2022 Season Recap What a wild year! Let’s start from the beginning… My plans for the 2022 season was to race as much possible. Frank Leivan passed away in December 2021. We were going through some of his old race logs after his passing and came across one that said he raced 78% of the weekends in 1978. My goal was to match that. Which meant racing 41 weekends in 1 year. The three series I put my focus on were GNCC, NEPG, and MORE. That did not fill 41 weekends, so I was going to do whatever was fun in between. This was my first year racing GNCC, the schedule is intense with it seeming like it is every other weekend for 4 months straight.. is not a bad thing if you are from the east coast, not the Midwest. Round 1 was complete culture shock. I felt like the entire time I was fighting for my life. Before we even arrived to the race, Trent Matteson said “well I will wreck 10 times on my first lap, one time being my fault”. I didn’t get it until I was out there. Jeez… We made it through round 1 and had a weekend to regroup. Next up was Florida. I pinched a nerve in my lower back earlier in the week. Such a great thing to do going into sand whoops and Florida heat. We sucked it up and moved on. I sat a lot in that race because of it which was brutal, and I was constantly passing people. I had fun though. I did manage to dehydrate myself and had to get an IV Monday. The following weekend was another GNCC in Georgia and it was a struggle trying to recover from the heat and dehydration, but we made it happen. A few rounds later, we went to Camp Coker. It ended up being one of my top favorite places and my best overall finish (121st O/A). When May finally rolled around, NEPG’s started back up again. It is insane how much more mellow and relaxed an NEPG is compared to an NEPG. I do not really recall anymore stand out moments until we reached Snowshoe. This was one of the top furthest GNCC’s but well worth the experience and views. It’s one of those places where you do not bike the track alone, just in case you see a beer. Snowshoe is a mountain, and it was beautiful. Unfortunately, I did not get the full Snowshoe experience. 2 miles into the race, another rider hit me and shot me off a 10ft ledge. Once I realized I was going off, I gassed it, hoping momentum would be in my favor but instead I landed in a pile of boulders. It was one of those moments where I knew instantly I was hurt but did not know how bad. I knew it my hand and just held it for a moment and then I tried to get my bike picked back up. I couldn’t do it so I yelled at a few kids and they picked it up. I couldn’t start my bike either (estart button on the left side & left hand injured). I decided to take my glove off. All I noticed was a busted knuckle and thought to myself, “quit being a baby you are fine”. I went to put my glove back on and something popped. I got sick to my stomach and screamed. This is when the pain really set in. I could not use my hand at all now. I sat there for a half a hour before I finally made the brutal decision to quit. I had a huge argument with myself, I didn’t want to quit but I couldn’t start my bike or use a clutch. I pushed my bike to the bottom of the mountain with tears running down my face from the pain. A snowshoe employee was at the bottom and took me to the top of the mountain to get me to the medics. I got there right before a massive thunderstorm rolled in. I spent 2 hours with the medics, and I was worried my crew had no idea where I was. After the PM race, we drove straight home and I headed straight to Urgent Care. My injury got missed and when I got into an ortho, my only way to fix it was surgery. I was far from happy. I had to have my bones pinned and the pins removed 6 weeks after surgery. I spent 9 weeks in a cast. I never fully accepted this injury. As soon as the cast was removed, I wanted to ride immediately. If you have ever injured your hand/thumb/wrist, you know that is not how it works. I did push the absolute limits out of stupidity and got lucky multiple times. I was tired of being pit chick and wanted to be back in the action. 3 weeks after I got out of a cast, I lined up for a GNCC. I took a handguard to my hand and thought I rebroke it. I had a meltdown and finally picked myself back up and decided I did not sign up to quit. So, I finished. It was not pretty, and I rode very timidly. I spent maybe 1 hour of riding total before I signed up for this. I figured if I could finish a GNCC, I could absolutely finish a NEPG the following weekend. I had a gut feeling the morning of and knew I did not belong on a bike. I disregarded it and lined up. It was an eventful day. I wrecked more in 3 tests than I had in the entire year combined. I had two very hard ones. I clipped a tree and did not have the strength to correct the bike and went headfirst in the tree. It was the hardest I have ever hit a tree with my
