Tuesday Toolbox: Bob Santheson

Plymouth, Mass., native Bob Santheson grew up around bikes while working at his dad's shop. Through the years, Santheson raced NETRA but came over to the GNCCs in 2003. Since then he's left to race for a local championship and for an injury, but last year he came back to race the XC2 Pro-Lites bike class for the entire season. Santheson talks about how he got started, how his first full year in GNCCs went and how he's going to get on a 450 in 2010.

Hey Bob, why don't you start of telling us how you got started racing? Well, my family pretty much got me started. My dad grew up racing and he had his own bike shop. So that was pretty much bound to happen.

Did he make you work at the shop growing up then? Oh yeah. I was sweeping floors and all kinds of stuff. I still work at a bike shop now. My dad closed his a few years back and I still enjoyed the industry and atmosphere so I stuck with it.

You have kind of a New England accent, where are you from? We're in Plymouth, Mass. I just realized after going to all these races, that people notice the accent pretty quick.

It's not one you hear a whole lot at the races. I bet all of your drives are long then! Pretty much! The shortest one is Unadilla and that's six hours. And then Pennsylvania is nine. After that it's 12, 14, 16 and 18 hour drives. It's quite the amount of travel.

And you're always with Tara your wife and Ava, your daughter. The Ohio race was their first race. It's been good to keep the family going together.  Before Tara started coming, it was pretty much just me and a buddy. I went to Florida and Georgia with some other guys. Tara takes care of getting the gear ready and in the truck. She does a lot actually. She's definitely a key team player.

I see her posts on the GNCC Facebook. She is very supportive. Unfortunately, you probably won't see her at most of the races next year. It's fortunate and unfortunate that she got a job where she works on Mondays.

How did you find out about the GNCC series? I found out through friends that raced in the NETRA series. I raced in that series for quite a while. Some of those guys went to a GNCC in 1999.  I had wanted to do it since then, but I just didn't have the finances. I raced them again in '03 and '04, until I ran out of money. Did the first 3 in '03 and did PA too. Then in '04, I did the first three again but at that point, I had been on my way to winning a championship locally, and I made that my main goal. So I focused primarily on the local series. And then I got injured, so 2005 and 2006 were rehab years.  In 2007, I was back and in 2008, I won the New England Cross Country Championship. That's when I picked up a ride with a Kawi through a dealer and I went for it that year for something local.

You said it took you two years to recover from an injury. It must have been pretty bad? I tore my ACL.  I tried riding through it in 04 and 05 and in 2006 I reinjured it. That was pretty much the straw broke the camel's back I pretty much couldn't walk after that. It escalated to a major problem. But I have that taken care of now. It's been three years now and it's healed.

Last year I really gave it my full effort. Stopped doing the local stuff, put them aside, picked and choosed which ones I used for practice.

The 2009 series was your first full GNCC season, why don't you run through how it went for you. It went pretty well. Basically, I started the season off doing the bike week thing. I chose the XC2 class since I was on 250F, and didn't meet requirements for XC1. But I didn't want to be the sandbagger in the A class, since I had raced up in New England for years. Then the results really kept going and by round 4 or 5 I just did whatever it took to get to the races. It definitely took a lot of effort and it was a lot of fun. But it took a lot of sacrifices too.

What kind of sacrifices did you have to make to compete? Monday I usually started getting everything cleaned up after the race. Tuesday would be training and riding. Wednesday was more training. Thursday, I would have to have the bike ready. I just had one bike making it a lot tougher, so I had to have it race ready. I'd have it loaded it up Friday, and then hit the road Friday and drive and drive and drive. Sometimes there would be leftover things, like changing tires when I got to the track though. And then driving for 6-7 hours straight on Friday was always tough.

We would pretty much drive all night to get there on Saturday. And we always stopped at Dunkin Donuts for coffee for Tara and then she would drive pretty much the rest of the way. On average we were getting there about noon, when ATVs were taking off. And then we'd relax for the rest of the day and get things ready.

I guess the people you work for at the shop were pretty cool to let you go to the races. What was really cool was that we had Mondays off this year. Saturday is usually a busy day at the dealership. It was a sacrifice to the shop to let me go, and that was really cool. This year, just experiencing the new tracks was really cool. It's a lot different than what we have up here.

How do the tracks differ in GNCCs? There are more wide opens like width and speed of the trail. And up here we only race for like 2 hours. That extra hour is a big difference. A lot of the tacks, depending on the soil conditions are a lot like my home town. We are very fortunate to have a lot of faster trails and that's always been the type of track I excelled at locally. It seemed fitting that the GNCCs are my type of riding actually. I feel comfortable going fast.

You're in your 30s, what was it like racing with guys as young as Buttrick and Russell? It was tough. But I never really looked at them at battling with them. The top 4 or 5 guys would have minutes on us by the end.  I battled with guys like Ryan Echols, Eric Bailey and David Snyder. It was fun and I definitely don't see the age thing as being a downfall.

So are you coming back for the 2010 Season? I would definitely like that. It's what we are looking at right now.  I'm basically starting over I don't have any bikes and old gear right now. It'll be a little bit tougher but we'll try to make it through. I think without having Tara at the races will be the toughest part. She'll make it to a few of the closer ones. If we can make it to Plymouth by 7 a.m., for work she'll be good.

You'll have to do a lot of the driving then! I got used to the driving home. In Ohio, I ran out of fuel at the race, and I was so upset that I drove 12 hours straight all by myself.

I guess that could be good or bad. The long drive to think about what you did wrong could be torture. It makes the drive go by though. Thinking about how things went wrong, or excited about how things went good, either way you're beaming the whole way home.

If you can come back in 2010, which you hopefully will, what are your goals for the season? I want step up to XC1. I'd love to do XC1 on a 450 and see what I can do up there. I thing the bigger bike is going to help. I was racing a 250 stock pretty much up against bikes that had stuff done to them. I don't think too many people are doing too many crazy things to the 450. In XC1 I'm thinking it will be easier, because there might be less wear and tear. The bike will last a little longer. With the 250, you tend to run it to the limit.

We hope to see you back in 2010. Anyone you'd like to thank? I would like to thank Spectro Oils, Loud Fuel, Kawasaki, hoping they can help out again this year and STS Motorsports I definitely want to thank my family and friends, that's a huge part of it.