Sorry it’s taken so long to get back posting again, but I’ve been extremely busy with work and my son in hospital. I’ll try to keep up to date better, but there really hasn’t been too much to report.
My last (and second) race was with Chiltern Hills Enduro Club. A club set up for mostly sportsman and lower-level clubman riders.
Obviously I’d never ridden at Moore’s Farm in Sevenoaks, but I ride past it almost every day on the way to work so I was quite interested to see where it went.
As it turns out, most of the venue was hidden back in the trees and you wouldn’t be able to see it from the road anyway, but it was a cracking ride.
Chris was out of town seeing her sister in Liverpool (Liverpull) so I had to hitch a ride with Fausto. I got most of my stuff ready Saturday night so I wouldn’t have to run around too much Sunday morning and I would have time to get some decent breakfast in and start loading up on water.
Here’s all my stuff outside waiting for Fausto to arrive.
We got there with no trouble and parked up right by the TBM crew. Mel and Si were there with Si riding the TBM project 144 bike and Mel on the long-term tester GasGas. I hadn’t seen them since the Dirt Bike Show so it was good to re-introduce myself.
There were loads of forumites in the race and most of them made their way around to introduce themselves and generally point and laugh at the TM.
Skip to the start and I managed to get off with my group after getting a bollocking from the starter for trying to cheekily warm up my bike. 
The first section was all open field but I took my time because I wasn’t sure how much grip I would get from my trials tyre in long, wet grass. As it turned out, grip wasn’t fantastic on the first lap but as the day wore on it was fine and I managed to get all the way into 4th and 5th flat-out on some sections of it. The TM screams in 4th and is bloody fast…
As I made my way into the woods, everything was going swimmingly (if a bit slow) as I tried to get comfortable on the bike again. I managed to go the wrong way at the bottom of a gulley and ended up stalling out. It was a real pain to get out of as well, since there wasn’t any room for a run-up.
I finally got over the top, but hadn’t realised what was on the other side. OH SHIT! There was a mahoosive hill that seemed almost vertical dropping about 20-25 feet. And just to make things a bit more interesting, there was a hump about 3/4 of the way down. Somehow, I managed to make it to the bottom without a) folding my forks, b) falling off or c) running out at the bottom.
After that it was another two-stage uphill climb. I can see how this day is going then… At this point I hadn’t really worked out the right level of commitment needed nor the amount of throttle required to get up all these hills. That being the case, I stalled it just before the top of the climb. I managed to not fall off this time – just kill the bike. Two kicks and I was off again.
The ride continued like this for the next good while. There were some big offs on the first lap – mostly going downhill. I worked out going up pretty quickly, but going down is an entirely different matter.
On the climbs. There were two of note. One of them was another two-stage climb where there was a long downhill into a long climb with a very steep bit right at the end. It would have been very intimidating if I had any time to think about it first. As it was, I was already caning it on the way up so there wasn’t any time to panic or think about what I should do. So I used “the technique” – which consists of keeping the throttle pinned and hoping for the best. And you know what? It worked pretty well for me most of the day.
There was another climb about 1/2 way through where there was a very tight left hand u-turn where you had to use the wall as a berm to get around and then gun it up a gradual hill for about 200m before turning 90 degrees to the right and going up a short, fairly steep climb. Now this really wasn’t too hard. There were a couple of stumps in the way and some roots to look out for, but nothing too challenging – or so I thought.
On the first time around, there was a queue of riders waiting to get up the hill but were blocked by a few fallen riders. “Great!” I thought to myself. “That’s me down in front of everyone, then.” Since I was stopped by everyone waiting and had lost any momentum, I decided to slowly roll backwards down the hill a bit so I would have some room to build up momentum to take into the climb.
Eventually the marshal was telling me to go so I sucked in a deep breath and went for it. Amazingly I made it to the top first time with no trouble at all! WOOHOO! I was totally chuffed. There was a short trail off to the right and then a right-hander back down the same hill. Bollocks! I hit some soft dirt and the wheel slid out and I took a very hard fall.
Here’s a top tip about falling in an enduro race: Get out of the trail ASAP. Especially in a blind, downhill turn.
Anyway, here’s me riding at some point during the day.
By this time I was starting to get tired from picking up my bike and it was negatively affecting my riding (if that’s possible). I was going even slower now as my confidence was starting to take a beating, but I know I have to pick up the pace a) to stay out of the way and b) to make it easier on myself.
So I pushed on and finally got to the last little 5ft vertical drop and promptly crashed again. I think this is the only obstacle I didn’t make all day. Anyway, after this was the open field again back to the start line.
I looked at the time when I checked in and it had taken me almost an hour to do one lap. The ‘advertised’ lap time was 12 minutes. Hmm.. I had a bit of work to do then.
I won’t go into great detail about all the other laps, but I will say that my second lap was only 19:55 which is a vast improvement over 55:something.
Here’s me at the end of the day.
That’s it for the moment. I have some more pics that I’ll post later.
