Bucket List: Time to try enduro
More than just learning new skills, hitting the dirt will reawaken your inner beginner’s enthusiasm
‘Ride off-road,’ they said. ‘It’ll make you a better road rider.’ Nearly two decades in the saddle, that advice has pretty much gone in one ear and out of the other. To my mind, handling a bike at high speed on a circuit represented the very pinnacle of skill, not slithering around a field getting mud sprayed up my back… Oh how wrong can a person be? “I can’t believe you’ve never ridden a dirt bike,” says MCN’s expert rally-riding Sports Editor Michael Guy, who was bemused when I admitted this glaring hole in my experience. “We’ll have to change that. I can teach you so basics, if you like.” I wasn’t so sure. Having spent half of my life as a road rider, I was worried I’d be too set in my ways. But the restrictions of this year changed my perspective, and after a bit of reflection, I decided to take Michael up on his offer.
After cobbling together some borrowed clobber, I found myself standing, feeling a bit awkward, in the middle of a muddy practice ground and faceto-face with a rather serious-looking Yamaha WR250F; 30bhp never looked so intimidating. “It’s proper,” begins Michael. “It’s competition spec so it’s really responsive, plus it’s fitted with brilliant tyres and mousses, which keep the tyres functioning if they get a puncture. It’s super light too. You’ll be amazed at how much your body position plays a part – it’s totally different from road riding.”
He starts to explain the fundamentals of positioning my weight in order to maximise grip and how basically, as a road rider, it’s the complete opposite of what I’d naturally want to do. “In a turn, you need to be really far forward on the seat and then slide your outside butt cheek off the side of the bike. At the same time, your inside arm needs to be more or less straight and your outside arm bent at the elbow. Like I said, totally opposite from what you’d do on track.” All of a sudden, I feel like a complete novice. Concentrating so hard on fighting my instincts also results in me having to think about the basic stuff too, like simple gearchanges. I can’t remember the last time I felt like I was intensively learning something new; it felt good for the brain – like I’d reawakened it. All the time, Michael’s watching my every move as I ride around him in ever-tightening, slippery circles. “You’ve gone back into trackday mode!” Michael shouts over the four-stroke din from the 250cc single. Forcing myself to overcome muscle memory, I start to get the hang of it and begin to feel the front end slipping on the slick, wet brown stuff, saving it with my foot when it goes too far. I can’t get
‘All of a sudden, I feel like a total novice again’
over just how physical it is - riding on the rough stuff is more like exercise than anything I’ve done on two wheels before. But it’s not all about brawn - thought and planning plays a big part too. “You should be constantly looking, maximising your view, planning ahead and picking the best line. You don’t want to get cross-rutted,” my colleague-turned-instructor says as we look towards the summit of, what appears to me like, a small mountain. For the first time in a long while, I feel nervous and out of my depth. And, in a weird way, I’m relishing the sensation. With Michael’s instruction swirling in my head, I open the throttle and power up the hill along my predetermined route in a bizarre mix of control and chaos – the bike going mostly where I wanted it to, but also dancing around beneath me.
“This isn’t road racing where everything’s perfect,” Michael says as I splash through a boggy puddle. “You’ve got to accept that things are going to move around, but you’ve just got to let the bike to do its thing.”
All of a sudden, for all my experience, I realised just how little I knew about riding. Half a day on the dirt had re-engaged that wide-eyed open-mindedness that comes from being a beginner. I may not be an enduro champ in the making, but even just a little dabble in the dirt has re-energised my desire to learn new skills, in all areas of my biking life.