Croydon Motorcycle Club Forest Enduro

Venue : West Harting Down, near Ippark National Trust Property on the West Sussex/Hant Border.

Damn this was TOUGH!
Almost half the entries didn't finish for one reason or another, 74 finished out of 127. The track looked like it would be excellent most days but this wasn't to be one of them. Torrential rain on the Saturday night made the whole track like an ice ring. During the early stages several of the hills had to be cut from the course as very few riders could make it up them.
Amusingly, parts of the course involved a downward hill with a turn 3/4 the way down. It became obvious that turning on these slippery slopes just wasn't going to happen naturally. Turn the bars to full lock and you'd only modify your direction slightly (unless you fell as many did). The resolution to this problem for myself, and many others judging from the tracks, was to aim at a convenient tree. Yep, aim AT a tree. When you hit it, hopefully with one of the wheels, it would stop your downward motion and convert it to upward thereby enabling you to make the turn. This worked well for me until I missed a tree and took an unorthodox route to the bottom, ahh well, the track went there in the end anyway.

I made the mistake of running far too high a pressure in my tyres (15psi in the rear). This made the going far more difficult than it needed to be. Added to this my sparkplug gave up on the start line meaning that I started over 30 minutes late to begin with. After the first lap I was aching from picking the bike up a dozen or more times along with having to keep it in check for the whole lap. Cass encouraged me to continue regardless and I finally consented to give it another go even though I really wanted to quit. Following another 5 minutes of arm wrenching hell at little more than walking speed I finally quit. I was terrified of falling of at the bottom of a hill at the back of the course and having no energy left to make it back to the start.

I've mad a decision to complete the next enduro (Canada Heights) regardless of time. If I hour out so be it but the only way I'll retire is through mechanical or biological failure.