January 26, 2022

The Off Season

As you may or may not have noticed, the blog has been a little quiet lately. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you know I have been pretty busy this off season. Below, you will find what exactly I have been up to!

The last time I raced was November 27! IT HAS BEEN A LONG TIME! My focus this off season has been regaining full strength in my upper body / shoulder after having surgery on it back in May. The other focus has been riding AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. That’s the vague version.

My bad a** van was completed by Enduro Van back in October. I have set up to handle lots of traveling and hauling my dirt bikes. It gives me the opportunity to travel more than ever and I am stoked about that!

Early December, I took a two-week riding adventure. I started out in Georgia at V3 Off Road, playing in the sand and being treated like family. After a few days there, I headed out to South Carolina and met up with a fellow Beta dealer, Redline Motorsports. We rode at his property the first day and that was EPIC! The terrain was quite a bit different for the typical South Carolina stuff I have ridden. It had rocks, hilly, bamboo trees, roots, clay, sandy dirt, basically all the goods.

The next day, we checked out GTR Complex. GTR is my cup of tea, FULL of sand! The trails there are a combo of super-fast and super tight, perfect training. The motocross track was straight sand and was fun to rip around. After I got done there, I headed to Allie & Tayla Jones-Spurgeon’s place. My first day there, I put my full focus on the turn track, perfecting every corner. The next day, I rode with Tayla. If you do not know Tayla Jones, she is one of the top women racer’s in the country.. Heck, in the world! We rode on a section of a motocross track and did 20-minute motos. I rode my butt off. Super intense but lots of fun. After we finished, Allie and Tayla took me to downtown Greenville so I could have “fun”. It was super cool and worth checking out if you are in the area!

The following day, I did more skill drills. At this point in the trip, I did not know what to do next. I wanted more sand riding for sure so I decided to go back to GTR Complex. That day, I shaved 6 minutes off each lap from when I was there over the weekend. The skill drills and getting comfortable on my bike again was HUGE! I stayed there for two days and continued working. By that time, I had ridden 11 days straight and felt like I could use a rest day. So, I decided to end my trip by going to Florida to hang out with my great friends, Broc & Lindsey French. It was nice to see them. We checked out Panama City Beach, I love the ocean, and participated in a golf cart Christmas parade. Super cool experience! It was now time for me to head home, 14-hour drive. I did the bulk of it in one day and decided to sleep about 5 hours from home. I had the next day off also so when I did get back home, guess what I did?! I rode some more before I returned to work to play catch up! This trip was EPIC!

This brings us to Christmas week. I rode all weekend but stayed local.

New Year’s Eve, brought another riding trip! I started out in Oklahoma for a day. My day got cut pretty short after a gnarly crash. My front end was twisted and my body did not feel pleasant. Ended up with some bruised ribs and lots of soreness. I decided to suck it up and still head further south to Conroe, TX, north of Houston, to check out 3 Palm’s Action Sports. That place is by far my favorite one I have been too in the last year. Sandy dirt, multiple tracks, and lots of fun! Best part, it was 86 degrees which was far better than the 30’s and snow back in Missouri that weekend.

When I got back from that trip, I decided I would spend riding in January within two hours of home… that did not even last a week. The following weekend I went back to Oklahoma to ride some motocross for a day and then went back home that evening and headed to St Joe the following day. St Joe involved a combo of motos and trail riding. It was a good time and 3.5 hours of ride time. This past weekend, I took another trip to Oklahoma to ride with some great friends and then went to Kansas for sand riding the following day. We had lots of fun and had improvements on the bike!

That is basically as far as the riding goes. Being 26 days out from race season, bikes are now being prepped and I plan on hitting a race sometime in the next 3 weeks to knock the rust off.

Riding, is only part of the off-season prep, as I mentioned above, I have been working on building strength. I train at the gym, 5 days a week, following a program I written for myself. I am almost to 100% full upper body strength before injury. I can squat and deadlift more than I weigh. I have not been ignoring muscles imbalances, trying to give me the best chance against injury prevention. I continue to push forward in every way I can, keeping my goals in mind and keeping the fire lit inside.