I mow therefore I am. We are mowing and growing. I’m going to kick his mower. He mows it all. The sod father. The mow the merrier. One mow time. A family that mows together grows together.

These are just a few of the lawn mower puns from the newest event at the July Jubilee in Lake Mills, Iowa: lawn mower races.

“What’s special about lawn mowers is we Americans can identify with a lawn mower. We grew up with them. We remember cutting the grass, smelling the grass and wondering, ‘Hey, I wonder if I was just to goose this puppy up, what it’d do,’” said Bruce Kaufman, president of the U.S. Lawn Mower Racing Association, also known as “Mr. Mow It All.”

About 20 racers from Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin brought their racing lawn mowers to lake mills for races sanctioned by Iowa Lawn Mower Racing Association. That group’s president, Kurt Knapp, said he hopes the race will build into a national points race.

At the start of each race, the drivers waited at the edge of the track. At the words “ready, set, mow” the racers ran to their mowers, started their engines and took off in a cloud of dust. This starting process is an equalizer, Knapp said, because the mowers need to start quickly. Speed isn’t the only thing a successful racer needs. The racer also needs a quick start and a mower with good control and handling.

“We really don’t take ourselves seriously,” Knapp said. “You’re on a lawn mower. You’re racing a lawn mower. Let’s get real. However, when we’re out there, we’re very much a hundred percent professional.”

Knapp described lawn mower racing as an everyman event, and it’s more affordable than other more expensive forms of racing.

“I love the sport more than anything, next to my wife and my kids, but it’s a goofy sport. We’re out here, we’re having fun. We don’t race for money. We race for trophies and bragging rights,” Al Minaker said.

Minaker is from Turtle Lake, Wis., and he races mostly in national points races. He raced in Lake Mills to promote lawn mower racing and help build the Iowa chapter.

Minaker is also known as the Lawn Monkey and is nationally sponsored by Anti Monkey Butt Corp., a company that makes a powder absorbs excess sweat and is used by truck drivers, motorcycle riders and athletes.

Without prize money, the races are not as cutthroat, and Knapp said if there was prize money certain people would outspend other competitors. But just because there’s no prize money, doesn’t mean the racing isn’t competitive.

The sport does have basic rules: no blades on the mowers, original engine block, the machine must look like a lawnmower, racers don’t race for money, and racers must wear a helmet, neck brace and chest shield.

The vast majority of racers build their own racers, many with the help of local sponsors.

“It’s their baby. It’s their creation. They build it. They race it. They work on it. They talk-shop with their buddies, and it’s their machine,” Kaufman said.

One of those racers is Mike Bliss of Albert Lea, who raced in the IMOW class in a MTD Chassy lawn mower with the words “Us poor boys only, can race lawnmowers” printed on his seat.

Many of the mowers have custom built front axels and a go-cart live axel in the back end.

But Kaufman said there is a transition period with a growing number of companies building parts. There will be a racing expo over the Labor Day weekend that will be filmed for the Outdoor Channel and Fox Sports Net.

One of business that will be at that expo is Smokin J’s Mower Sports, located out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Owners Josh Havlik and Just McCusker were both racing in Lake Mills Saturday. One of the parts the two specialize in making front ends of the mowers that can be adjusted for handling. They sell a lot of parts so a racer can still build their own machine, but they will also build mowers, and they’re planning to begin working with engines.

“When I first started doing it we had basically stock engines and stuff like that,” Havlik said. “Now if you want to be fast you’ve got to be willing to take it seriously and shell out some money. But I will say the lawnmower racing is way more affordable than anything else you’re going to do.”

The race Saturday was sanctioned by the Iowa State Racing Association chapter.

Mowers race in different categories like AP, SP and IMOW, or International Mower of Weeds. The FX category, or factory experimental, is the category with the fewest restrictions, and the mowers can reach speeds of 70 mph, but the smaller track kept the speeds lower in Lake Mills.

“This is for the nut cases who don’t care about our lives or money. We spend insane amounts of money and go stupid fast on a lawnmower,” Moniker said.

Knapp said lawnmower racing has one of the top safety records of any motor sports.

Occasionally a racer will roll a lawnmower, but Knapp said the racer is usually able to get back up.

The U.S. National Lawn Mower Racing Association is growing, and it has a 17-race national circuit in the U.S. National Lawnmower Racing Association.

“I like to say it’s growing like uncontrolled crab grass,” Kaufman said.

Knapp described the group of racers as a nationwide family, and he told a story about a trip he took to Illinois for a race, and his engine broke down after two laps. He was going to leave, but a racer he’d never met from Wisconsin let him use a new engine he had built.

Before the races start, the atmosphere was jovial, and the FX racers were all sitting together in the shade.

“Once my shield drops, I hate everyone of these guys, and I’m going to beat them up bad. I’m going to try really hard, anyhow,” Minaker said.

“Once we pull off the track, we’re all best friends again,” he added.