Now that I am in front of a computer and have had some time to gather my thoughts, here is a bit more on the event. A view from the bottom of the results table, if you like.

Excuses out the way first. For various reasons, Saturday was the first time this year I have ridden a bike. I also got the dates wrong, and thought I would be out the country when the race was being run, but when I came to cancel, I realised I would be here, so decided to give it a go anyway. It’s just like riding a bike right?

After the rain on Thursday, it was a welcome sight to see the wind pick up and the sun come out on Saturday. We were visiting friends just up the road from QECP and rolled in just before 3pm to get signed on and pitch the tent.

With the recommendation at registration and at the riders briefing to ride stage 1 & 2, and listening to the crowd, it was evident that this was going to be the challenge of the day. So I headed up the hill knowing that I needed the practice, but also weary of the energy I would expend in getting round. After a steady climb to the top of the hill, and a bit of a scratch around to figure out which stage was which, I braced myself and dropped into stage 1.

The next hour or so is a blur of mashing on the brakes, white knuckle death gripping, wheels locked, sliding down the fall line and more OTB hurdles than I have achieved in years. I was just not prepared for the off camber loam fest, and went to pieces. At the end of stage 2, with my shoes full of dirt, and my confidence in pieces, I had an earnest discussion with one of the Vets about running the stage being faster than riding it. I climbed back up to ride stage 3, and found it quite sensible by comparison, which was a relief. I called an end to practice at this point, as I was running out of time before the start, and needed to head down and get some food.

A friend of ours saw me at the start line, and said to me, “are you as worried as you look?”. I thought I was pretty relaxed, but my nerves were obviously showing through, looking back my thoughts probably were cycling (geddit?) through: stage 2 – will I be getting in the way of the other racers? – I’m too young to die – I’m not fit enough. The starter set me off, and I climbed to the top with plenty of time to spare. Waiting in the queue to start, everyone was chatting, mainly about stage 2, and the nerves settled down.

The stages went as follows for me:

Stage 1 – Much better than practice, still woefully slow, but enjoying it lots more. Managed to stay on my bike until the big x-shaped root into berm spat me off, and I promptly got overtaken.

Stage 2 – A line, B line? Who knows what line I took? All I remember is a spectator standing further up the course saying, “Hear that? They are cheering the bloke in front who just fell off”, and I emerged into the baying hoard. Which really helped, as I stayed on the bike, slid down the hill into the berm to shouts of encouragement and stayed upright until the next right hander, where I found myself stuck on the inside of the corner and a “why did you take that line?” from a spectator. The rest of the stage was generally sliding off the course, I was overtaken, and then by the second time the course crossed the road, I was blowing out my arse so hard, I stopped to collect myself, and promptly got overtaken a again.

Stage 3 – As I climbed back up the transition, my legs were starting to complain, and as I got onto the jeep track at the top, the cramps started. A bit of stretching stopped it, but I could feel the pedals were getting harder to turn. I set off on stage 3, and just couldn’t pedal to make up time at the top, and was overtaken not long after crossing the road. I managed to stay on my bike for the whole of the stage, but I wasn’t carrying speed. Luckily I didn’t get caught until the last bend, and with a last effort stayed in front until the end of the stage. I still haemorrhaged time, but felt like it was coming back.

Stage 4 – Unridden, so no idea where the top of the transition is, as I cycle past the rider in front pushing up, my right leg seizes up with cramp. I’m off the bike and grimacing. Great. Push on up to the top, and gratefully accept the offer of Jelly Babies from number 19. I am riding the stage blind, but decide to give it one last effort, and see if I can avoid being overtaken again. The legs aren’t there, but it isn’t until the last right hand berm that the rider behind me pulls off a blinding overtaking move on the inside line. We race to the finish, where I am handed a beer, and asked how I got on and I breathlessly babble something along the lines of “yeahgreatsohardimknackeredbuthatwassomuchfunwhooo!”. Number 19 and I clink bottles in recognition of his overtake. And that’s it, my first race ever is over.

Over to the tent to hand in my timing chip and meet my girlfriend who had been waiting for me. Get my timing slip, look at the results on the screen, and come to the realisation that I really was that slow. However, stage 4 was the best result of the day for me, so the rustyness was wearing off.

Reminder is set for the 30th so hopefully can get some tickets for the next one. That’s if they will have me back, and I promise I’ll train this time around. I hope I didn’t get in anyone’s way too much.

QECP Day and Night Enduro – Race Report

It blow away by Oli’s race report, what a nice guy!!

Nice, few too many product plugs for me but that’s the way of the world

Scott can we ride the stages this weekend, any traces on Strava ?

Not an official answer in any way here.
Prob best not to ride Stage 3 as some of it is Red route but backwards, some is Blue trail and rest cuts through parts of the park that are very busy with families and dog walkers at weekends. I’d save that one for night rides when the walkers etc won’t be around & the lights will give away people on the Red bit riding it the ‘right’ way.
Stage 4 is essentially the last descent of the Red so I suppose it’s fine.
Stages 1 & 2 would probably be ok as they are in a nice quiet bit of the park, in fact I’m likely to continue riding them as I really want to be able to get down 2 with more conviction and less mincing. He only thing I’m wary of is that the reason Bermie (Stage 2 from last years race) was closed is that someone had a nasty crash on it and had to be ambulanced out, the park authorities had turned a blind eye to its use up to that point but then had to close it, presumably for boring liability issues.
Basically, if you crash & hurt yourself please crawl/ drag your broken body onto the nearest fire road before calling for help! 😉

Scott can we ride the stages this weekend, any traces on Strava ?

only stage 4 and please don’t ride any oneway trail backwards as for the others I will NEVER 😉 ride stage 1&2 same as the second half of stage 3.

Understood, (I think scott), anyway plan is to ride Sat am following a dry week and before the rain is due. If wet-ish I will wimp out and do something xc style elsewhere I think 😳

Oli didn’t show much respect to the legend that is Nick Craig did he?! Coming through!

Great event. Managed 9th in the Vets after crashing on first 2 stages and then 3rd on final stage to make up some time! Loved the atmosphere, range of trails and brilliant organisation. Cheers Scott

My first Enduro event, I shall be back for more!

[url=https://flic.kr/p/siFaCT]IMG_6528[/url] by freeride nick, on Flickr

all show some love to Rupert, Spencer and Jesse too please, those guys do loads. Scott only gets the mic because he has best beard 😉 😛

we could probably use a few more marshals and tapers next time make yourself known to any of those guys, even better at a dig 🙂

it blows my little mind that Ollie can ride all that in ~11 minutes, took 16 man hours to tape just S3 lol. both numbers are nuts.

also Karl (on podium), Tim and others who bench cut S2 more late Friday without them loads more probably would have fallen off the stage.

afraid position of park for 1+2 is same as Bermie, was talking to ranger on Sunday about that..

to the guy with the dislocated knee are you ok? i found you on the sideways drop on S2 in practice, you were being pretty cool about it. worst accidents were in Demo not race well done racers.

everyone new to racing or not a dh-er who got over their fear and rode or tried S2 well done i wouldn’t have wanted to show up cold to that, it’s not the Alps but for Hampshire pretty full on.

everyone new to racing or not a dh-er who got over their fear and rode or tried S2 well done i wouldn’t have wanted to show up cold to that, it’s not the Alps but for Hampshire pretty full on.

Was that wise in the dark ? Not criticizing you understand just asking ?

The day/night and the enduro will sell out as they are seen to be fun and manageable. The dh doesn’t as it’s not seen the same way.

fair question. using the “would Alex ride it” rule i thought it was scary visually but ok already, then we benched some more, then chicken line was added around hardest bit (B line could have been less penalising maybe). everything rollable so not really DH standard? it rained on thursday and loads of roots came through so it got harder.

a few people Tim said were getting to end and going “f*** that”, in a nice way. not sure, maybe should do a questionnaire or something. who (that was there) thinks it was too hard?

like Scott said probably less dangerous than 3+4 because so much slower.

i like that everyone had diff favourite stages though, something for everyone?

like Scott said probably less dangerous than 3+4 because so much slower.

This is true 🙂

all show some love to Rupert, Spencer and Jesse too please, those guys do loads. Scott only gets the mic because he has best beard

this is also true.

Hopefully we made stage 2 hard(Slow and technically challenging) to ride but not to hard.

Was that wise in the dark ? Not criticizing you understand just asking ?

The day/night and the enduro will sell out as they are seen to be fun and manageable. The dh doesn’t as it’s not seen the same way.
BTW all the fun riders rode stages 1 & 2 in the light, slowest first too.

I think that from a difficulty point of view, Stage 1 was fine, just a few awkward corners and the loose drop in to the last section that were a bit nervy.
Stage 2 was pretty nails, but mainly due to the greasy chalk & roots, in the dry it would have been much easier. I think it was more mentally difficult than physical, you just had to let go of the brakes to get some traction on the corners and off camber bits and trust that it would be ok. In many places (like the off camber bit before the hip jump) it seemed far easier to ride than to walk. Both me & my wife rode all of both, not quickly but if we can do it (I was smack bang in the middle of fun class) it must be doable by most! The hardest thing must have been to ride it quickly, hats off to all those who got down it in a good minute quicker than me, no idea how!
Stages 3 & 4 were a welcome change, a chance to burn the legs and lungs with just enough tricky stuff to keep you in your toes, especially with wobbly legs and blurred vision from pedalling so hard.
There were no big horrible double jumps or un rollable drops, I found the taping pretty generous on some of the techy bits and the transition times gave me a good rest at the top before each stage. A thumbs up from me & the missus. We’ll be online bright and early next Sat hoping to get an entry for the summer race.
As for riding the stages, I noticed yesterday when coming out of Lumberjack into the Blue that the line into NPS was pretty well strewn with big logs which I assume have been put there to block the line. Obviously won’t be riding that & stages 1/2 (certainly not in normal park hours anyway) as much as they are awesome fun I don’t want to jeapordise the relationship you guys have with the park. Wouldn’t it be lovely if they could be adopted as official trails, even if they have to be ‘black’ graded to deter those who would be out of their depth…

Wouldn’t it be lovely if they could be adopted as official trails, even if they have to be ‘black’ graded to deter those who would be out of their depth…

that is the long term goal/plan

So who had the biggest lights out there then?
Can anyone top Phil? 3 OMGs, each @ 3800lm 😆 You could almost hear him humming!

smiff, I believe we rode (pushed) quite a few of the transitions together, assuming you had the full-face on and were no. 151. I was on the stealth Banshee and my (faster) mate on the green Capra in his quasi-full-face.

Funnily enough I found stage 1 and 2 much less intimidating once it was dark and I could only see what my lights were pointing at – less distraction from the tumbling/plummet potential… However I do about half my annual riding in the dark and have nice Exposure lights so I’m probably more comfortable with it than most.

Mattbee, I felt that it was stage 1 which had all the roots to catch you out (and a few bits on stage 3) whilst stage 2 was just very loose – grippier in the race than in practice. I really want to get back over to join a QECP night ride before the weather turns and it gets famously slippery but I’ve a hectic few months ahead…

Does anyone know how to embed photos from Facebook into here? It used to work…

CGG- that just shows how it’s all down to perception.
A forum night ride would be pretty fun I reckon.

Official QECP day&night enduro race video
[video]https://vimeo.com/128637755[/video]

[video]http://vimeo.com/128637755[/video]

” Im not doing it , I’m going home”
Should have done , would have saved me coming dfl in Vets

That was my favorite bit after Tim dancing like a loon. Next year you can do sign on with me, you’ll be older and your bathroom still won’t be finished 😉

Just the bath screen to fit , and box in the random array of pipework along the back wall.

Then its details , bog roll holder, blind , bead along tile tops ,repaint door and window sill. Should be done by Xmas.