbuilt, and I suspect he’s right.  The bike is a little heavy.  It doesn’t feel heavy when you’re riding it, but if you get it stuck or have to wrestle it on a hill, you definitely feel it then.  It could go on a diet.  I’d really like to ride the new Husky 250 four-stroke because it looks feather light.  That new engine looks more like a 150cc unit than a 250. 

Brent had an excellent race this year.  He finished 6^th out of 20 riders in the Senior C class and got a nice plaque out of the deal.  He was 211^th overall.  His new KTM 250F has really helped his riding.  He’s much faster and more consistent than he was on his last two bikes.

Erik also did real well.  He got 19^th out of 29 in the +35C class and 216^th overall.  He and Brent finished less than two minutes apart.

Another Ironman in the books, I had a wonderful time and I’m already looking forward to next year.  The weather was terrific, the company was good, and with the fall colors, it was a wonderful weekend to spend in the woods.  Of course, getting to ride that Husky didn’t hurt my attitude either!

Bob