First Person Report: Abbatoye Tackles Perry Mountain Challenge

DirtBikes.com test rider Ryan Abbatoye talks about the trials and tribulations of contesting Alabama’s 24-hour endurance race.

You’ve got to love it when a plan comes together.

For the last 11 years, Action Sports Kawasaki based in Bradenton, Florida, has put a team together to race the Perry Mountain 24-Hour Challenge in Maplesville, Alabama, and this year I was fortunate to get an invite to come out and race with them.

My background is racing in the desert and racing the WORCS series, so racing in the woods is unfamiliar to me. Frankly, I was a little surprised when I got the email from Kawasaki, which supports the team and also helps by sending a few West Coast guys to join a few East Coast guys for the event. This year the team would consist of former AMSOIL GNCC competitor Garret Edmisten, former AMA trials rider Ron Commo III, Clay Lyons, WORCS regular Justin Seeds, my good friend and reigning WORCS champ Robby Bell and myself.

The plan for our West Coast entourage was to fly out Friday morning and arrive in Alabama around 5 p.m., giving us just enough time to sneak in an hour or two of testing and woods riding before the race started on Saturday morning. Nothing like cutting it close, huh?

Only things didn’t exactly go as planned (do they ever?). Robby, Justin, and I ran into our first bit of trouble when we ran into typically bad California freeway traffic on our way to the airport. We ended up just missing our flight by a few minutes, leaving us to spend the next four hours on standby before we were finally able to make it onto another plane. By missing our original flight, we also missed our connector from Texas to Alabama, so, we got to enjoy another “relaxing” 3 hours at Dallas/Ft. Worth airport while hoping we could make it onto a plane to Alabama. Long story short, we ended up in Alabama around midnight, so any chance of testing or getting any woods riding flew away like our first airplane.

The race started at 10 a.m. Robby, Justin and I didn’t get much sleep or any time on our race bike before the race, so the team came up with a strategy. Garret was going to start, with Ron second, Justin third, then Clay, then me. Robby would be our anchor man. Without the team knowing how any of us California boys would perform, we thought it was smart to start with a guy who knows the terrain.

When the flag dropped, Garret sprinted to our bike, tripping over himself while in the process, so we ended up rounding the first corner in about sixth. Garret quickly made some passes and came around the first lap with the lead. Within a few laps he had already gapped the field, but the Max Motorsports Husky team wouldn’t let us get away that easily. They gained all of our minute or so lead back on us during the second hour of racing, and put up a great battle. We didn’t know it at the time, but this battle would go on for the whole race.

My first stint on the bike didn’t come until the race was already 5 hours old. I wasn’t nervous or anything, I was just excited to get out and ride. My plan was to go out and take it easy, learn the bike, terrain and, of course, maintain the lead. I knew second place was lurking back there, so I couldn’t take it too easy at the same time.

But somewhere between taking it easy and staying on the gas I made a pretty bad mistake when, about halfway around the 10- mile course, I missed a turn and kept going straight. I didn’t catch it immediately, but it didn’t take me but a few hundred feet to realize that there weren’t many tire tracks on this trail. I also didn’t see any arrows. By the time I turned back around and got back on the course, the second-place team was now the first-place team! Taking it easy went right out the window. I was now in scramble mode, which seemed appropriate since this was basically a 24-hour hare scramble.

After I got through the first lap, however, I felt a little more comfortable on the bike and in the woods, and I started to pick up the pace. Catching the leader on lap two of my three- lap stint, it seemed too be coming more easily than I expected, and I started getting a little cocky. I blew probably the next 3 corners before I told myself to calm down a little. It seemed to work, as I could see myself closing in on the leader and feeling like I was figuring out the woods.

With that, I handed the bike off to Robby. We had a faster pit stop than the Husky team so Robby went back out in the lead, and he really put some time on the next rider. Over the next few laps he stretched the lead out and gave us some breathing room. Robby was riding well, but he and I always have lap time battles, so I had to go check his lap times to see if he was faster than me. Robby looked really strong, but I just barely beat him (pause to brush off my shoulder), so I was ready to start the smack talking.

Even though we would stretch out the lead out, it always seemed like the Husky team was right there, just waiting for something to happen. Sure enough, while Garret was on his next stint, he went down pretty hard. Luckily, he was okay, but we did lose a lot of time in the pits. Ron finally jumped back on the bike and took it into the night, which made me feel confident because Ron had really hauled the mail during his day-time shift. So, I went back to the motor home, hoping to get a quick power nap before I had to go back out for my first night ride.

About eight miles into my first night-time lap, the Husky team caught up to me. I was riding as fast as I thought I could, and I only proved myself right when I tried to take it up a notch and found myself on the ground after I lost the front-end in a corner. If there was any good news in this for our team–and it wasn’t intentional–it was that I took out the send-place guy in the process! He was a little pissed off, and rightfully so, but all I could do was say was “sorry” and get back to racing. Fortunately, he got going again, too, and he actually took over the lead.

As if I was disoriented enough from riding through the woods in the middle of the night, when I came into the scoring chute to finish my first lap, I got red flagged. I was a little confused at first, but soon found out that they had to shut down the race due to a huge storm that was hitting us. It was all lightning and wind at first, but then the rain hit. Race officials actually had to hold up the race from 11 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. because they had to wait for the storm to pass and reroute some parts of the course that had been washed away due to the rain.

The positive side to the stoppage was that after I crashed we found that I had twisted up the front-end a little, so we were able to fix that and do a full prep on the bike, the plan being that we would take it to the finish without any major pit stops.

At 5:30 a.m., the race restarted with Robby on the bike. By the end of his three-lap stint we were a few minutes behind the leader. Robby would hand the bike off to Garret, who only made it two laps before he got sick and started throwing up all over himself and inside his helmet, and he still made up all the time we had lost anyway! What an animal! Thing turned disastrous again just as quickly. Ron hopped on the bike, actually caught the leaders and made a pass on them, but then our problems returned. The muffler bolt broke, which caused the muffler to fall off, so we had to come back into the pits. The spare muffler we had didn’t match the header, so, we had to change the whole exhaust system.

With his already having time on the new course and with us two minutes out of the lead, we decided to put Robby on the bike. He made it two miles before the bike started running really bad and eventually quit. Robby eventually got a tow back to the pits. While in the pits, we got confirmation that the Husky team had broken down as well, and they were also getting towed back to the pits.

We still had a shot at the win if we could get our bike going, so we scrambled to find the problem, but luck wasn’t on our side. We couldn’t find it. We changed the fuel pump, water temperature sensor and the spark plug. While we worked away the third-place team passed us, and the Husky team also fixed its issues and got back underway. With one lap left to go, we realized we didn’t have any time to try and change a stator or do any more work, so we decided to push the bike across the finish line after the checkered flag came out.

So we were out. The Husky team eventually pulled its spare bike out of impound and used it to finish second. The third-place team would break down on the last lap, but it would still get the win because it logged more laps than anyone else. We ended up finishing fourth overall, not what we were hoping for, but that’s racing! We later found out that while we were changing the pipe on our bike, we melted the throttle position sensor wire on the throttle body, but our bike was so muddy we just missed it. We definitely learned a lesson for the future.

All told, it was a relatively short amount of time that I spent racing in the woods, but I had a blast. The whole team and everyone back east were awesome, and I was really impressed with just how fast the east boys on our team ripped through those trees. In my opinion it’s just as specialized a skill as riding in the desert, maybe even more so. It is definitely a whole different type of riding. In any case, Action Power Sports, TF Racing Suspension, Michael Hall, and the whole crew really put a great effort together. I can’t thank them enough. I really appreciate the opportunity, and I’d love to do it again to get some more woods racing under my belt.

Only next time, I think I’m going to try leaving on a Thursday!