Tuesday Toolbox: Brandon Sommers

Brandon Sommers just returned from his second trip to France to race the Pont de Vaux, and while his racing improved, his opinion of French food did not. Sommers took some time out from getting ready for GNCC to tell us a little bit about his French experience.

Brandon! I was going to start off my first question in French because of your recent trip to France for the Pont De Vaux. But I can barely pronounce Pont De Vaux to begin with! So why don't you tell us about your trip? Have you raced the Pont de Vaux before?
A couple years ago I went over, there was a Belgium team I raced for, an A class. This was my first year since then and we kind of put our own team together. I learned a lot this time. I wish we had been more prepared-getting things shipped over there and getting the tools over there. The first time, everything was taken care of, I just flew over and raced. I just had to take my gear. We had to ship bikes and parts to the track this time so we could set the bike up and work on it if we had any problems.

What do you think of France? Did you have a pretty good experience? The country actually really sucks. I hated France. They don't have A/C anywhere, they don't use ice cubes, most of the people smell funny. They don't have washcloths. I can't live without washcloths. I hated the food but I had a good time. The race was really cool. It's not like a GNCC but it's really intense. It's like a motocross/flat track race. You are constantly racing with someone. It really wore you out.

How else is different from GNCC? Well, first of all, it's 12 hours long. (Each teammate takes a session of the race)There were no woods. It's all out in the cornfield and there were 3 minute laps for 12 hours. It was super high speed. That was the biggest difference. I've never run anything like that in my life.

How often did you switch riders during the race? We switched riders about every hour and 10 minutes. That's all we had fuel wise before we had to refuel. We'd go back out and the pit times cost you a lot of time. You have to go down a whole 110 pit areas and they had a speed limit through there. So you want to do that as little as possible.

How did the race go for you, Bill and Taylor? It started out really good. We ended up 2^nd at the end of the first session. We didn't pass sound check at the end of that session so we had to come in at the beginning of the second session. We had to come in and exchange exhausts so we were down 2 laps by then. We had some more exhaust problems. We had to replace the spindle in the 9^th session and we had more exhaust problems. But the 3^rd session we led most of it. At one time we were a lap and a half lead ahead and then we had another exhaust issue putting us back in around 7^th. We were 15^th overall at the end of the race.

Why did you decide to do the Pont de Vaux? I did it a couple years ago and I thought it was fun. But the first time, we only raced like half an hour and then we blew a motor and I hardly got to race at all that time. I wanted to try it again and put my own team together. I never really got around to it and then me and Kiser were training together this winter, and he raced it last year and said he'd like to do it again. So we decided to do it together. We decided to call Bill and we know he would be interested.  We wouldn't find a better teammate than Bill for that race. So we started putting things together. We used Mike Novak, who has done several races over there, and he helped set a lot of the stuff up for us. He did a lot of the logistics. Then, we built the bike and sent it over. I really wanted to win. We did a lot better this time then last time but I don't like to lose.

Did you do anything different with your training to prepare for it? Not really. Obviously I think if you want to race it, run some flat track stuff and high speed stuff to get used to the speed but I've just been focusing a lot on the GNCC's this fall. I just kept doing what I was doing. You just have to get accustomed to the speed a little bit.

I've talked to a lot of the guys about the kind of racing they're doing over the breaks. Do you think running the Pont de Vaux is going to help when you go back to GNCC? I think there were benefits and good points and bad points. The good points would be running those speeds for that long- for me that was really good. I feel like it slowed things down in my head a little bit. I hit the woods in my little practice track and I felt like I was going so slow and I was pushing my guts out. I hit the field and usually it feels fast but this time It felt like nothing. Obviously it's also pretty decent for endurance.  You're pushing yourself hard when you are tired. It was very expensive though. We were gone for a little over a week and that killed a lot of training time we could have been working on bikes. The food was horrible. I didn't even train while I was over there because I wasn't eating very healthy. I think we ate McDonald's every day. The morning of the race, I'm pretty picky about the food I eat, and Sunday before the third session I had four cheeseburgers and a large coke. It was definitely a learning experience. I would love the opportunity to go over there again but right now I couldn't afford on my own.

Can you judge Bill and Taylor's reactions to the race and to France? I think they felt pretty well the same way about it. We didn't realize how expensive it was going to be until we started paying for things. We really wanted to win obviously. Then it's just tough going over there like that, and your hands are tied. A lot of things we haven't had the chance to test and tune since the conditions are so different. It was a cool race but we were overwhelmed. Doing it on your own dollar is very very expensive.

Did you talk to any of your competitors? I did talk to a few. The KTM team was there with McGill and Kirkland- they raced with an English rider Paul Holmes. I talked to him a little and Jasmin Plante, he is a Canadian rider. Then Paul Winrow, he's a big name over there. I met him last time over there. He's a really nice guy and he's one of two guys when I was racing that blew my doors off when I was on the track. He blew by me like I was standing still and he was 46 years old which made it even harder for me. I didn't get to talk to a whole lot. A lot of them spoke French but we did get to talk to a few.

So was there a bit of a language barrier? There was definitely a language barrier! I enjoyed that the most. You go somewhere and buy something and sometimes it clicks and then you go to a hardware store and we were trying to buy hose you had to measure and we didn't do it right and we couldn't speak French and they couldn't speak English so used a whole lot of sign language. I can tell all kinds of stories like that.

Oh really? Let's hear another one then. Did anything really funny happen to you over there?
On the flight over I got really sick. I had a head cold so I went to the pharmacy. I thought I could walk in and get Nyquil. I walk in and there is nothing that I recognize. Finally, someone could take care of me so I kind of asked if she could speak English and she shook her head. I made a coughing gesture, I blew my nose so she could tell my nose was stuffy. So she made a motion and I couldn't figure out what in the world she was trying to say. So it went on for five minutes and everyone in there is laughing. FINALLY a woman came in who could speak both and I guess she was trying to figure out if I had a dry could or a wet cold. I still don't know what that means but they gave me 4-5 things that really helped. Then Ryan Smith from bignutzracing, he's one of my friends and he kept us pretty entertained. He was out of control for sure. We went to supper one night and we sat at the table for three hours and I never laughed so much in my life. He has such dry humor, he would never crack a smile and you would be rolling over in laughter.

So you can sit at dinner for three hours but you didn't like the food? Why didn't you like the food? It sucks. It was edible but it wasn't great. I didn't eat any French food because I remember the last time I thought it was disgusting. They almost got me to eat some French food. And then we just bought bread, and ham and barbecue sauce. We had Italian one night and that was probably the best food we had.

If I was there I would have been buying bread and good cheese and wine! Well, I'm like a cheese connoisseur. I like aged gouda. They had too much creamy stuff over there! They put sauce on everything. I don't like sauce on stuff. England was nice because they could at least speak English and they had AC. I didn't think the women were that attractive. That was hard on me. I was hoping for some attractive women.

I always heard French women were very slender and chic and classy, but not so much? Well, there weren't really very many overweight people there. There are a lot of obese people in the states. I figured (in France) it was because their food sucked. The girls just didn't do it for me. I figured they would have nice accents, but they couldn't even speak English. Maybe that was the part.

So to be happy, you need AC, good food and attractive women? I guess that's reasonable.
And four wheelers.

Well, yeah of course.

Your first GNCC race after summer is in two weeks. Are you pretty excited? I can't wait. I'm dying to get back. I would love to have more time to get ready. I've been racing all summer around here but there is nothing like a national.

How do you hope to do? I'm sitting in 6^th right now but I'm really happy with how my bike is working right now. Obviously I want to go out and do well but my biggest goal is to go out and give a 100 percent and have fun and not worry about all the politics that go on.  I just enjoy the racing because that's what it's all about. I don't think you'll talk to anyone in the pro class that doesn't want to win. It' s just one step at a time to get there. I want to do as well as I can at every race I go to. I just want to go out and do the best I can and if I'm not the best, OK... As long as I gave it everything I got.

Well,  thanks for a terrific interview! I guess we will see you in a few weeks!
OK! See you then!