2022
The conditions were perfect for the Inaugural Ironspoke Scramble at the Lake. The morning sun temperature hovered in the mid-teens with breezy conditions near the shore. The grass was nice and crunchy after several days of sub-freezing temperatures.
The three racers involved spent the moments prior to their single run down the hill in quiet reflection no doubt making their best effort to harness maximum concentration. There’s no room for error as you race down the slightly off camber hill while trying to maintain as straight a line as possible. Runners drew lots to see the order of the race. Wolfgang Hoffman went first, followed by Sven Johanson and Rev Torrance.
Where you drop in along Clay Pike at the end of the guardrail there is perfect grass and consistent conditions. After a relatively flat middle section of about ten paces, you burst on to the second downhill and it is here the runner faces a decision to either negotiate the fastest line through uneven, steeper terrain or take the wider, yet safer course through solid grass. The finish line is where the grass meets the asphalt at the lower parking lot of Indian Lake. A five second penalty is assessed to each runner’s time if they do not finish on their feet.
The fastest time was posted by Johanson with a run of 12.8 seconds. Hoffman came in second with a time of 16.2 seconds and Torrance posted a third-place time of 17.4 seconds.
“Hoffman and Torrance are both punks. They got nothin.’ They couldn’t hang with me back in ’19 and they sure as fuck can’t run with me now,” commented Johanson after the race.