Hills from Hell
What is it about Enduro racing that causes grown men to loose control of rational thought? What I mean is why do you approach things differently while riding an Enduro than in the rest of your life? Case in point: A couple of years ago, I was riding an Enduro in Arkansas. Now, I had ridden this Enduro before, and it wasn’t what I considered to be a truly nasty event. In fact, the only really challenging portion of the course was this extremely long; rock infested uphill where the club usually puts a check at the top of the hill. You’d like to think that the club chose this location for a check because they figured that most people would be late, and drop points here. But, actually this check placement allowed them to look down the nasty hill and enjoy the carnage that they had caused. You see, this is how Enduro course work goes.
(Bye the way, if you’re out there and just getting started in Enduros, and you aren’t a member of a club that puts on an Enduro, then you’re missing out on a HUGE opportunity. You see, your clubs Enduro is where you get to exact revenge on those clubs that have been torturing you all year long. It helps when you are stuck and miserable at an Enduro in say Louisiana to think to yourself: "Just wait until our Enduro this year, we’re going to take pain to a whole new level.)
Back in the 70’s I heard that there would be fierce battles between clubs to see who could put on the most gruesome event. Clubs would devote entire meetings to discuss course changes that would be virtually impossible to cover on a dirt bike. The best tale that I ever heard was a club that considered running the trail off of a virtual cliff. They knew that they couldn’t ride down the hill, but they figured that they could just throw a roll of course marking ribbon over the edge and let it go at that.
Anyway, I digress, so I’m at this Enduro in Arkansas and I come up to a small valley with a short steep climb on the other side. Now this isn’t the nasty uphill that I told you about, but just a short maybe 30-40 foot long climb up a steep bank that’s partially covered with bowling ball size rocks. It has one 6-inch wide trail that goes up the bank through the rocks. I arrive behind two or three riders. We stop briefly and assess the situation. Doesn’t look too bad. So, the first rider starts up the bank with a second rider following a few feet behind. About two/thirds of the way up, the first rider slips and his bike goes sideways in the trail. Predictably, the second rider plows into him and they go down in a mass of humanity and machinery.
Now I’m just sitting there waiting my turn. By now, more riders are starting to trickle into the valley. This begins the search for alternate lines. If you’ve every ridden an Enduro before (and I’m assuming you have) then you will have no problem visualizing the scene that I’m about to describe. About 10 minutes after I arrived in the valley with the other two riders, the scene can only be described as mass carnage. A fog of blue exhaust smoke hangs heavy in the air of the once peaceful valley. Many foul (four letter) obscenities can barely be heard over the wail of engines being revved up to the melt down point. Fifty to sixty bikes and riders are spread out over the side of the bank in various states of crashing.
Here is where the question that I posed earlier comes into play. I asked what causes Enduro riders to make decisions that they wouldn’t otherwise make in everyday life. In a matter of ten minutes or less what started as two guys stuck on the side of a small hill transformed itself into 60 raving lunatics screaming and yelling and tearing up expensive machinery. Why? Why is it that when a rider happens upon a bottleneck, a point on the course that is obviously beyond most riders’ capabilities, does he still feel compelled to thrust himself at an obstacle where he will surely fail? Now, don’t misinterpret what I’m saying. I know that one of the challenges on Enduro racing is to push yourself and machine to the limits, and if you don’t try, you won’t know.
What I’m talking about here is hopeless situations. It seems almost comical that people, myself included, would ride up to the scene I’ve just described and think to themselves "Well, this looks bad, but I better give it a shot," when they will almost certainly end up just like the other poor souls on the side of the hill. Of course, there’s always 10-15 riders at any Enduro who can ride up to any bottleneck, pick a new line up the hill, and ride up it while popping a one handed wheelie. However, I never seem to be one of those people, I also don’t contend for the overall. Hell, I usually don’t contend for 1st place in my class.
I’ve tried to think up some parallel situations in regular life where one would willingly make the decision to participate even if failure was looming large. For example, let’s say that you’re a competitive skydiver. You’re at a competition event, the kind where you have to jump and try to land as close to a spot on the ground as possible. So you’re up there in the plane at 4000 feet, and you look down at the target and you see 50 previous competitors lying on the ground in complete (partially conscious) misery. Would you jump? Do you think to yourself: "Well, this looks bad, but I better give it a shot."
Another example. You’re in your car going across a long span of elevated freeway. All of a sudden, one section of the span gives way and plummets to the ground. The first few cars are caught off guard a drive right over the edge. When you drive up do you stop or do you think to yourself: "Well, this looks bad, but I better give it a shot."
Ordinary people (those who haven’t ridden an Enduro) can’t even comprehend the scene that I’ve previously described. Maybe Enduro racing is the world’s greatest spectator sport, but no one knows it because there’s never any spectators at the nastiest hill climb, that’s farthest away from the camp, with no dirt roads in sight. No spectators accept for the one guy who rides up, looks at the situation, and then decides to call it a day. He just sits there and watches the mayhem without actively participating. What’s wrong with "this guy?" He’s obviously not an Enduro racer. I think he needs to have his head checked out.
