Dyfi Enduro Pre Ride 2010

Less than a week to go until the 2010 Dyfi Enduro, so yesterday a large group of us had a pre-ride around the course.

There were 17 of us in total. We didn’t do the road section from Machynlleth but started at the ClimachX Trail head and then rode down to the road and up the first long climb. It wasn’t long before I was trailing towards the back of the group with some of the faster cross-country whippets sprinting off ahead. It was going to be a long day so I was quite happy pacing myself.

The first descent rode nicely, but on the climb afterwards a couple of us had flats, me included. Actually, mine was from a previous incident a couple of weeks ago that I thought had sealed itself, but obviously it hadn’t. There was no option but to stick a tube in it. The others had carried on so I had to ride fairly hard to catch them all up. So much for taking it easy! I eventually caught them over the top on the grassy field, which now has a wide path cut into it so that its actually a rocky road across the field.

The descent into Baileys Bridge was nice, if a little greasy and slippery on the off-camber rocks. We did however manage to lose a couple of the group members here. We waited for a while but they didn’t show up so a couple of people went off in one direction to see if they could find them whilst Joe waited at the bottom of the descent in case they came out that way and the rest of us headed up to the cross roads at the top. The rocky descent to this point was pretty sketchy with a couple of people off and a little bloodied and bruised. We waited here for the others to find us, which they eventually did.

After a break and a play on some of the jumps at the top of the ‘World Cup Descent’ a few of the group headed off on their own, leaving us with 11 people. The next descent was the ‘World Cup Descent’ which I hadn’t done before. It may, or may not, be in the Dyfi Enduro. It was mad, nice and flowy at the top with some jumps if you fancy them and then it just gets steeper and steeper becoming a mad, rocky cliff that you ride down. We all made it unscathed, if a little scared at times. If that’s in the event next weekend then it will be carnage!

From here it was a fireroad descent followed by a long climb to the feed station. We stopped here for a bit but as it was getting late, there were lots of MX bikes about and some people were pretty tired we decided to miss out a couple of the descents and climbs in this area and instead started heading back towards ClimachX.

The next descent was a typical loose, slatey, Dyfi Enduro descent followed by the technical climb up to the descent with all the whoops in. Then we climbed back to the ClimachX Trail, did the 3 in 1 descent and then climbed (again) back to the top. We were going to do the Elephant descent and the final Dyfi descent but instead did the final descent of the ClimachX Trail.

All in all a good day out. I felt OK all the way around, but was slow both up the hills and down them. It was nowhere near as far as the Dyfi Enduro will be next week and there were lots of stops and rests so I think it might hurt quite a bit more next week.

Tags: ClimachXCyclingMountain-Biking