countdown - 11 months to go

it's already been a couple of weeks since marc coma took the dakar trophy for the 2 wheel class and simon pavey completed it without any support, a truly awesome achievement. it also brings me 2 weeks closer to 2012 and that's scary!

as much as i am focused on my challenge ahead, i want to ensure that i enjoy the journey, enjoy each race, each rally, each moment, but it is hard not to be overwhelmed sometimes.

so, yesterday saw my first enduro since the d2d last august and the technical riding required was quite a contrast to the fast, open desert rally in morocco. the event was run by the reme down near bagshot, as many laps of the 6 mile circuit in 4 hours and apart from a 2 minute re-fuel and goggle clean, jago and i didn't stop. it was brilliant to see patsy, zippy and rob, plus chris, ross, billy, sean, nick..... it was like  reunion!

apart from missing the start with a flat battery, i caught up with jago and we battled it out for a number of laps which was a lot of fun. however, at one point i nearly took jago out completely; he was going to slowly up a steep climb ; ) so i tried to pass him....but there was not a lot of room and then i hit a stump and it threw into his path, fortunately it was only me who went down....but it did stop jago from going anywhere!!

i attempted the tyre obstacles on one lap, but i was crap at that and having been thrown off twice, i decided that i needed some trail riding practice before attempting those again. sadly, patsy also took a tumble on the tyres, but she broke her collar bone! i did not hear about this of course until i refueled at the 2 hour mark. poor patsy, what a shocker. when she returned from hospital, we had not long finished. but as usual, she was smiling, although clutching her left arm as it perched in a sling : ( we're thinking of you pats!

lots of funny moments, but two in particular; first one, up a steep incline and i was in too high a gear and the bike slowed near the top, just able to change down i throttled it and the bike launched into the air, but without me! the bike made it to the top..... the next one, i can't quite work out what happened, apart from the fact that the bike was running up a small incline..... on its own??? perfectly upright and in a straight line.... i even had time to run up after it and catch it as it started to topple! so bizzare was the scene that a fellow biker stopped, grinning crazily with a big thumb of approval, shouting "that was amazing!"

don't know what the results were or when we may get hold of them, but as far as i was concerned it was a great first h&h and i'm looking forward to the next one. we're training with pats and zippy in feb and there is another h&h with the cotswold enduro club on the 27th. and if i'm lucky, i may get another ride when i'm next in dubai later in the week.....

i was out in dubai 3 weeks ago and managed to get  a morning's run into the desert courtesy of matt hall, who put me in touch with sean linton and sean very kindly introduced me to jayne and hein van der merwe.

it was 515am on a saturday morning when i was in a taxi heading over to jayne and hein's.  i was so excited to be hitting the sand that i started sending texts to mates in london who i knew would be up partying as it was only 115am!

it was still dark when the taxi pulled into their driveway, which was filled with a huge pick up and a 2 bike trailer. by 7am we were on the sand and heading east as the sun rose gently over the desert. hein had kindly  provided me with a honda crf450x to ride, first time on a 450, geared for motocross, fuel injected it was hard to keep the front wheel down, but no electric start meant kicking the darn thing when it stalled!

the vista was awesome, just dunes as far as the eye could see, although to be honest i was only looking about 20 feet in front of me most of the time, there were a few 'fuck me' moments as the ground disappeared down a 10 foot drop at the last second!! but nothing prepared me for the huge dunes we scaled towards the end of the first hour, i had not been down anything like that, even in morocco. watching hein scale the face of the next dune was incredible, it must have been a 150m climb, straight up the face of the dune, unbelievable......fun!! we were out for about 3.5 hours including a good fuel and drink stop and covered about 100km of dunes..... thanks again hein and jayne for a fantastic morning's ride!

i've updated the calendar with some of the key events this year, notably the tunis rally in may, the romaniacs in july (although this may be better post dakar!), the d2d in august and a rally in turkey in september, then it's bikes off to le harve for the long crossing to ba!!!

still no closer to deciding on the ktm or yamaha, but you can be sure it will be one of them and some point not too far in the future!

ciao for now

tobes