Video: One Industries Mini Enduro - Forest of Dean

After a week of severe weather warnings, gale force winds and torrential rain, the Forest of Dean woke up to blue skies ready for Sunday’s Mini Enduro race.

Armed with maps and stickers telling the riders their start times, everyone headed off for a morning of practice on the three stages, which were all quickly drying out thanks to having some sun in the sky. With a large majority of people having spent the day poaching some practice on Saturday, practice took a back seat for most on Sunday morning while the riders conserved their energy for the racing ahead.


The blue graded Verderers trail got the riders up to the start of stage one with enough of a pedal to warm anyone up! Riders started bang on their start times and headed off down the hill. A long sprint at the beginning of the stage led into some tight woods with a surprising amount of line choice. A drop onto the fire-road and into a long, fast off camber through a gulley and along the side of the hill, before dropping in to some high speed turns and a hero gap at the bottom to finish off the stage. As it has only been taped in for the race and using other small bits of trail, everyone had a ton of fun and there was no local advantage to be had here either!

A pedal up the main DH push up and back along the hill took the riders nicely to the top of stage two, a track known to the locals as the ‘old race track’, as it was the home to a load of DH races back before anyone had heard of the millennium bug. A fast pedally top section drops into some technical turns, gulleys and berms before a full throttle, flat out last section down through the finish. There was a lot of time to be made up on this stage, with the sprint at the top and getting those techy turns right being massive potential to gain some vital seconds.


Through the finish and a muddy fire-road slog to the bottom of the main climb up to stage three, which luckily (for some of the tired riders) was more of a push! It did give everyone a good amount of time to chat and have a load of banter though, which at the end of the day is what the Mini series races are all about.

Stage three was a lot of people’s favourites. With a similar chance to gain a huge amount of time to stage two, it meant a lot to be feeling fresh at the top of this one. A long sprint into some fast but technical turns, a very long off camber section and some muddy turns into a drop (or huck to flat) to finish the stage off was enough to be pretty tired come crossing that final finish line of the day. The amount of people watching stage three was pretty amazing, giving the bottom half a of the stage a real DH race feeling, but with that light hearted, fun vibe that the Mini Enduros always achieve.


After a good hang out at the finish, it was time to get a cuppa and wait for the results, which almost caused a stampede when they were put up! Seeing everyone after the race, chilling, chatting and having a laugh was pretty special. Everyone mingling and that banter and good vibe from the day carried on right until podiums, when it was unfortunately time to head home. Until the next Mini-Enduro…..

Results:

Mini-Enduro-FoD-Results2013.pdf

Mini-Enduro-FoD-Results2013.pdf