by Nuno Luz
Hi FCCC’ers, my name is Nuno, I’m from Lisbon in Portugal, living in Guildford, and have been a member of the Club since last December.
I’ve been lucky enough to meet and ride with some of you, and get to know a bit more of the great trails and off road rides around our area.
Recently, I’ve also been doing a mix of races in two of my favourite bike sports: Enduro and Cross Country.
My last Enduro race was at Matterley Estate, near Winchester, run by Pedalhounds. Paul Hunt, the founder and former British quad champion, also shares a passion for bike races and created this Enduro competition series.
My goal was to enter the Fun category and have a fun day with a healthy competition mindset. This category isn’t the most competitive, and as they describe it, it’s open to riders starting their first enduro and less experienced riders. Once a rider has scored a podium they must race in the appropriate age category.
I have been doing the Pedalhounds series for the past 3 years now, and there’s no pressure to join my age specific category, but I think that if my training goes well and I feel fit enough I will probably do the last round of the year.
The organisation is always top notch, and for every event there’s always free parking, a well prepared race HQ with food, coffee, free Redbulls and male and female toilets. One can also camp overnight if needed on most venues.
The race format is simple, usually 5 stages which can be done in any order as many times as you want/are able to do 🙂
Riders have to do each stage at least twice so they can get a time. And the organisation provides a timing chip bracelet that you should wear on your right hand and return at the end to get your times.
The best two runs on each stage will count to your overall result, which allows me to go back, correct any mistakes and find where I can get some time back!
Overall there were 199 competitors at the event, ranging from under 15’s to over 50’s on both acoustic and electric mountain bikes. Almost 10% of the riders were women.
On race day, I had to register and then was able to walk the track just before heading to the start gate at 10am. Most riders, like myself, tried to squeeze in as many stage runs as possible before the end of the event at 2:30pm, when we’re supposed to return the timing chips.
The race itself was quite good, with some steep sections, flowy single tracks and a good amount of pedaling involved. Especially going back uphill to the start of the stages!
The weather was nice and cool, with some wind, but the tracks were dry and somewhat sandy.
Being a grass roots series, the level of technical difficulty is very reasonable, so perfect for those who want to try their first Enduro race.
When climbing up to the first stage, I heard a familiar voice who turned out to be none other than Ben Deakin, a well known mountain biker who has a very popular youtube channel ( you can check his account of the race here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHjF4ofchF4 ).
He quickly went past me whilst vlogging, on his ebike, only to go and finish first of his category! Last year it was Jono Jones that also tried one of the events, and it’s always great to see these amazing legends race the same events we do!
I started my first stage with the mindset of not going all-in, but trying to get a good clean run. My goal was to do every stage twice, then go back to race HQ, check my times and see where I could improve.
I was making clean runs (could’ve been a bit faster, but I need to lose a couple of extra pounds 😀) and feeling that both myself and the bike were doing well, which made me enjoy the track and feel quite happy.
It took me well into noon to complete two laps on each stage, having some stops in the middle, and then I had a couple of hours to ride three more stages and get over 10 seconds back, which ended up landing me second in my category.
Unfortunately I was way too far from first place, about 1:46, and my energy was gone. So I was happy with a second place at the podium.
Overall, it was a really good race day, and I highly recommend everyone tries at least one Enduro race at some point!
Next – and final – race of the series, will be Land of Nod on the 4th of October in Bordon (GU35 8SJ). If you want to join, you can enter here: https://www.sientries.co.uk/event.php?event_id=16918
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