Avalanche Enduro - Ae Forest

8th & 9th May

Report by: Aidan Bishop
Pictures by: Barbara Sztyk
Official Results Page

Well the 2010 race season has kicked off for the RapidRacerProducts team this past May weekend. It was an enduro event organised by the Avalanche crew, for those who don't know they also put on DH, maxiavalanche and the infamous Megavalanche races around Europe.

Being Scotland a close eye was kept on weather forecasts on the run up to the event to see what sort of weekend we were in for.....turned out we hit the jackpot and the sun shone pretty much all weekend! Friday afternoon we all loaded the van with our Trek Remedy’s for the off. On board was myself (Aidan Bishop), Stefan Gleed and the return to the race scene for our good buddy James Allaway (throttle Jammer is back!).

We take racing seriously!
(left to right: James, Aidan, Stef)

The event is an enduro, a discipline best compared to a car rally on bikes. So fitness, endurance, stamina, technical skills are all needed in abundance to excel in these races. These type of events including other avalanche races have focussed the teams training to compete again and the team has been training hard so far!?! This course at Ae forest was pretty tough, a 24km loop in total, seeding was held Saturday afternoon to give all riders their start position and time for the race on Sunday. The loop took us all around the large hillside with the 6 timed ‘special stages’ located around the course where your time from each stage was totalled to give your overall time and result. The stages varied in style from exhausting pedally stages to super fun and fast DH ones to give a good mix of everything to test and push the riders.

The start list was full at 300 riders! Some recognizable names from DH past such as Glyn O’Brien from Ireland, Crawford Carrick-Anderson, Clive Forth and oh yeah 10 time DH World Champion Nicolas Vouilloz!!! (that French guy that kept Steve Peat from becoming World Champ for several years).

So after practising the course and stages in the morning it was go time! As none of us were seeded riders we all had low start numbers and so our run was towards the end of the field (would this be a big disadvantage as there was only 20 second intervals between riders, and would we catch people?). We watched all the top guys come through and everyone was looking good, the seeding run was held on an extended version of what would be stage 1 and was around the 3:30 to 4 min mark in length. It was a relatively flat stage which was pretty pedally with lots of flat corners on loose stoney and dusty corners (so caution was needed on these) and then try to sprint out of them. Stefan was first up for the RRP team and once riders started coming back up to watch we heard Nico had set a time around 3:20ish...but wasn’t the fastest, to our surprise! Stefan appeared and said he had posted a 3:31, a good time considering he crashed in front of us trying a brave inside manoeuvre on the rider who he had caught up in front of him, and was in 17th place when he looked. Next to go was myself.

Aidan Bishop

I set off with a mission to do well and so put the hammer down. I soon caught the rider in front who kindly allowed me to pass cleanly, three quarters into the run and I caught two riders who were close together, luckily I managed to go inside the first one on a corner and then the next had a near crash which allowed me to pass him before the finish without losing too much time. I was 4th with a 3:20 when I checked the results, so I was very happy with that. James was next, and as he hasn’t raced in years, really didn’t know what to expect from himself, he also caught his rider but managed to pass cleanly and crossed the line with a 3:30, putting him 18th overall, good work!

James Allaway (remember me!)

So after seeding it ended with me 4th, James 18th and Stef 23rd, a solid start for all with Glyn O’Brien posting a very strong and impressive time of 3:15 and placing 1st. I was especially chuffed as I had out qualified Mr Vouilloz who was in 7th!

After a few beers and a tour of Dumfries town to find an Italian restaurant recommended to us on Saturday night, it was time to get our heads down for the 8:30am start on Sunday. With the Trek’s all prepped and team kit on we were ready for the off. In a slightly controversial idea each rider was paired with the next fastest rider from seeding. This was cause for a lot of conversations on the ride to the start of stage 1, would you race for the holeshot? Agree who would lead? Who was best suited to which stage, etc?? Most opted to agree who would lead which stage and if needed passing could happen. To cut a long story short all of use managed to complete all 6 stages without punctures or mechanical issues hampering our progress, so all feeling the effects from our efforts there was nothing more we could do but pack up ready for the drive home and wait for the results to see how we had faired.

Stefan Gleed

After the waiting, the results were announced at the podium presentations....should hedge my bets and wear a RRP jersey already for if I make the podium and risk looking presumptuous!?! Or wait to hear the results first. I stored the jersey in my back pocket and kept my fingers crossed. They announced the ‘Scratch’ (overall for all categories) results for the top 5 first. As they were calling names out, I was quite surprised to hear how the final result was quite different from the seeding results...... I really didn’t know how I would do, but the top 5 were as follows...

Overall Results:
Nicolas Vouilloz 1st
ME!! 2nd
Ben Whitehead 3rd
Michael Thickens 4th
Crawford Carrick-Anderson 5th

Awesome Trek Remedies

I was stoked!!! I made no big mistakes, put the effort in on the pedalling stages and rode strong but safe on the other stages, I was standing on the step below podium royalty in the form of NICO! A memory that will stay with me for a while!
James and Stefan also had very good rides finishing up with Stefan 17th and James 18th overall out of 300 riders!! We also then finished up 1st, 6th and 7th in our own Masters Category....Awesome job guys!

Overall a really great weekend of racing. The weather was pretty much perfect, our Trek Remedy’s performed brilliantly, we all got good results, and now have a better idea of what we have or want to do before the Megavalanche in July. This Enduro format providing all of us with a lot of riding time with some hard racing to get our teeth stuck into....I’m sure we will be back!

Official Results Page

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