1st Enduro national champs 25-26th Aug

Tenzor07

As the title says this is the first cycling Ireland sanctioned national enduro champs.. so if you want to be the first Irish national champ, get on it!

https://emerald-mtb.com/event/cycling-ireland-national-enduro-championships/

Tenzor07

A reminder that the practice ban for Djouce comes into play tonight!

nummus

Fairly new to the sport and was planning to go and have a look for some riding around Djouce tomorrow will I be able to access?

Tenzor07

nummus wrote: »

Fairly new to the sport and was planning to go and have a look for some riding around Djouce tomorrow will I be able to access?

Yes of course, just not if you've entered the champs.

nummus

Great thanks. Dumb question I’ve only ridden balinastoe so far. Do the trails in djouce have any indication if they are uphill or downhill? I’m just planning to park up and see what I can find. Wouldn’t want to meet someone tearing downhill at the wrong time!

Tenzor07

nummus wrote: »

Great thanks. Dumb question I’ve only ridden balinastoe so far. Do the trails in djouce have any indication if they are uphill or downhill? I’m just planning to park up and see what I can find. Wouldn’t want to meet someone tearing downhill at the wrong time!

No markings at all, though the trails are easy enough to spot, just use the double-track and fireroads to get back up the trails...

nummus

Thanks will see what I can find!

muckwarrior

nummus wrote: »

Great thanks. Dumb question I’ve only ridden balinastoe so far. Do the trails in djouce have any indication if they are uphill or downhill? I’m just planning to park up and see what I can find. Wouldn’t want to meet someone tearing downhill at the wrong time!

The vast majority of the trails in Djouce are mostly downhill. Climb to the top and find a route down and you'll be grand.

It should be pointed out though that on average they're a fair bit more technical than Balinastoe!
Edit: actually if you've only ridden the trailcenter trails in Balinastoe then you'll find Djouce a LOT more technical!

steamsey

If you search YouTube for Djouce Enduro videos you'll see what the trails are like

nummus

muckwarrior wrote: »

It should be pointed out though that on average they're a fair bit more technical than Balinastoe!
Edit: actually if you've only ridden the trailcenter trails in Balinastoe then you'll find Djouce a LOT more technical!

Haha I found some trails and yes a serious step up from what I have been riding in Ballinastoe. Took a nice trip over the handlebars into a gorse bush! Some seriously steep drops and a ridiculous amount of roots.

Think I need to work on my skills - thanks for the pointers.

prunudo

What would be the best way to go and spectate at this. Will there be parking or is it better to just park on the road and make my way down one of the fire roads. Was thinking of heading up and see how the pros do it.

Tenzor07

jvan wrote: »

What would be the best way to go and spectate at this. Will there be parking or is it better to just park on the road and make my way down one of the fire roads. Was thinking of heading up and see how the pros do it.

Usually they hire the field beside Djouce so park in there, they're probably charging €2 to park i'd say... the lower carpark will be taken up with marquee's.
Probably also park further up, the upper car park was open recently..

emeraldmtb

Let's hope there are lots of entries/support for this as its the first Enduro race organised by Cycling Ireland (or with Cycling Ireland support as I think it's still mostly biking.ie doing the work? )

But it would be nice to get a lot more support for Enduro.

nummus

Any idea when this starts, might bring the kids up. Are you allowed to watch from the side of the trails?

Tenzor07

nummus wrote: »

Any idea when this starts, might bring the kids up. Are you allowed to watch from the side of the trails?

Don't see a timetable up, but reckon it will kick off around 10am...

But get up early to find a good place to spectate..


https://www.facebook.com/events/194164671244561/

rizzodun

emeraldmtb wrote: »

Let's hope there are lots of entries/support for this as its the first Enduro race organised by Cycling Ireland (or with Cycling Ireland support as I think it's still mostly biking.ie doing the work? )

But it would be nice to get a lot more support for Enduro.

There's pretty good support for Enduro in Ireland as it is, it's the discipline of mountain biking with the highest participation in Ireland right now I would guess, bigger than XC.

There's the Gravity Enduro, the Grassroots Series, and the First Tracks Cup up North.

nummus wrote: »

Any idea when this starts, might bring the kids up. Are you allowed to watch from the side of the trails?

First off usually about 09:30, if you get there early and get a map or ask marshals for directions you can find spots on the stages where you can watch with the kids. Djouce has some good viewing spots, they mightn't be too far of a walk either, or you could bring the bike to get there a bit quicker. Stages will be taped up, so as long as you don't walk along them you can walk beside them to watch where you choose.

Tenzor07

rizzodun wrote: »

There's pretty good support for Enduro in Ireland as it is, it's the discipline of mountain biking with the highest participation in Ireland right now I would guess, bigger than XC.
There's the Gravity Enduro, the Grassroots Series, and the First Tracks Cup up North.

You're right there, Enduro racing has been responsible for the explosion in popularity of MTB sales in Ireland, people really seem to like the casual relaxed format, and social aspect of it.
Plus the fact that event organisers use mostly Coillte land and pre-existing trails makes it easy to set up.

Tenzor07

Biking.ie are looking for additional marshalls for this weekends race:

We're looking for a couple of extra marshals for Sunday if anyone if available? Usual wage and lunch provided. Please message or email info@biking.ie

rizzodun

So it was wet, really wet, or so I've heard, anyone have any feedback on how it was overall this weekend?

Would be good to know the sort of turn out, will it justify CI to don't again next year, as they really should.

Tenzor07

No surprises, Greg Callaghan the new Irish Enduro champ!

http://www.sportident.co.uk/results/2018/CIEnduroChamps/

Very tough conditions in Djouce today so well done to all who finished..

emeraldmtb

Conditions apparently so slippery that Dan Wolfe opted to not compete with his still recovering elbow after trying stage 1

steamsey

It was a savage weekend.

Practice day was lovely and dry and have rarely seen Djouce in such good nick. 6 stages - all familiar ones with a new cut off camber grass section on Stage 3.

Race day was a different story. It was piddling down from the get go. The only absolute mud bath was stage 6, but that trail is always muddy. The rest, I thought, were actually riding well but the mud in the face was tough - "the goggles do nothing". Everyone was head to toe in mud by the end of it.

It wasn't that slippery - there were some really dodgy bits, but overall, felt confident enough.

Great day racing - turn out was OK but you could tell it wasn't packed. I've seen the results on the Gravity Enduro facebook page and will check Cycling Ireland at some point as they have 2 different sets of results - 1 for licence holders (official results) and another set for those who entered on the day.

Great to see so may young faces out there and some of them absolutely hammering it - especially on Stage 3.

Some vids of the practice day, and almost unwatchable (mud on lens) race day vids on youtube.

Gerry

I made a last minute decision to race it after arriving back from holidays Saturday. As it turns out with the weather practise wouldn't have helped much.
I've done pretty much all the trails last winter. I have only recovered from an elbow injury myself and my main mission was not to have any further injury. As always, achieving that has lead to a lot of frustration as to all of the places that I could have gone quicker
Agreed that most of the trails held up quite well, just the roots I think I was too cautious on. Ideally need to be in the air over most of em.

my self preservation went a bit too far, I suppose I should take some positives, I cleaned a lot of sections that I've not cleaned previously. All the really steep stuff I got through fine. I had a stupid crash on stage 1 and reckoned if I had one more that was curtains. Enjoyed stage 2 though was slow... cleaned the tricky new section on stage 3, still too slow. I felt a bit dead for stage 4 , corrected this with a load of red bull and gels for stahe 5. Thought i went well on 5 but stopwatch says differently. Stage 6 seems have been relatively speaking my best result, maybe this was my bog skills I pedalled through almost all of it
One more enduro, for this year at Carrick.. I hope to be able to give it a bit more Welly and get a little further up the timesheet.

steamsey

Write up of the Djouce Enduro here:

http://freewheelin.ie/greg-callaghan-crowned-irish-enduro-champion-at-djouce/

Results here:

http://www.sportident.co.uk/results/2018/CIEnduroChamps/

Next Gravity Enduro is Carrick on the 8th Sept, then Grassroots Enduro in Cahir on the 30th Sept

Think there were about 110 entrants on the day if the overall Enduro results are the full picture

Carrick is savage so really looking forward to that

muckwarrior

I heard attendance was pretty low alright. I guess some people like me were locked in by the pope, and the weather forecast was pretty crap, but I also know guys who decided not to race because they were so disappointed with the Balyhoura race. Was mostly just trail-centre apparently.

rizzodun

Ballyhoura was extremely disappointing, but everyone that know Djouce would've known it wouldn't be like Ballyhoura.

I'd say there's a few who probably didn't turn up as there was nothing to race for perhaps?

I think having Greg race should've been made more of, one of the biggest names in World Enduro, even to see him hit some lines would've been awesome. I only heard about it late on Friday.

steamsey

I'd say they could have advertised it better, including saying that Greg C was going to be there. They could have mentioned it at the (last) Ballyhoura Enduro - even stuck a leaflet in the goodie bag maybe??

Ballyhoura is always going to be a trail centre heavy Enduro - and always has been. If you love racing Enduro, then it doesn't matter too much - it's still a savage weekend on the bike - trails taped off, you can let it rip.

rizzodun is right - bad idea to judge Djouce based on Ballyhoura - Ballyhoura is a big trail centre, and all of the Enduro's there to date have been quite trail centre focused. Djouce has not one official trail - and has been one of the best Enduro locations since 2011/12. It was a brilliant weekend racing and I wish I could go back and do it again - except Stage 6! I was in a jock by then.

If I were going to recommend one Enduro for beginners, it would be Ballyhoura it's like an XC Enduro!

Tenzor07

In fairness anyone who's a MTB regular will certainly have known about the champs..

What's likely to have put people off would be the requirement to register for a license to race the champs cat.

and the weather..

Also remember that MTB'ing in Ireland is very much a minority sport so you're never going to have huge numbers at events anyways..


Also with regards to Ballyhoura as a venue, well, of course it's going to be leaning more to XC, it takes a lot of time and effort to build Enduro trails, and Coillte will block them up as quick as they are built, and the fact that they don't appear out of no where like magic.
Just lucky to have Djouce, and the trails were all pretty much built by one person, and added to by random groups over the years...

rizzodun

I think the problem with Ballyhoura was the amount of effort put into stage 4, it wasn't worth it in my opinion.

If you race Enduro you expect a challenge, I understand that it would be a good beginner Enduro but the large difference between the first 4 stages and the last 2 would also put some people off.

Saying that, I loved the last two stages, proper Enduro stages.

I think going forward though the Champs will improve, finally a CI sanctioned event that isn't XC, nothing wrong with XC at all but CI need to include other disciplines. There isn't a DH Nat Champs organised by CI is there?

Tenzor07

rizzodun wrote: »

I think the problem with Ballyhoura was the amount of effort put into stage 4, it wasn't worth it in my opinion.

There isn't a DH Nat Champs organised by CI is there?

Can't keep everyone happy, there's a lot of work building trails as well as general lack of available lands to run a Challenging Enduro on...

The CI DH Nat champs was about 4 1/2 weeks ago at BPI

rizzodun

Tenzor07 wrote: »

Can't keep everyone happy, there's a lot of work building trails as well as general lack of available lands to run a Challenging Enduro on...

The CI DH Nat champs was about 4 1/2 weeks ago at BPI

Ahh I know you can't, but there's serious trails they could've spent time on that would've been way better, including ones that were used in the grassroots last year (parts of which were in 5 & 6 admittedly)

They actually acknowledged they wouldn't put these stages into an Enduro, but didn't explain why, loads of guys said they would've been much better stages.

I knew the Champs were at BPI, didn't know that was CI ran though.

Was a weird venue for that too, hardly DH worthy in my opinion, bar the jumps you could've ran it on a XC hardtail by the looks of the videos.

Tenzor07

rizzodun wrote: »

Was a weird venue for that too, hardly DH worthy in my opinion, bar the jumps you could've ran it on a XC hardtail by the looks of the videos.

Apart from BPI and GAP I don't know of any other private lands with facilities, as mentioned it's hard to find land with a range of suitably challenging trails for DH/Enduro..

Have you raced any DH or Enduro in Scotland or the Alps?

rizzodun

Tenzor07 wrote: »

Apart from BPI and GAP I don't know of any other private lands with facilities, as mentioned it's hard to find land with a range of suitably challenging trails for DH/Enduro..

Have you raced any DH or Enduro in Scotland or the Alps?

Unfortunately not, not yet anyways, I know a few who have raced some Alpine races, but they really are spoiled for choice. I get the point about facilities, but for National Championships you want the best course and a course most representative of international competition, I just think BPI fell a bit short in comparison and they're is a few places maybe better suited (Bree perhaps?)

But still, at least CI are running these events, it'll get there I'm sure.

steamsey

http://freewheelin.ie/interview-greg-callaghan-2018-irish-enduro-mountain-bike-champion/