Round one of the Qld series has taken off..
We headed to Toowoomba where the steep and rocky terrain put everyone to test..
Having only ever ridden Toowoomba once before, I as keen to have another look at the trails and even more excited to see how they had laid out the course stages..
The climb up for stage one was not for the fainted and with the recent rule changes requiring all riders to run with full face helmets, it certainly made for a steady precession of some 200 odd riders crawling up the mountain.
It was a stunning day with plenty of heat in the Sun, the perfect setting for a Gravity Enduro round.
Being the C grader rider I am, I had considerable time to get up the hill while the Elite and Expert classes ran before us, this gave me ample opportunity to watch the big guns bomb down the hill. Graves, Rude, Carlson, Levinson, The Giant AMC, Leutton, and a couple of crazy hipster looking dudes all ripped down the hill at warp speed, along with a host of other impressive Elite riders..
In full flight, the big names flowed down the T-bah trails with absolute ease, and demonstrated silky smooth technique through even the rowdiest of sections. It was an eye opener, and also, strangely surreal watching these guys float down the same hill that I was about to clunk, stall and drag myself through..
All in all, I had a great day, and finished with relative success, I could have done better if not for a small crash on stage three and a small mistake on stage four, but that’s the breaks of Enduro!
Fourth overall, not to bad for a clunker..
But more importantly I came away relatively unscathed and I got to enjoy some fine “Aussie Tacos” with a great bunch of mates and have a laugh, what Enduro is all about.... I Can’t wait for the second round to commence at Garapine, a trail system tucked away in the hills of the state forest up the north coast, roughly two and half hours north of Brisbane..