As part of my preparations for Enduro Africa, I did a days off road training with TrailWorld.
The day began at 9:30 at their training site close to St Albans when we were kitted out in full off road gear. I had taken my own helmet, goggles and armour to get used to, but borrowed jacket, trousers, knee armour and boots. Once fully kitted out it felt very restrictive (the boots are like ski boots!), at this point I was wondering how I was going to get on the bike let alone ride it!
We were then introduced to our bikes - lovely little Honda CRF230s - which were thankfully small and fairly light as the first exercise was recovering a dropped bike. Fully armed with the correct technique, it proved pretty simple to get the bike up from either side.
The morning consisted of lots more handling exercises including standing on the pegs, weighting the pegs to steer, rear brake locking, front brake locking and lots of low speed exercises.
After lunch we moved to the main area of the training centre which is a HUGE off road playground with lots of hills, ruts, water and tracks. We were taught ascents, descents, recovering the bike on a hill, negotiating ruts, and riding through water.
All in all it was a great day and very intense. I managed to come off the bike once in the afternoon in quite a spectacular manner too!
The trainer was excellent, and the group were great fun. I think I developed a lot during the day, but still have a long way to go before October!
Thanks to Chris Guy for taking such fantastic photographs!
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