Enduro Training report – December 2021
Saturday 4th December 2021 saw the first in what, hopefully, will be many Enduro Training days for youths in Ireland. The GAP was the venue as it lends itself perfectly for parents to be able to drop off their kids and has facilities available while they wait. The cycling club, GAP MTB, was kind enough to host the event. We enlisted Enduro World Series (EWS) rider Gavin Carroll to lead the tips / tricks and teach valuable lessons from experience on the EWS Circuit.
The first session started promptly at 10:00 and had participants from all over Ireland – Donegal / Limerick / Dublin and Belfast. These riders were chosen on the back of their performances during the 2021 Enduro Season. We picked 4 from the 12-13 Category and the remainder from 14-16 category.
The second session was based on a first come, first served basis from 12-13 and 14-16 age categories. This filled up very quickly and we had a waiting list of 6 riders. This session took place from 13:00 – 15:00. All riders braved the cold elements on an otherwise glorious day. Sessions included, cornering, assisted front wheel lifts, rear wheel lifts, slalom, lateral bunny hops, line choice and much more.
Saturday 11th December 2021 saw the second day of Enduro training, again at The GAP.
Session 1. Was top finishers in the Women 14+ category. We had 6 women join us from all over the country. The weather was a bit warmer than the previous week but the site was misty. We kicked off again with a warm up and straight into basic skills – cornering, power assisted front wheel lift, rear wheel lift and bunny hops. The progression here was unbelievable. When we asked “Can anyone do a proper bunny hop?”, we were answered with a lot of negativity. All 6 participants nailed a bunny hop before the we moved up into the mountain! We started to transfer our cornering session in to berms and then took the riders to focus on pumping. From here we went to the skills area and transferred the bunny hop skill that they had practiced to a set of 2 table tops. We finished off with a slalom session.
Session 2. This session was on a first come, first served basis for Women 14+. Unfortunately, of the 4 participants booked in only 2 arrived. One sent apologies (injured) and the other was a no show. We turned this into an advantage where we were really able to focus on each of the riders and devote a lot of one to one time. We copied what we had covered in the morning session except for the table tops. Both riders really enjoyed the session.
