Whyte Enduro R1 - Thetford

After a long cold and wet night, everyone was delighted as Thetford once more proved to be in it’s own little microclimate as we woke to glorious blue skies and just a touch of frost. Still the glimpses of white soon burnt off and by 10am with riders gathering for the offing of the first Whyte Enduro of the season, the air was hot with excitement.

Over 400 hundred riders hustled and bustled to the start line, keen to get stuck into the miles of singletrack that lay in wait. Yesterday XC course had been tweaked to extend it to 12.2 km per lap and some sections reversed so you didn’t feel you were just riding the same, but longer course. A lot of thought and attention had been used to make sure the riders had a grand day out.

Aided and abetted by the marshals of the local trail building group – TROGS, who were in much demand as Joe P and his family struggled on times to understand that riding on a taped out trail the wrong way, despite being constantly told, was not the best option…the races got underway safely....

Many thanks to Sarah Collins who sorted out a stiff shoulder, with her magic touch, if you think you would benefit from sports or remedial massage get in touch, she’s brilliant!

Ian Wilkinson – 75km

“Yeah a good weekend, but we were lucky really especially on one part, Boothy (Dan Booth) was going really well and could have been a worry, but he wrapped himself round a tree and saved us the trouble of having to shake him off our tail. So that was one down out of 4. Billy was riding well out there too, he’s a good little rider, when we went hard and Boothy wrapped himself round the tree, we kept pressing on, with me and Dave going off over the top, Billy was still there. Dave then went off on his own, got a bit of a breather through the back markers. I waited and waited, the hardest bit of the course had to be the drag through the finish, then you hit some of the fire road where you could make some time up, it were no use pressing on in the singletrack as you’d just get held up and lose all the time you made up.

I only caught Dave up with 1/2 lap to go, we kept pressing on, as Billy wasn’t that far behind, we just rode it to line and it just panned out as it did. We’re just trying to figure out how to split a track pump in half now…

Yesterday I gave the win to Bibby, although we’re pretty equal, someone ahs to win and someone has to lose, but he’s going to be contesting the whole series so I thought it be handy to give him a good start”.

If you’d like to read the full report click on the BC link above.