| Enduro 6 |
Mountain biking six hour endurance race - 2nd May '04
Six hours of mtbing at Trentham Gardens. This race has grown over the years and is now a season regular. You can choose to ride the six hours solo or as a pair. This year I had gone of the pair option. With some tough opposition in the form of Oli Beckingsale / Stuart Bowers, Liam Killeen / Gary Foord, this was to prove no easy option.
The start was a mass start run, not as long as in some years but still hard for a non runner. It was about 500m then into the changeover area before mounting the bike and setting out on the lap. The usual sections were used with an extended loop in the trees at the top of the course. This caught me out on the first lap as I thought I had reached the top only to find I had this extra section of down and back up.
After the first lap I came in for a change to my partner Paul Oldham. With the changeover you had to walk and in all it took about a minute and a half. You can ride alot slower each lap if you don't loose that sort of time. So as I came in I said to Paul that we had to do two laps at a time. This is what Oli & Stuart Bowers were doing anyway. Liam & Gary were changing every lap. As it was all about the average overall speed the lead was constantly changing between us. Liam was putting in some fast lap times but Gary was loosing all the gained time. Oli was a bit faster than Stuart. Paul & I were reasonably consistent.
With just under and hour to go I changed over to Paul and we had about a two and a half minute lead. Paul was out against Oli who was lapping now at about a minute a lap quicker. As Paul set off he told me to be ready in case he blew. As he came around with a lap remaining he knew he could not afford to loose the changeover time as the gap was down to one and a half minutes. All I could do was leave the pits and go out and give Paul time checks. The gap was coming down but Paul looked as if he was going to hang on. On the line it was down to a lead of only 8 seconds. We won - 6 hours 12 minutes but only 8 seconds between 1st & 2nd!
Mens Pairs Enduro 6 result
| Pos | Laps | Time | Name |
| 1 | 11 | 06:12:26 | Oldham/Clarke |
| 2 | 11 | 06:12:34 | Beckingsale/Bowers |
| 3 | 11 | 06:15:43 | Kileen / Ford |
| 4 | 10 | 06:00:01 | Hambling/Collins |
| 5 | 10 | 06:03:45 | Hopkins /Firth |
| 6 | 10 | 06:10:55 | Scott / Henry |
| 7 | 10 | 06:12:16 | Rayner/Oliver |
| 8 | 10 | 06:16:27 | Barrett/Ireland |
| 9 | 10 | 06:19:03 | Wells/Robinson |
| 10 | 10 | 06:19:46 | Burridge/Davies |
To the top of page
Press to return
to home page
(written 04/05/04)