enduro racing is fun. isn’t it?
so. i’m still alive & kicking, although i might have to make some concessions regarding any kicks that require extra energy or nimbleness. still, this is not robocop speaking, as it was two weeks ago. all things considered it (the last enduro race of this year) went pretty well, i scored a double victory over myself, lost one against administration: on the balance i’m still ahead.
first of all i got up; did not just kill the alarm and go back to sleep. not that easy on a saturday, when it’s dark outside, you know. secondly, i did finish the race. all of it. 5 hours again. ok, my test times suggest there is still some room for improvement, and my penalty (for arriving at the checkpoints too late) reached galactic dimensions, but it was still within limits.
next day i found out they actually disqualified me because i allegedly missed a checkpoint, which i am sure is not true. still, to file a protest i would have had to be there when the preliminary result were published, which i was not (i was on the way home already), so it’s too late to be sorry now.
anyway. i still had a good time & enjoyed every meter.
except for the first bit, when i was mostly going sideways. i actually stopped & got off the bike a couple of times to see why going straight was something that only happened to other people. until i found out that it did not happen to them, either. from that point on it was only a question of pointing the front wheel in the general direction where i needed to go and hope the best. ‘the best’ being nothing solid coming up ahead, which happened only once, and the handguard caught most of the blow from the otherwise rather solid and healthy tree.
then there were these special test bits, the timed sections. i was never particularly good at that stuff, but nowadays it’s just wearing me out. at the end of the 4-5 minutes of treehugging, whoop hopping, and some odd mountaineering i need a long straight and a few sips from the camelbak. pretty much sipped out 2 liters of isostar in the course of the race.
oh, and there were those slippery bits, i hate those. bit difficult to explain. certain types of soil react to the addition of water in a very strange way: they acquire most of the features you know from what we call ‘soap’, except that it won’t make you any cleaner if you rub it on (trust me, i’ve tried), quite on the contrary.
if you’re interested in what the stuff does to your equilibrium you can try a little experiment: first dress up a bit: helmet, protectors, that kind of stuff, no need to get hurt. put a fair amount of water on you bathroom floor, and mix it with a large quantity of liquid soap. now enter the bathroom and try your favorite russian folk dance. avoid any sharp edges in the process. see?
right, and that bit i was not really counting on, too, i did not enjoy that one either. they wrote that we (nationals) would have to do 2.5 laps. so, third time at the time control i want to hand in the papers, but the guys laugh at me and tell me i have to go on. turns out that after the next checkpoint i had to take a right instead of a left and take a shorter route back. 2.5 laps, right.
come to think of it, the statement, that i enjoyed every meter might have been a bit of an overstatement.
i do remember one thing though: i definitely enjoyed the last meter!
but i’ll do it again, still. too late to learn. 😉