I decided last winter that 2009 was to be the year of Wacky Races. By wacky I don’t mean racing in a gorilla suit or on LSD, just doing some events that seem a little bit different to the usual all-night slog through a muddy field.

The Dyfi Enduro was wacky race nr. 1, although I’m told strictly speaking it isn’t a race. In fact it felt more like a mini Glastonbury festival but with bikers.
Bearing that in mind (and also because I was still bleeding my brakes 20 minutes before the start) I lined up with Bionicon team rider Elaine Burroughs at the very back of the 666 strong field.

I then realized that, yes indeed the alpha male competitive urge does flow strongly through my veins and yes I definitely, absolutely needed to overtake as many folk as possible. Unfortunately the lazy zero training urge is equally strong so most overtaking was done on the plentiful singletrack downhill sections. Having 6” of travel up front made blasting past wobbly hardtail riders most entertaining. My Golden Willow scandium was definitely the perfect tool for the task at hand.

Approx. 50km & 2300 vertical metres later I arrived at the finish coated in finest welsh mud but with a big grin on my face. It being the Dyfi Enduro no-one seemed to know (or care) about who won. I was happy to find out later that I came in 163rd overall with a time of 4hrs 10. A wee bit more training will be required to threaten the fast boys who finished in 2 hrs 45! Elaine seemed happy that according to her Garmin stats she could now eat 3300 calories of cake. She placed 7th in the senior ladies class  with a time of 5 hrs 18.

So bring on the wacky races. Two more to go this year, I suspect both will be considerably more challenging than the Dyfi Enduro.
Better get training…

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 1:26 pm and is filed under CAMPUS | BIONICON. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.