Ask Ping!
April 24, 2009 12:17pm | by: David Pingree
Hey Ping
Just wanted to say congrats for last weekend. Your team is kicking ass and Moss was featured on the V.I.P pass during the show. Hopefully you can get some more sponsors to jump on board. Did you have any idea the team was going to be this good at the beginning of testing for the season? And when is the team going to do the nationals or are you guys going to do the west coast nationals?
Thank You,
Michael
Dear Michael,
Thanks for the nice words, man. It was definitely a great weekend for us. I don’t remember the last time a team had 3 riders in the top ten and all four in the top twelve. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect at the beginning of the season. Both Moss and Albertson got hurt before a gate even dropped and our fill-ins were pretty unproven. But we have a great package at TLD and after a little testing with Blose and Borky I knew we had at least some top-tens in us. Obviously things went well for both of those guys. Now with all our riders back it’s been great. They all push each other and it’s forcing them to be on-point every time we do motos together. I think this weekend you are going to see more of the same from our crew. We are planning on doing five rounds of nationals this summer to test the waters in outdoor motocross. We’ll be at the first three plus Colorado and Washougal. Next year, if things go as planned, we will be racing both series. We have some pretty cool things coming together.
P.S.- I haven’t seen the show but one of the questions they asked Moss for his segment was what was his most embarrassing moment. In his answer I heard Moss say something about “deuce-ing” himself in a first turn crash and riding the whole moto with a full load in his drawers. Did that make it in or did they cut it out?
PING
Ping
First, I want to say you are the reason I look forward to getting my Racer X magazines. I hear, though, that you will be stepping away here and there. I hope that your new gig will be very successful for you and your team. Now, the reason that I wrote is that I was watching some old tapes of races back in 2001 I believe.You were just coming off a six-week break from the east coast and you were doing your second to last West coast race of the season.You had a 10-point lead in the points and that night you had your worst race of the season, basically giving the Championship to Shae Bentley. Not to rub salt in the wound, but do you think that if they got rid of the long break from east to west coast it would be a more fair series. I think a lot of guys lose their mojo during that time and a lot of guys also have the ability to heal up during that time also. This is not the case with the east coast. It is pretty much run straight through from start to finish. Do you think without that break you could have kept your momentum going and got that championship? Maybe it is time for a comeback??? Keep up the writing.
Doug Hadaway
Kalamazoo MI
Dear Doug,
The year was 2000 and, yes, I remember it well. I went into Minneapolis with a ten-point lead. I was confident because I had won that race the year before and I always liked that venue. But a first turn crash bent my front brake carrier and cost me that title. My front brake was dragging the whole race, making it impossible to jump anything. Have you ever tried jumping with your front wheel locked up? It’s pretty hard not to crash, Doug. I had plenty of mojo. What I needed was a front wheel that would continue to spin when it came off the ground. My sad story aside, I think they would be much better off finishing the west coast series before they head back east. It makes more sense and allows the riders a chance to focus on the next series rather than bouncing back and forth between the two. There are serious logistical issues that we aren’t considering though. Stadiums are only available at certain times and Feld has to adjust their schedule accordingly. Ironically, Shae Bentley called me last week wanting a ride on our team for 2010. Maybe he’ll trade me that number one plate for a spot under the awning?
PING
Ping,
Hey, great article most of the time. I was wondering how come these supercross riders seem to get sick so often. RV had to take three weeks off. Reports of Chad with a stomach bug and losing 15 lbs. James saying he was sick earlier in the season...and so on. You raced, what's up?
Thanks, Rory
Dear Rory,
Most of the time? What kind of half-assed compliment is that? Whatever. Yes, I did race and here is my explanation in the simplest of terms. When a rider trains he breaks down his body. You know that muscle soreness you feel when you train hard? That pain is caused from torn muscle fibers that have to repair and rebuild themselves after you work out. This also generates free radicals in the body that your system must dispose of. Now, imagine training every day, multiple times a day for five or six days a week. And imagine you do that for about eleven months out of the year. That much training is hugely taxing on your immune system. Then imagine you had to log in hundreds of thousands of sky miles across the globe traveling from race to race. You think there are any germs on an airplane? You’d be less bombarded with germs if you took a swim in your septic tank. Now think about how stressful it is when you line up for a local motocross race. If you multiply that by about nine thousand you’ll have some idea of the pressure that these guys deal with every weekend. Stress is absolutely brutal on your immune system. All of those things combined are the reason that so many top athletes get sick. Their immune systems are completely taxed and all it takes is the wrong virus to hit your bloodstream and it’s all over. There are very different specifics to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Mono and Epstein Barr Syndrome but they can all be the end result for a motocross rider. RV was experiencing the early stages of Mono. Reed has a stomach virus that is messing him up. It happens. Sadly for Reed it happened at the worst possible time. There is one disease that is nasty and it bites a lot of riders, particularly young ones. It is a ferocious affliction called Lazyass Syndrome. This energy-sapping bug leaves riders on their couch and off their bikes, especially when it gets hot. I had it for a while during my first year of supercross… it’s not good.
PING
Just wanted to say congrats for last weekend. Your team is kicking ass and Moss was featured on the V.I.P pass during the show. Hopefully you can get some more sponsors to jump on board. Did you have any idea the team was going to be this good at the beginning of testing for the season? And when is the team going to do the nationals or are you guys going to do the west coast nationals?
Thank You,
Michael
Dear Michael,
Thanks for the nice words, man. It was definitely a great weekend for us. I don’t remember the last time a team had 3 riders in the top ten and all four in the top twelve. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect at the beginning of the season. Both Moss and Albertson got hurt before a gate even dropped and our fill-ins were pretty unproven. But we have a great package at TLD and after a little testing with Blose and Borky I knew we had at least some top-tens in us. Obviously things went well for both of those guys. Now with all our riders back it’s been great. They all push each other and it’s forcing them to be on-point every time we do motos together. I think this weekend you are going to see more of the same from our crew. We are planning on doing five rounds of nationals this summer to test the waters in outdoor motocross. We’ll be at the first three plus Colorado and Washougal. Next year, if things go as planned, we will be racing both series. We have some pretty cool things coming together.
P.S.- I haven’t seen the show but one of the questions they asked Moss for his segment was what was his most embarrassing moment. In his answer I heard Moss say something about “deuce-ing” himself in a first turn crash and riding the whole moto with a full load in his drawers. Did that make it in or did they cut it out?
PING
Ping
First, I want to say you are the reason I look forward to getting my Racer X magazines. I hear, though, that you will be stepping away here and there. I hope that your new gig will be very successful for you and your team. Now, the reason that I wrote is that I was watching some old tapes of races back in 2001 I believe.You were just coming off a six-week break from the east coast and you were doing your second to last West coast race of the season.You had a 10-point lead in the points and that night you had your worst race of the season, basically giving the Championship to Shae Bentley. Not to rub salt in the wound, but do you think that if they got rid of the long break from east to west coast it would be a more fair series. I think a lot of guys lose their mojo during that time and a lot of guys also have the ability to heal up during that time also. This is not the case with the east coast. It is pretty much run straight through from start to finish. Do you think without that break you could have kept your momentum going and got that championship? Maybe it is time for a comeback??? Keep up the writing.
Doug Hadaway
Kalamazoo MI
Dear Doug,
The year was 2000 and, yes, I remember it well. I went into Minneapolis with a ten-point lead. I was confident because I had won that race the year before and I always liked that venue. But a first turn crash bent my front brake carrier and cost me that title. My front brake was dragging the whole race, making it impossible to jump anything. Have you ever tried jumping with your front wheel locked up? It’s pretty hard not to crash, Doug. I had plenty of mojo. What I needed was a front wheel that would continue to spin when it came off the ground. My sad story aside, I think they would be much better off finishing the west coast series before they head back east. It makes more sense and allows the riders a chance to focus on the next series rather than bouncing back and forth between the two. There are serious logistical issues that we aren’t considering though. Stadiums are only available at certain times and Feld has to adjust their schedule accordingly. Ironically, Shae Bentley called me last week wanting a ride on our team for 2010. Maybe he’ll trade me that number one plate for a spot under the awning?
PING
Ping,
Hey, great article most of the time. I was wondering how come these supercross riders seem to get sick so often. RV had to take three weeks off. Reports of Chad with a stomach bug and losing 15 lbs. James saying he was sick earlier in the season...and so on. You raced, what's up?
Thanks, Rory
Dear Rory,
Most of the time? What kind of half-assed compliment is that? Whatever. Yes, I did race and here is my explanation in the simplest of terms. When a rider trains he breaks down his body. You know that muscle soreness you feel when you train hard? That pain is caused from torn muscle fibers that have to repair and rebuild themselves after you work out. This also generates free radicals in the body that your system must dispose of. Now, imagine training every day, multiple times a day for five or six days a week. And imagine you do that for about eleven months out of the year. That much training is hugely taxing on your immune system. Then imagine you had to log in hundreds of thousands of sky miles across the globe traveling from race to race. You think there are any germs on an airplane? You’d be less bombarded with germs if you took a swim in your septic tank. Now think about how stressful it is when you line up for a local motocross race. If you multiply that by about nine thousand you’ll have some idea of the pressure that these guys deal with every weekend. Stress is absolutely brutal on your immune system. All of those things combined are the reason that so many top athletes get sick. Their immune systems are completely taxed and all it takes is the wrong virus to hit your bloodstream and it’s all over. There are very different specifics to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Mono and Epstein Barr Syndrome but they can all be the end result for a motocross rider. RV was experiencing the early stages of Mono. Reed has a stomach virus that is messing him up. It happens. Sadly for Reed it happened at the worst possible time. There is one disease that is nasty and it bites a lot of riders, particularly young ones. It is a ferocious affliction called Lazyass Syndrome. This energy-sapping bug leaves riders on their couch and off their bikes, especially when it gets hot. I had it for a while during my first year of supercross… it’s not good.
PING
