[REVERUP]

After nearly 5 seasons of off road and Enduro racing my injury card was dealt on Saturday in Odessa Washington at the White knuckle H.S. desert event.

It was a perfect day for racing but course conditions from the earlier short course had severely rutted and disturbed the silty soil.

This was an odd start as they started my class ( open A) with the AA guys. So there I am looking down the line seeing guys like Paul Neff and Jon Seehorn thinking to myself here we go. Dead engine start Hands on the helmet go!
I had a great start top 10 or so, but got in behind a few guys and was blinded by the dust as we were about to drop over the hill at about 50 to 60 MPH at the end of the long desert start straight. I think I hit a silt hole or brush pile, but before I knew it I was down on the ground,over the bars after swapping, visor broken, sub frame and hand guard tweaked and shaken up. Bruised and battered realizing bikes were flying by me through the dust I jumped up thinking I was OK. As I rode off I realized I had bit my tongue and could taste the blood and my right ankle and left knee were hurting. I pressed on and started passing people stuck in huge silt ruts and on to the enduro cross section bikes stuck on the logs everywhere I cruised through fairly easily and stalled once on the second set of tires, and had to kick start the bike thats when I realized my ankle was injured pretty bad as it hurt severely to get the bike started. But I pushed on through the continuous silt fields and silt ruts stabbing that ankle into the ground a few times and writhing in pain to make it back to the pits with 1 lap calling it a day.

Drove home 4 and 1/ 2 hours and went to the hospital as my ankle swelled up huge and I had some impact marks on my head. After some X-rays I found out I had fractured my fibula down near my ankle. The good news is this break will not require any surgery and I should be back on my bike in 6 weeks. I am in a walking boot hobbling around and taking lots of pain killers.
The bad news is no 24 hours of Starvation Ridge race for me, I'm still planning on going down to support my team but I wont be competing. Also I took the following week off work to help with arrowing and always sweep and pre ride the Black Bear Enduro. Not this year. So now I guess if anyone who's reading this makes it to our Enduro you will see me at a checkpoint or something like that instead. I also probably will not be healed and back in race shape by November 18 so I will probably miss the NMA series grand finally, a new race added to the schedule this year, called the Sand Flea H.S. in the Beverly Sand dunes area near Vantage Washington. So I'm hoping for a top 5 series finish open A this year in Off Road. Only time will tell.