Excellent report Mark. Congrats on the good ride. Very nice to see Nopporrat lining up for these events. Is he running primarilly in japan or Thailand now?
Good to see the FIM attempting to put on a well run event system for the enduro riders in the country. It will be most interesting to see how things pan out with their intentions. I know in the past they had grand starting ceremonies at Thapae gate in the middle of Chiang Mai, complete with a decent amount of international riders showing up. Lets hope they can get the backing and attendance they need to run the professional events.
Ballpark how many riders showed up for this event?
Nop is riding in Japan, He usually rides team green on a KXF 250.
At this event only 30 riders, as the entry was 2,000bht. This is a issue for FIM Asia, the entry is expensive for locals. Mostly the only riders showing are people who feel they have a chance of prize money to recoup their overheads. In the future races, they plan to hold the Asia championships and North Thai championships together in the same event. This will increase the overall turnout.
Was there a reason they chose to start you to the side of the MX gate instead of using the gate as it was designed?
I guess they didnt want to scratch the paint on the new fantango toy.
105 minutes at race pace is a lot, I'm sure it was a challenging event. Other Enduros I've done over here only had 60 minutes per day. What was the feedback you heard from other riders of the event? Would an average trail rider be able to get through the event or did they have any obstacles that would be considered impossible for the average Joe?
It was 3hrs of Special stage/sprint time over the 2 days each day being 1-1/2 hours. The way they are running the event now, is you are given your freelance time, however you can check in early. Then from here you usually started 1 minute after your freelance check in time. As it was a advantage to be in-front of the pack the freelance was important to get through as quickly as possible so as not to loose your start position to the people behind you.
So basically to give you a idea, we started the first SS on Saturday at 11am. We where finished racing the SS sections by 2pm. So it was go-go-go.
To answer your question about difficulty, They ran a lot of water sections, the most difficult ran about 400m along the banks on the Ping river. Sometimes you where riding on loose rocks the size of footballs and then through water that at time became about 50cm deep. I thought the stage was good, however I did mention to the orginiser's it may have been to much for the veterans and the super cup riders, It was well suited riding for a fanny clutch.
So all the times we've ridden together I've only ever seen you wear jerseys, what was rationale for wearing a jersey one day and body armour another? A new trend perhaps?
In the forest racing I usually where body armor, If anybody has every clipped your shoulder on a tree racing through single track you would understand why. My simpler, cooler mx set broke, So Saturday starting at 11am I took the cooler option and rode a little more reserved with no armor. After Saturdays racing there was only 12 second between myself and 3rd so I wanted to up the ante a little. Safety first.
As always in Asia it still was not without its unforeseen dangers, We had 1 section of fast dirt road gravely special section of about 7km linking up a loop in the single track. This section had the bike pinned trying to get all the speed it had (probably about 120km) Over the weekend I came head on with 3 pickups on the restricted race track?
The S.S. section in a FIM enduro are not supposed to exceed 80km top speed for safety reasons, and obviously the track is supposed to be clear. I guess the farmers coming down the road are aware we are racing on the road, but most have know idea at the speeds our race bikes can travel. It is sketchy and daunting when you are starting position is numero uno.