HOGSBACK ENDURO REPORT
was great – and then an ominous rumble was heard, the sound of thunder in the background and out of nowhere rain began to fall. Everything changed, bikes needed attention and the medics had their bags out patching scratches and bruises. The E-Bike class was decimated, the ballies spirits were broken. Silence and nervous tension mounted at race briefing as more rain was predicted overnight. Race day arrived with light rain and the field down to 40 die-hard, rain jacket cladded gladiators. You can smell the fear. Were we going to race down those trails or were we
course that consists of “liaisons”, which are non-timed sections from one race section to another, and then “special race stages”, which are timed from start to finish, much like a downhill race, but instead of only one track you race down multiple downhill trails. The boys from iTime Africa provide a super accurate, robust timing system made for this type of racing but more on that later. In some races, like this one, they even provide shuttle uplift, because as in this case, you would have had to pedal about 4000m of climbing. I can see the eyes roll back in the marathon guys heads. Let’s put this into
“WHEN YOU SAW TRAIL SIGNAGE WITH THE WORD “STEEP- ISH”, IT MEANT STEEP. REALLY STEEP!”
Full face helmets and loads of travel – living the enduro life.
just going to see who can survive? These were the questions that ran through a middle of the pack racer. The young guns fresh from racing the international circuit and Dan Dobinson, our very own Cape Town Veteran Racer second place veteran of one of the hardest enduro races in the world (Trans Provence) who refuses to let the young ones get one over him, were amped to race … And race they did. For those that do not know how the discipline “enduro” works. Enduro has a set
perspective, an average South African enduro will have 1500m to 2000m of climbing and a total distance of 30 – 40 km in distance and when all Special Race Stages are combined, the winning race time will be around 15 – 20 minutes. At Hogsback Enduro, each stage was 10-15 minutes long! The winning time for the total six stages combined was just over 53 minutes. Mister average here completed it in 1 hour 19 minutes and the last finisher 2 hours 38 minutes of racing time … Time out on the bike was about 6 - 7 hours. A very tough day!
