VOLUME 58 ISSUE 29 JULY 20, 2021 P79
WHEN WEST
MEETS EAST
BY RYAN NITZEN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAC FAINT
What happens when
a West Coast SoCal
moto-head goes east
and, for the first
time, enters a GNCC
race? With the help
of the Coastal Racing
Factory GasGas
crew,
Cycle News
Contributor Editor
Ryan Nitzen finds out
when he heads to West
Virginia and takes on
the Snowshoe GNCC
T
ake a second and visualize what fast means. What do you see?
Is it MotoGP riders tucked down the front straight at 200 miles
an hour? Is it Supercross racers clicking fourth gear before a big
set of whoops? Maybe a wide-open hare and hound bomb run. For
me, fast has always been riding through the desert, when the bushes
on the side of the trail become one continuous line. That's fast. Or
is it? I question that now, after I experienced my first Grand National
Cross Country (GNCC) race, the Snowshoe. Never in my life have I felt
so fast going so slow. These East Coast woods racers who blew my
doors off gave me a whole new definition of the word fast.
