Round 4 of the Red Kite Enduro meant wild weather!
Olly reports from a wet and windy weekend.
Photos by Dan Wyre // words by Ollie Hooper
It was a typical August weekend of ย racing. torrential rain, high winds and ankle deep mud. The fourthย round of the Red Kite Enduro honestly couldnโt have had worse conditions! It rained all Saturday morning and theย majority of Sunday turning the Coed Trallwm trails into sloppy bog which made conditions challenging to say the least!
I traveled up on Friday morning with two other friends aiming to have a chilled weekend’s riding and havingย fun racing. The Red Kite Gravity Enduro races are a great set of events if you are trying to get intoย the Gravity Enduro scene. The chilled out vibe and great trails make it perfect for the weekendย riders trying to push themselves into the racing scene. This was perfect for one of my mates Samย Green who decided to do this for his first mountain bike race. Although the conditions wereย challenging he still thoroughly enjoyed it.
โAll in all it was a good race, the weather was against us but that didn’t get in everyone’s way. As itย was my first race I didn’t really know what to expect but with a little help by Ollie Hooper and Edย Bartley I got down the runs and got a time. The marshals and everyone who helped out were veryย helpful making my first race a good one. It’s a brilliant little venue, miles from anywhere but that didn’tย seem to of effected the turn out. Most stages were short, steep and muddy but stages 1,4 and 5ย where more ‘trail’ like being faster and having more flow to them, so put together it made a niceย combination for a race.โ
The schedule for Saturday started by some practice of the 3 stages in the morning then in the afternoon you gotย to race those 3 stages. The plan wasย to try and ride all three stagesย twiceย so we got asย much ride time in as possible before racing in the afternoon (as well as staying warm!).
The shortย stages and short transition back to the top made this a superย easy job leaving us plenty of time beforeย grabbing something to eat. Racing came around and we foundย that the threeย of us were the only people in the junior category. This was ideal as it meant that we could all enjoyย our selves and train it down each stages together letting a different person go each time.
The morning of race day looked pretty bleak. Heavy rain meant that the organisers had to cut someย of the stages out for safety as they were so muddy that they were un rideable. They changed someย of the steep and muddy ones for trail centre stages making it much easier to stay on your bike butย much harder to try and keep pedalling the whole way down. Although the weather was horrible weย still all enjoyed the day training it down the majority of the stages and having fun sliding down!
Although the rain did spoil the event a little the organisers made the most of what Coed Trallwmย had to offer still putting on 5 great stages and racing a full ten stage race over the weekend! I takeย my hat off to all the marshals who stood out in the rain the whole day so that the event could goย ahead and we could race our bikes.
I am now looking forward to the next one so we can have a great laugh at the nice chilled out raceย which you don’t get all the time these days!ย Thanks to the Red Kite Team and all the marshals!
Full Results- http://www.sportident.co.uk/results/2015/RedKiteEnduro-Round4/
Photos- http://www.danwyrephotography.co.uk/Mountain-Biking-2015/Red-Kite-Events-Enduro-4/
