It’s not often that I turn up to a race venue knowing nothing about the nature of the riding. But this time, after a five hour drive that took seven, I genuinely had no idea what to expect from the second round of the British National Enduro Series at Minehead, Somerset.
I had heard from some southern mates that it’s “sick” and I “should really ride there one day”. But as I sat in my car on Friday evening, I didn’t a clue what the Southern Enduro crew had in store.
My weapon of choice this weekend was the new Airdrop Filter MX (as seen in Fresh Goods Friday 806) The stem may have #sessionsnotseconds written on it, but I’m a real advocate for more modestly travelled bikes when it comes to enduro racing, especially in the UK. I expected this bike to go well this weekend.
The Stages
The first thing to mention is there were several races going on this weekend as well as the main enduro race. There was a ‘Mashup’ event on Saturday. And the E-bike race featured a couple of extra stages (including an uphill ‘Power’ stage). As a result, the stage numbering for the day was a bit odd. Our race (main enduro, non eeb) was run on stages: 1,2,3,6,7 and 8. But from here on I’ll just number them 1-6 as they occurred to me on the day.
Six stages, giving a total of 1000metres or so of vertical means a lot of punchy tracks which have to make good use of the elevation. Usually I would write a short summary of each stage for this bit, but with six stages, all of which having lots to talk about, I’m going to try and summarise more broadly!
Each stage had a good mix of fresh, loose and loamy turns, some tricky steep bits, flat out and dusty singletrack, a few punchy climbs and even a couple of sea views for those taking a more leisurely tack.
Minehead feels a pretty stark contrast to the first round of the Nationals in the Tweed Valley last month. However, I’d still say it was equally, if not more, fun. And fairly unique too. Usually at an enduro it seems you would maybe get one or two sections of fresh loamy riding dotted into a couple of stages, but here every stage had at least something to put a real grin on your face.
The first three stages were definitely in this fresh and loamy genre of stage. Rooty, lots of line choice, a bit moist in the morning and the sort of tracks that you would lap all day if it were just a normal ride. This said, they were tricky to get right. I think most people had at least one ‘lie down’ in the steep technical woods of these tracks. I managed to get through the first two stages clean, until I followed what I thought was a well cut in line on Stage 3 that ended up being seriously blown out, taking me off the track into the bushes. Nonetheless these stages were the highlight of the day for me.
The second half of the day seemed to feature some longer tracks with a bit more physicality involved. Between the sprints, these stages featured some fast but still tricky rooty sections of track. These sections struck a nice balance between flow and tech. Precision was still needed to ride these corners smoothly. But, if you could find it, there was a lot of flow to be had.
The Final Stage
The final stage of the day was the most important as it technically counted twice. In an effort to limit the amount of people getting caught up in the race runs, the Southern Enduro ran a seeding stage on Stage 8 (the sixth and final stage of the main enduro). Seeding ran in the late afternoon on Saturday with your time not only setting your starting order for the next day but also counting towards your race time (i.e. you couldn’t just roll down to get an early start time).
I think this is a really good idea, at the end of the day it means you get more racing out of the weekend, and it in theory makes Sunday’s race more fair. However, riders were still set off in groups based on category, with seeding times deciding where in that category slot you would set off. This worked well for the first few stages where you were riding with similar paced riders. But after delays and several climbs, the orders were shifted and slower riders had been caught. So overall I’m unsure how effective seeding was in spreading out riders, perhaps it would have been a different story if category starts were abandoned all together on Sunday and starting was based purely off seeding time.
Anyhow, the final stage was a great option for a seeding stage, and not just because it finished with grassy turns into the race village. The stage had some good variety with some flatter riding at the top, a short sprint, some really fun rooty and loose corners finishing in the open with a noisy crowd. Overall, having a seeding run on Saturday really added to the vibe of the weekend and really warmed you up for another day of racing on the Sunday.
Results
Starting with Elite, local boy Joe Varndell pretty much dominated the whole weekend, setting the fastest time of the day on Saturday and winning elite on Sunday. Irishman Adam Murphy was looking quick with p2 in seeding and the first two stages before a crash took him out of the race. In the end Will Haines took second with Seth Barrett finishing off the elite podium. Both Seth and Will took stage wins over the course of the day but it wasn’t enough in the end to overcome the 24 second gap to Joe.
All the categories were well stacked, the overall top 5 fastest times of the day only featured one elite time, with seemingly all the categories featuring some seriously talented riders.
Harris Meikle (U21) set the fastest overall time of the day, 5 seconds up on Joe Varndell with the youngster Joe Carpenter taking the third fastest time overall.
The under 21s category provided an exciting race after a super tight seeding seeing Tom Mynott take the win on Saturday with the top three riders separated by 0.3 seconds. In the end Tom had a consistently quick Sunday, doing enough to finish second behind an even quicker Harris Meikle with Oscar Durston finishing third in the category.
It wasn’t just the kids setting quick times, Kyle Hayes and Steve Baldock rounded off the overall top 5 with no more than a 17 second gap to the fastest time. With Steve even taking the fastest time of the day on the 4th stage of the day.
Niamh Creig was the fastest woman of the day by a pretty decisive 35 seconds after a lengthy journey from Dundee. Routh McDougal won under U21 by an impressive 1 minute 26 seconds. There was also a good battle in the women’s 35 to 44 category. Heather Dring and Becky Evans were trading blows with Becky winning seeding by nearly 30 seconds. However, after a really strong race day, only losing 2 seconds to Becky on stage 4, Heather found nearly a minute over the course of the day to take the win. It’s great to see Heather back on top after a pretty nasty crash at round 1 in the tweed valley.
As for your humble writer, I had a lot of fun but probably got carried away too much. With a couple of crashes on race day and one in seeding I’m happy enough to sit 9th in a very stacked senior category. Oh, and that Airdrop I rode was great. Super nimble and reactive, it felt made for a race like this. Super excited to get some more miles behind this one.
Overall, it was a weekend of superlatives. I’ll happily say some of those sections of track were the most fun I have ever experienced in an enduro race. The verdict for Minehead Southern Enduro, is that it was well worth the sweaty seven hour drive in the traffic on Friday night.
