If you spend your autumn months pining for the camaraderie and hilltop fun that the spring and summer gave you, then help is at hand.
Joe Hayward and the people that brought you the Howies Dyfi Enduro for the last ten years (as featured in Singletrack Issue 66) are organising an event of similarly huge scale around the trails and hillsides of Coed Y Brenin in North Wales. The non-timed event will take place on Sunday October 2nd and take in some popular and some barely known trails around the huge woods of Coed Y Brenin. If you think you’ve ‘done’ the trails there, then you’ve not seen some of the new stuff. We’ll have a web feature on some of them in the near future, but in the meantime, this’ll be your best chance of seeing what they’ve been up to there for the last couple of years…
Needless to say, the Dyfi Enduro crew will have their usual great feed stations, two route lengths (30 and 60km) to choose from and a lot of the individual touches that make their spring event so good. The first 400 entrants even get a free mug… Anyway, for more details, head on over to: Summit Cycles’ website We’ll be keeping you informed about the event as time goes on and we’re also going to be providing some sweet Singletrack prizes – which everyone gets a chance of winning. Although you’ll get a time for your ride, there’s no prize for being the fastest. Prizes are handed out at random, so everyone has an equal chance of winning.
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I think we need some sort of legislation on the use of the word ‘Enduro’. It’s all very confusing at the moment.
Sounds good though, apart from the potentially misleading name.
What do you reckon we should call it? The motocross original meaning is of a long-distance event over mixed terrain where riders have to maintain a steady speed and not arrive at checkpoints early or late. That would discount the ‘downhill’ enduros and also events like this. You could call something like this an ‘off road reliability ride’ perhaps. The downhill enduros are a little further from this, perhaps better described as multiple Super-D races.
Anyway, this is a ‘supported, marked ride around a forest on a Sunday where you get a finish time, though it’s not a race’. How’s that? 🙂
Why not just call it a “Mountain Sportive”?
LOL… Enduro is fine.
I think calling this an Enduro is also a bit confusing. Reliability XC ride would probably be the most accurate. I certainly think it’s more of a marathon type of event than an Enduro.
Anyway, it sounds like fun and a bit like the Fat Tyre festival they put on there a few years ago. That was also a fun relaxed event.
Ride?
Sounds good whatever you want to call it!
In Belgium we call these “organised rides” or “randonees” and there are 10-20 of them every sunday from May to October.
Features include;
– Non-timed
– Start when you want (usually 7-10am or something)
– 3-5 Euro entry dep on distance chosen
– distances from 25-100km, usually at least 3 choices
– chocolate and fizzy pop stop every 15-20km
– Bar and BBQ (or hog roast if you’re really lucky) at the end
– Village fete athmosphere (often, it is actually part of the village fete)
Of course the ones in Flanders can be plugging round a muddy field and the ones around Brussels are always over subscribed but down in the ardennes you get some really good stuff (although I wouldn’t pitch it against North Wales)
Rides like this are what we need more of in the UK IMO, If it wasn’t so bloody difficult to get to N Wales for the weekend from here I’d consider firing up the club van and heading over but whilst N Wales stays so stubburnly far away I’ll have to give it a miss. jealous though, looks really good and if the article on dyfi was anything to go by, it will be.
UCI definition of enduro is pretty clear. And there’s a perfectly good word for these non-enduro events, which is “endurance”. No reason it should be this complicated.
Oh and this thing looks brilliant… Love CYB and the Dyfi’s got a great rep so should be a fantastic combination
As Chipps says the term enduro comes from the motorbike world and these events are probably as close as you’ll get in mountain biking.
Just because other events have used the term doesn’t change that.
Short XC = XC
Long XC – Marathon
Gravity Stage races = Enduro
DH long or short = DH
Think the way Endurance guy’s use the title Enduro is because they shortened it,sounds better 😀
the official UCi rule is as Dan says above
Endurathon?
Dan’s definitions are correct, but we continue to call our events Enduros because when the Dyfi started 10 years ago there was no real protocol for this sort of event. Also, it was a way of paying homage to the moto enduros in the Dyfi, which are largely responsable for the trails we use for the event. Plenty of info on the event site for anyone who finds the title confusing.
“The downhill enduros are a little further from this, perhaps better described as multiple Super-D races.” …Chipps, try telling that to the French Enduro Series guys who have been running MTB Enduro (i.e. multiple timed descents, linked by untimed climbs) races for 10+ years.
It doesn’t matter where the word “enduro” originated, the fact is that today, UK MTBers are the only ones in Europe who refer to long-distance XC rides/races as “Enduro” when in fact everyone else (including the UCI) calls that “Marathon”. Hence, I agree with Parr and Dan_Cube.
Let’s call it a really good day out.
I went to an Enduro at Whinlatter and paid £30 for a power bar and queuing behind muppets all the way round. Next time I’ll go for a free ride.