Spring '26 Poker Run – 90 Minute Cut

This is the condensed 90 minute cut of the helmet cam recording of my journey through this year's Rampart Range Spring Poker Run. The full cut is about 4 hours and 30 minutes. This was about as short as I felt I could get it while preserving the interesting parts and the 55 mile scale of the ride. I trimmed the short course pretty aggressively since it's just a lot of basic sweeping curves, hills and descents. Some interesting timestamps: 4:07 - Checkpoint 1 7:11 - Checkpoint 2 10:21 - Checkpoint 3 12:55 - Saved by the dab 21:46 - Checkpoint 4 - End of short course/start of long course 28:34 - Checkpoint 5 - Rad Mullet Dude 39:21 - Low speed drop at Dutch Fred 44:38 - Unintentional Off-road 1:04:19 - Rock crawling & abortive boulder climb drop 1:10:13 - More rock crawling 1:16:09 - Checkpoint 6 1:19:23 - Crash over loose whoop 1:23:59 - Beautiful view 1:29:29 - Approach to finish I started at about 9:30AM and completed the long course with about 30 minutes to spare at 2:30PM. I had a couple minor drops after stopping and getting caught on the side of a boulder after a stall, then one minor moving crash later on. Nothing serious, I'm no worse for wear and besides a bark buster getting pushed up the bike's fine. Either way, my bike was setup a lot better for it this year - rebuilt rear shock, lowered gearing, more aggressive tires and a couple lightening mods like a lithium battery and lighter tail rack. On top of that I had geared up a bit better with some better riding pants, boots and a new pair of gloves. All of that did well, no bumps or scrapes or anything. I also think I've skilled up a bit since the last poker run. I still think I need to step it up a bit though, I was getting passed constantly. And while I know we started pretty early (I think we were within the first twenty or thirty riders to start of some two or three hundred.) and I was never going to see riders that are slower than me and already behind me, it was a PITA getting passed so much. I know some part of it is my bike being a 300+ pound, fairly low-powered dual sport equipped with moderately street-capable DOT knobbies, but I would be making excuses to say it's not mostly a matter of improving my skills. Probably 80% skills, 20% bike. I doubt if I just hopped on my buddy's Husky TE 300 I'd magically become a pro enduro rider, and I'm sure a pro could jump on my modest KLX250 and school everyone on their top-of-the-line 2 strokes. I can't complain though. I had a ton of fun, I pushed it a bit and I think this ride was one of my best performances so far. I didn't have a good enough poker hand to win the main prizes but I did score a sweet pair of Leatt goggles in the raffle. Cool end to a great day of riding, for sure.