Enduro1: Racing Blind

Local races are coming thick and fast before the National level races start in May. We caught up with Peak Leader's graduate John Inman on his first moto-style inspired enduro of the year.

After trucking down the A46 with UOSCC Alumni Ross Phelps and 'Togger Sam Taylor (check out his website), we arrived at the Forest Of Dean to a welcoming drizzle for the first round of the Enduro 1 Southern All Mountain Race series. The idea is the riders tackles the 25-30km course as they would is they were riding the trail for the first time. This means riding all the stages blind without any prior knowledge of the track, meaning a lot more skill is placed on negotiating new trails at speed.

Fully laden


Wrist worn timing chips

Making sure we were there early to sign on, we received our timing chips for the day. These were wristbands that had to be held onto a receiver at the start and end of the stage in order to register your time. This made for interesting finishes to each stage, a fine balance of trying to make sure you kept it as fast as possible to the finish, but not wanting to overshoot the receiver and lose precious seconds!


No pack, no problem. Ross going fully enduro.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail..

Round 1 of the new series was a 25km course with 5 stages, starting out from the car park at the FoD trail hub. Although plenty of the climbs were on built trails, the majority of the stages were cut fresh for the race, meaning the locals didn't get much of an advantage. My starting time was at 10.45, so after a quick warm up pedal and last bike check it was time to head up the hill.

After climbing up the 'Verderers' trail, it was into the first stage of the day. Having not ridden a blind style race before, I decided it would be best to try and keep things as smooth as possible, looking ahead and try and let the bike run when I felt comfortable. However, this all went straight out the window. After getting wild and almost going down in the first corner of the day, the first stage started with a small descent and then straight into a leg burner sprint of a climb before traversing over some rooty and flat switchbacks, across a fireroad and to the finish.

Having expected a bit more gradient, the first stage was a little disappointing. Especially after having a lot of rain that morning, things were moist to say the least. However, stage 2 more than enough to restore my faith in gravity fed enduro stages. After a fast and open few corners, it was down into some steep and off camber corners freshly cut into the hillside. Definitely one of the best stages of the day, trying to keep a high line in the corners to maintain speed was a real challenge!

Getting loose in the fresh and loamy off-camber corners (Credit: Sam Taylor)

It was then a brutal transition climb up the push up track to stage 3. A steep roll in led into some jumps and bermed corners, getting progressively steeper before a chute to the finish. I was definitely starting to appreciate the challenge of racing stages blind, but by this point grown a little more confident and pushing it a bit harder. The legs were definitely tiring by this point, so I'm definitely going to have to work on my fitness a lot before the next race!


Another steep transition, characteristic of the Forest of Dean, led to the start of stage 4. A flat sprint to start, led into one of the steepest stages of the day. Long off camber traverses into blind drops were difficult to negotiate at race speed, especially after having ridden at race pace for the last 2 hours! Back up the hill, we headed up to the main trail network for the final stage. A boggy and flat opening straight led into some flat corners to tire already burning legs, before dropping into 'Corkscrew' and a final rooty off camber straight to the finish.

The final drop before the finish (Credit: Sam Taylor)

Knackered but grinning, it was time for a well deserved post race pie before packing up and heading home. I had a great first experience of Enduro1's blind race format, it really pushes you as a rider especially over a course that had a good share of challenging terrain. If you are looking to get into enduro style racing and live in the South of England, I definitely recommend this series!

Anxiously checking results..

Before a locally source chicken pie.

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