The Story So Far: Part 1
The story so far: Part 1
Trail rider to Romaniac, what a good idea.
I came into trail riding sort of by accident following a move south from Cumbria to Oxfordshire and realising that there were still a lot of Byways open just over the border in West Berks and even more in Wiltshire. Mountain biking in the Pennines and Lake district was replaced with plodding around the lanes on an old Suzuki SP370. In doing so, I met some great people and made some friends too!
My problem though is that whilst I love exploring and pottering about, riding unobtrusively and generally keeping myself to myself, I also have an alter ego who has a different view of things and loves to race. (Hong Kong Phooey anyone?)
Initially I fed this character by doing the occasional rally, low key, only as competitive as you want to make it, good day thrash round a forest course etc etc but eventually, as I knew he would, he became restless and was looking for a new challenge. It was during a 6 day trail riding trip to Portugal with some friends from Oxford TRF that I final heard myself say “Who fancies the Red Bull Romaniacs”?
Well, no one as it happens. I was alone with my alter ego and he’d left me high and dry! “Why did you have to say that, could’ve just thought it”…
And so the dream became a potential reality. I had met someone who had done it, he was a seasoned enduro man, far superior to me but he was still only a human, two arms, two legs and a head, surely I could manage Iron if he had finished Bronze? People have been very encouraging, “go on then, enter”, “we’ll come and watch - bloody hell, how far away?” etc etc
Well, I watched the website, filled in some details, sent a bank transfer and about a grand later, I was “In”.
I have entered the 2016 Red Bull Romaniacs, the website offers advice on how to choose your class and some priceless hints and tips such as:
For Gold
“Sections we will present to you will be impossible to ride for "humans"
For Silver
“Your physical fitness, mental stability and ability to deal with pain should be excellent”
For Bronze
“Your physical fitness, mental stability and ability to deal with pain should have been trained before the race. You should be able to quickly recover a fluent riding style after dragging your bike though sections that you have never considered riding before”
For Iron
“Your physical fitness should be good but there is no need to go to the gym to prepare”
Well, as part of the reason for entering is driven by my up-coming 50th birthday, Iron it is then! I never liked working out at the gym anyway.
I planned some events, The Welsh 2 day enduro, The Hafren Rally, The Tour of Mann, The Snowrun, and a few Hare and Hounds dotted in between. This along with weekends trail riding conspired to make quite a dent in my quality family time. You sure do need a supportive family to allow this level of self-indulgence, but as we say in my shed, “you only get one life”.
Evenings in the winter were spent running in wet and cold conditions up to 3 miles initially and then up to 5, backache put a stop to much more. Training my abs with an iPhone app lasted 9 days before I pulled a muscle in my stomach, so then it was getting aboard my 2001 mountain bike and cycling to work and back twice a week to build some leg strength and give me a cardiovascular workout.
My mate Mike (from Lodden Vale TRF) had now felt obliged to join me and so had entered in the same class, his training was going well and so we began a competitive dialogue, still building in ferocity as we approach the fateful date, 12th July 2016.
We both chose the basic support package offered by Patsy Quick at Desert Rose racing ( and this means that the shipping of the bikes and a place to work on them each evening of the 5 day event will be guaranteed. In addition Patsy and her team will be on hand to offer advice, hints and tips along the way (such as Zippy and his (in)famous quote “crack on then”) meaning we give ourselves as much chance of finishing as we can.
Do we know what we are doing? - No not really. I don’t watch too many of the videos as I am not sure I want to see the edited highlights of someone else’s dreams come literally crashing down. I want to test myself to a limit I have chosen and the planets have aligned in 2016 with the time, money and support needed to allow me to enter this prestigious event. I’ll let you know afterwards how we got on and whether my question “Can a trail rider finish the Romaniacs?” was in fact the right question…
Part two:
What is the Red Bull Romaniacs?
From the web site this is the introduction:
“Thanks to his adventurous style, Martin Freinademetz, the former multiple World & European snowboard Champ and the organiser of the “Red Bull Romaniacs hard enduro rallye", explored the Carpathians Mountain areas on his own enduro bike for many years, before coming up with this solid and unique hardcore competition in 2004.
He had the off road experience and skills, knew the geographical areas better than anyone, so could present an unforgettable and unique enduro rallye experience.
Amazing mountain climbs and downhills, fantastic single trails, add in some GPS navigation…and thanks to the numerous exploringexperiences, Martin figured out that adding a time attack to those tracks would leave him withan ideal World Class motorcycleenduro rallye event on tracks never crossed or ridden by offroad motorcycles before”.
So, an enduro spread over 5 days with the first day being a prologue in the form of a man made obstacle course in the centre of Sibiu as a spectacle for approximately 10,000 spectators, who wouldn’t want to do that…!
Read more about it here;
Well, it is all behind me now as I write this and I have to say that I have had the most satisfying experience ever over the whole period of the build-up through to actually taking part in the event billed as the hardest of it’s type in the world.
I am an official finisher of the 2016 Red Bull Romaniacs Hard Enduro Rallye and along with Mike Fredriksen of Lodden Vale, we did ourselves very proud.
I spoke in part one about having the need to feed my alter ego (or inner chimp), and this was the goal, to finish this event would satisfy my craving for a bike challenge.
The prologue was enormously stressful; the whole organisation of the Romaniacs is designed to mess with your head, telling you one thing, being another. The way they build the course even backs into this, the night before the event, the huge logs and massive drops left us aghast at the prospect of riding the following day and in Iron we had the option to sit it out without penalty. But we hadn’t come all this way to sit it out had we? Oh no, we were riding. By the morning, a number of ramps and kickers had been added to the obstacles to make them ridable for mere mortals but the damage had been done and we had tossed and turned all night with the images of the part built course in our minds from the night before. The most terrifying obstacle, the sideways steps, was only for the Gold class riders, again we only found out at the last minute – see what I mean, messing with your head!
The stress continued as the Iron class was to go last, this meant we had all day to watch the other classes go hammer and tongs at the obstacles and watching someone else suffer does nothing to ease the nerves. As our start time loomed we were both on the verge of throwing up, I went and sat under a tree, Mike disappeared somewhere else, we needed to be alone.
Riders leave the start gate at 30 second intervals and attack the course against the clock, we were 29th and 33rd respectively and this meant that there were other riders on the course in front of us. Blast, that meant traffic to contend with over painfully designed obstacles.
The start gate was a Red Bull arch with a lovely Romanian lass counting us down from Five-Four-Three Two- One and GO!, the adrenaline surge was massive and I went over the first three obstacles with no issues, arriving at the next, a series of tree trunks lengthways but with large traps for the unwary, I cautiously started my crossing only to be baulked by an unfortunate rider who had fallen in front of me (adrenaline caused me to think of him as a fucking tosser), I waited a full minute for him to move rather than riding over him! Not great.
I have to say, the rest was fantastic, the trials training I had done with North Berks MCC made all the obstacles fall to my crazed mastery and without going on too much, I came a creditable 15th place (yeah I know, without the delay I might have been 3rd- coulda- shoulda- woulda…didna )
As soon as it was over I was full of it, wanting another go, wanting a clear track, seeing ways to improve etc etc, all irrelevant because apart from watching the magic of a couple of world class Gold riders, no one gives a crap, they want to see carnage, not muppets slowly improving. It’s entertainment after all.
So, with that behind us, we were able to relax, get changed into shorts and watch the final races where the Gold Silver and Bronze boys race head to head from a mass start, carnage was delivered! I was glad we were in Iron and had only raced for good start positions. Check out the videos on the website link if you want to see what I mean.
Day two was the beginning of the race proper.
As first timers, it hadn’t occurred to us that the start might not be in the town we stayed in, in actual fact it was 50km away and we chose to ride there on a main dual carriageway rather than in the back of a tightly packed transit van. Cruising at 35mph amongst the Romanian HGV’s was quite interesting, Romania had the feeling of Italy but with absolutely no rules…
The riders briefing (held each night at 9pm in race headquarters) had said that Iron would have an easy morning with the challenges increasing in the afternoon, that made us relax a bit, they were making concessions for the newbies…wrong.
From the off, we were subjected to steep hills up and down, mud, rocks, ruts, roots, perilous drops, fallen trees and off camber traverses on wet grass, easy my foot! By the time we reached the lunch stop we were knackered and wondering what we had done, this was going to kill us.
The afternoon however consisted of the most fabulous trails I have ever ridden, endless mountain top tracks, massive switchback trails up to 5000ft, totally absorbing and highly enjoyable. The end of the route involved a bit of trick riding in the local culvert on rickety bridges and concrete dams to put on a show for the locals (whose kids enjoyed hurling stones at us...hey-ho)
We were both relieved to see the Red Bull arch at the finish but we were also brimming with tales of daring do, getting lost and coming out the other side in good fettle, neither Mike or myself incurred any time penalties, we later found out that over 50% of the field had timed out and 4 of the lads in our “Team” with Desert Rose packed in at the lunch stop and gave up. Still messing with our heads, the organisers had designed day 1 to test our motivation, I was learning not to believe a word they said in the riders briefing.
We now fell into a routine, alarm at 6am, breakfast and 10 minute walk to the pits, travel to the start, wait nervously for the off, ride the most superb terrain imaginable, stop for an enforced 20 minute break half way through the day and fettle the machine if needed, ride again until 3-4pm, get back to base, do the maintenance, change tyres etc, eat, briefing at 9pm, sleep at 10pm, repeat. Days 2-3 and 4 kind of blur a bit but all contained the most fantastic riding, moments of camaraderie between riders and epic scenery (sadly no time to stop and look though), we had blistering heat, heavy rain and mud slides, wind and fog to contend with, often on the same day but we could do it all, we felt great.
The end of the final day was designed, you guessed it, to mess with our heads. Billed as the longest day, the morning was “normal” great terrain, but then the route took us for 20 miles across the flat plain towards our base at Sibiu, in the distance we could make out the sandy coloured land of what appeared to be a huge quarry, I had forgotten that these guys were not going to make it easy for us.
As we approached the city, the route took a torturous line along the main river bank, mingling with the local fishermen, one slip the wrong way here and it was game over, I didn’t see any frogmen either…
After this we entered the quarry proper and found ourselves at the bottom of the infamous sandy hill climb, the finish apparently at the top under the Red Bull arch. As I was lining up and taking a big gulp, a spectator shouted, “go to the left”, yeah right, as if I’ll have any control over it. So as I set off, I glanced left and noticed a sign saying Iron Route, taking a different line, OK it was still a 15ft wall to climb but we were spared the full horror of the main hill that the other classes had to do, even then it wasn’t over. I could see the finish line, all the cameras, spectators and Red Bull girls (there are many of these) gathered just a few metres away, but still the course took us away, ups and downs in the quarry until finally it made sense, if we wanted to finish, we had one more obstacle, a prologue style affair, 3 log steps up onto a platform, then down onto a pallet which was on rails which dropped you down to the finish, except it didn’t, it stopped hard against two buffers in front of a massive mud pit. It dawned on me as the pallet started sliding that I was going to pitched head first into the mud unless I did something, dropped it into first, gave it a handful, dumped the clutch and effected a huge wheely just as we hit the buffers and landed on the back wheel, momentum carried me through the mud and onto the finish line. The feeling slowly came to me that I had finished the most gruelling event of my life and the atmosphere was truly uplifting. As I turned around, Mike came in and even though we hadn’t ridden together all week, it was fitting that we finished together and I was able to see him down his first beer after his 8 month abstention.
Epilogue
Life after Romaniacs, is going to be different. I feel as though we have climbed Everest, OK we did it by the easiest route, but we still did it. I don’t feel motivated to go and do it again a harder way, I may retire from racing, the chimp is sated, we’ll see.
For the data heads, I came 21st place and Mike came in 19th both in Iron class, we did well do achieve this and I think the secret, if there is one, is that we took the event seriously. You don’t just rock up and give it a go, those guys didn’t make it through the first day. You have to want it badly enough to get up every day and do it all over again despite the bruises and blisters and aches and pains. The reward is hard to put into words, I feel totally happy having done this and I am also totally happy for Mike who rode intelligently and was most strong when the chips were down, you find out what you are made of when you have nothing left in the tank but still a long way to go.
So the original question, “can a trail rider finish the Romaniacs”? Absolutely. But should he?
That’s up to you to decide.
Measure those smiles
Hands need looking after