Big Bike Rally Challenge Training Weekend - .: XT660.com

uberthumper · # 1 16-09-11, 20:37

It's been a little over two years since I first swung a leg over a trail bike (under the guidance of Dave Haines at Lot Valley Enduro) in the South of France. Somehow I managed to make it through a couple of hours on the trails upright, despite Dave leading me down a few that he'd 'forgotten' were a bit steep for a novice. The next day, we set off for the 2009 HUMM, two full days in the Spanish Pyrenees which also saw my first crash - parking one of Dave's DR-Z400S' in a tree, which seemed better than the alternative of throwing it off a 20ft drop. Since then, I've ridden in two more editions of the HUMM on the T�n�r�, had a go at racing Hare & Hounds on a DR-Z400E and latterly a GasGas EC300, and done quite a lot of mileage on the byways of the UK.

After all that, I've come to consider myself a fairly competent trail rider. I don't often fall off or get stuck, and if there's no particular hurry, then there's not much that I can't pick my way through. What I've never been particularly good at is 'pressing on' over rough ground, even while racing on a small bike. This is compounded when I'm on a big bike by the sheer weight of the thing.

Having never really gelled with the GasGas, but still thoroughly enjoying the T�n�r�, my thoughts have naturally drifted to running the Yamaha as my sole dirt bike (and as of last Saturday, that is the reality, as the diminutive Spanish stroker was dispatched to its new home with a friend in rural Gloucestershire). Not a problem for general trail riding, where I'll always gravitate towards the Ten' anyway, but it begs a couple of questions: "How do I scratch the racing itch?", and "Will I be able to keep up on rides with the East Mids TRF group, who all ride small trail/enduro bikes?".

Actually, the first question isn't phrased quite correctly, as I already knew what I would need to do. For a while now I've been glancing inquisitively towards the Big Bike Rally Challenge, a racing series designed for big bikes, and assembled by piggybacking on to the various long-distance rallies run by different clubs around the UK. The question is really "Can I manage to finish these rallies aboard the Ten'?".

I have no doubt that the bike itself is up to both these tasks (with a few choice mods paid for by selling the GasGas, more of which at a later date), but the 'nut between the handlebars' could definitely do with a bit of improvement. So when I heard that the BBRC organisers were teaming up with Black Desert Training (Dakar Rally finishers Craig Bounds and Tamsin Jones) to put on a weekend of training at the start of September focused on racing big bikes in rallies, it wasn't long before my deposit cheque was in the post.

Friday night came around and the Tenere went on the back of the truck, riding and camping gear was piled up inside, and Sarah and I set off for Aberystwyth where we'd booked onto a campsite. This put me about 20 miles from the Sweet Lamb Rally Complex, where the training was being held, but meant Sarah wasn't stuck in the middle of nowhere while I was out having fun. Besides, aren't you supposed to expect an early start and a bit of 'liaison mileage' when rallying?

On Saturday morning, I geared up and rode back inland to the Sweet Lamb venue, which we'd passed in the dark the night before.

The turning off the main road. The Rally Complex itself is a mile or two up a gravel road, providing a nice 'warm up' to get back into the swing of loose surfaces.

After a cup of tea, introductions and the obligatory disclaimer-signing to acknowledge the inherent danger of motorsport, we moved out to the training area adjoining the 'Rally Shed' (a fairly accurate description of the main building) where, led by Craig, we would work on the basic elements of bike control before moving out onto the rally course itself to put them into practice. Beginning with how to get on and off the bike, and our riding position once aboard, we moved on to riding round one-handed and steering with our feet, then riding a slow, tight slalom course - requiring full lock while stood on the pegs, and emphasising the effect that where you look has on where the bike goes.

Dakar legend Craig Bounds does a good job of hiding a look of despair as some muppet on a T�n�r� manages to stall and nearly fall over in the middle of the slow slalom course.

The final area for focus was braking, and getting us used to feeling for the limits of grip on both ends of the bike - firstly by locking up the rear completely from high speed to a standstill, and then by riding along in first gear (with some throttle on) and trying to keep the front wheel on the verge of locking up.

I think the 'take home message' here was that if you just put the back brake on, you will take a really, really long time to stop.

After a break for lunch, we split into two groups. One group would go off with (BBRC series organiser) Robert 'Burt' Hughes and (HP2 riding, ex-BMW-school-instructor) Mark 'Moly' Molineux to work on high speed riding, my group was with Tamsin and Craig to work on more technical sections. They led us a mere couple of hundred yards before stopping on a fire road within sight of the Rally Shed. I'd have to admit the words "this doesn't look very technical" passed through my head before Craig pointed out the five foot deep drainage gully full of loose rocks alongside the road.

Craig demonstrating the ride up the gully for the other group on the (sunnier) Sunday.

We were to drop in from the side at the downhill end, and ride uphill for a hundred yards or so before climbing out again (although the precise exit route was modified slightly when Tamsin couldn't get out at the planned point even on her lightweight two-stroke KTM). In hindsight, this was probably the hardest exercise for me to get to grips with. I'd thought beforehand that my biggest issue was being scared of the high speed stuff, but it later turned out (see further down) that I took to that fairly quickly once I knew what I had to do. Although I was more successful at this exercise with each run up the gully, it was still a bit of a messy scramble rather than precise riding. Something to practice more I think.

(Of course my concentration at this point wasn't exactly helped by a screw-up while packing for the weekend which meant I was wearing glasses rather than contact lenses. With all the stopping and starting I inevitably ended up with the fine, misty Welsh rain coating both sides of my goggles and my glasses. On balance though, it was probably best that I was doing the slow speed stuff, rather than the fast riding on the day I couldn't really see where I was going!)

The next technical section was a mixture of slippery surfaces (wet rutted grass, piles of loose slate chunks, and wet rock) and awkward corners, with a short climb up a steep rock slab to finish. The emphasis here was on building up the right amount of momentum to carry the big bikes through or up a given obstacle, but again, the importance of both looking in the right direction and the judicious application of the correct amount of weight to the correct footpeg was reinforced.

Opening the throttle here simply fires bits of slate back down the slope. Need to have enough momentum beforehand.

Tamsin making the slab climb look easy.

We then moved on to another area to work on climbing and descending progressively steeper slopes, and perhaps as importantly, how to safely recover your bike if you grind to a halt half way up.

Serious 'body english' to try and thread the bike into the rut at the top of the climb.

Recovering safely from a failed attempt

Here's a video of Jase (in the other group) making it up the slope (just) when we swapped over the next day.

One of our group didn't quite manage to remember (or at least make his body comply with) Craig's instructions for what to do if you get stuck. A mere bike length from the top of the climb he ground to a halt and instinctively pulled the clutch in and tried to hold the bike on the front brake. This doesn't work on a 40 degree gravel incline, and we were treated to the alarming sight of a KTM 950SE accelerating down the slope backwards before slipping sideways and finally flipping itself upside down into the long grass at the bottom. Fortunately the rider was thrown clear and largely unhurt, and the only damage to the bike was bent handlebars which were swapped overnight. I was next up to attempt the climb, and needless to say I was muttering "don't touch the clutch" inside my helmet like some sort of religious incantation. I made it to the top - just! In the words of Craig "You were about three foot off-course at one point, but because you had your eyes on where you were going, it all came back into line".

uberthumper · # 2 16-09-11, 20:39

We finished with a "gentle trail ride" around the rest of the rally loop back to the 'Rally Shed', and while the others (staying locally) were making plans for a pub dinner, I bolted down a cup of tea to warm me up for the ride back to the coast. By now the rain was driving down, and it had gone far beyond the 'water resistance' of my Klim Dakar trousers. A few miles into the journey I stopped under some trees to put my earplugs in to quieten down the wind, pulled my Buff up over my face to stop the rain stinging, and turned the heated grips on full.

Sunday dawned, considerably more pleasantly than Saturday, but it was still quite cold as I gritted my teeth and pulled on my sopping wet riding gear for the ride over to the rally complex. We stayed in the groups we were in the previous day, and swapped instructors - meaning my group was with Burt and Moly for some high speed work.

Our first 'exercise' was a section where the track dropped downhill while curving continuously to the left, tightening slightly for the corner itself, then began to climb back up the hill. As Moly talked us through the ideal line I couldn't help noting that both the turn-in point and the apex were only a couple of feet from places where the edges of the track had collapsed, hitting the apex required hooking both wheels into a rut a mere foot from the edge of the track and a deep ditch, and running wide on the exit would see you disappearing over the edge and down into a valley. In other words, pretty fearsome when you contemplated approaching it at high speed.

Moly in full drift mode.

The location of this corner was such that we were able to ride a short, quarter mile loop and keep trying it again and again without having to turn around, so with Burt and Moly watching from the verge, we all set off to give it a try. We'd been told to "start at about 50% and work up", and my first few runs were quite tentative, concentrating on putting the bike in the right place on the track without going too fast, and convincing myself to look up the road to where I wanted to be, rather than target fixating on the (many) opportunities for having a horrible crash.

Pretty soon it all clicked, and I found myself able to attack the corner faster and faster - and in fact the whole loop, in an attempt to apply what I had learnt elsewhere, to get back round and have another go, and frankly because I was getting hooked on the feeling of going fast. One of my last attempts saw me winding the throttle to the stop before the apex, drifting across the exit, and just kissing the 6" berm on the outside with the back wheel to stop me going over the edge before powering up the hill and (surprisingly) thinking I could do with a few more than 46bhp. Success.

We worked on a couple more tricky corners, including one which was a bit tighter, wet and very rutted, allowing several lines, including running straight across the corner then bouncing off the gravel bank on the outside before accelerating away. Moly: "My preferred line here would be the rut on the inside, but you've got to be able to take every corner at least a couple of different ways to allow you to get past people.". Finally we moved on to handling high-speed jumps - the aim in a long distance rally context being to make them as unexciting as possible.

We put everything together with a couple of laps of a larger loop before returning to base to join the other group for lunch. After all the high speed, lairy sliding antics of the morning, I managed to crash in the one 500m technical section as I failed to mentally 'change gear' to deal with the slower pace and trickier going. Later on I mentioned this to Burt, who replied (I paraphrase) "You make up time by being quick on the open bits, you lose it by falling off in the technical sections" . So, erm, don't.

The afternoon was spent lapping both loops of the rally course behind Moly, steadily increasing the pace. We were travelling much faster than I ever would have considered riding before this weekend, but the most surprising thing was that I still felt like I was riding within my comfort zone - I was able to consciously think about whether or not I was applying the instructors' advice, and feeling like I would be able to go a bit faster if I was up against the clock on a rally special stage. A huge difference over the course of two days, and testament to the value of Craig, Tamsin, Burt and Moly's collective experience and their ability to pass some of it on to their students (They're planning on running more training weekends in the future, see here for details). I didn't want to stop lapping the course at the end of the day, but it was finally time to head off and meet Sarah and the truck for the drive back to Derby.

On Monday night, before I had washed the T�n�r�, or my stinking riding gear, I signed up to the Hafren Rally at the start of October. There's a time when you've got to stop saying "some day".

[Note: Although I had my camera with me, I was somewhat remiss with actually using it over the weekend - too busy having fun and attempting to extract the maximum amount of knowledge from the instructors! With the exception of the first photo of the T�n�r� at the entrance to the rally complex, all the photos and videos used were taken by Jason Markos. Jason was in the other group on his BMW HP2, which is why, aside from the first few shots before we split up, the weather in the photos doesn't match my comments in the text. His story of the weekend can be found here]

stoic bloke · # 3 18-09-11, 19:27

thanks for the good write up uber, looks fun with plenty of info, certainly looks a good course to hone ones offroading skills !

any advice on submarining or boating?

uberthumper · # 4 18-09-11, 22:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by stoic bloke

any advice on submarining or boating?

Nope, although there were some amusing lunchtime anecdotes, particularly from Moly, about launching oneself headfirst into bogs. Tamsin's one about ripping up about a mile of barbed wire fence on the Tuareg is a good one too

dave p · # 5 19-09-11, 13:37

A very good and enjoyable read that

sure ive been past that place a 100+ times, as the board about mountain lamb always made me laugh, (being a hunter/pest control) and having a caravan at borth. Next time im passing i pay more attention and maybe drop in for a look round, and take some pic/s. While out walking around the hydro dam you often see groups of green laners pass by.

Gas_Up_Lets_Go · # 6 19-09-11, 13:54

I meant to say over the weekend, nice write up.

Skunkmoto · # 7 19-09-11, 16:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by uberthumper

launching oneself headfirst into bogs.

Done that on my first bog.

My more experienced 'mate' said "Get as much speed up as you can". As an eager 17 year old I gave me DT125MX all she had, in a haze of blue smoke I managed the powerband in second gear.

The next few moments were a bit confusing as:

a) I didn't know where the bike was.
b) It felt like I was upside down.
c) It was dark.

When I sat up, shook the moss out me lid, I saw the bike sunk upto the mudguard and my 'ex-mate' laughing his nuts off like he'd just seen someone fly ten foot through the air and bury tha sel heed fist.

I did learn a valuable off roading lesson......

If someone with a big grin sez "You go first" immediately punch them in the face, twice.

uncle ricky · # 8 19-09-11, 17:38

good write up. The hafern is a fast fire roads one and not tricky

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