With a new K8 RMZ250 from Byrner's Suzuki and some Shinko tyres from BCE, Joe Harvey entered his first enduro, the Australian 4 Day in Warrigul, Victoria 17-20th April . We had only picked up the bike the week before and raced and won one motocross meeting on it before fitting lights, stand, bashplate and handguards to make it an Enduro bike.

We fitted 520A Shinkos as a good intermediate, changing one after 2 days and fitting a 540 rear for the final MX. The front 520A lasted easily .

Luckily, a friend of ours who'd competed in NSW in 06, came along with his wife who is also a personal trainer, so she knows the right foods to eat. She made sure he was fed nutritiently at all major controls. Thanks, Marie

The experience was very different to all other disciplines with a huge "transport" section every day of 200-250Kms, the "tests" are the races and make up only a small part of each day . Very significant was that Joe had to do all his own maintenance the only exception to this being oil changes. He changed his own air filters & more importantly, tyres in the 15 minute work period allowed. Fortunately he had no mechanical dramas or major crash damage. To finish with a Silver medal is another feather in his cap, all respect to the enduro community, tough men.

All details of the event on http://www.a4de.com

Results at http://www.a4de.com/0015/intro/Results_Day4.htm

Joe's report

Terrain
The terrain was made up of mainly loose, small rocks, lots or roots and lots of bulldust. The tracks became fairly chopped out by the third day and everyone breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of having a fresh track to race on for the final moto.

Day 1
The first day of the A4DE was a little daunting for me as I had never done anything like it before, I had to familiarise myself with riding to a specific time and not against other riders which felt very strange to me.
In the tests I was going really hard trying to put in good times on some pretty technical terrain.
I thought that I was doing pretty well until I came off in a big way in the Yamaha MX test, I was simply going too fast to be able to do anything about my bike bucking me over the handlebars and into the side of the hill. I got up quickly but staggered about trying to focus my eyes, suspecting that I had concussed myself I took it very easy for a while, nursing a sore wrist and a sore head for the rest of the day this incident would ultimately cost me a lot of time but I consider myself pretty lucky that I wasn't alot more seriously injured.

Day 2
The second day of competition was my favourite day of the event, the trails were good with lots of single track and I actually enjoyed the chopped out special tests more than I had on day 1. I did some good times throughout the day and managed to redeem quite alot of positions that I had lost after I crashed on day 1. The bike was handling the punishment of the event with ease with the only maintenance being air filter replacement, lubed chain and tightening up some loose bolts at each service point.

Day 3
Day three was my least favourite day of competition. The tracks were extremely dusty and I struggled all day with slower riders in the enduro tests, I also had a few incidents with unwary trailriders going the opposite direction to the people in the event which was a little scary. I gathered that I must of done okay in the tests because I was catching alot of people but thought that I could have done much better had I not met so much traffic. Once again the RMZ ran faultlessly, with all the dust we were changing the filter regularly but no dramas whatsoever arose from another punishing day of riding.

Day 4
The final day started with a very long very cold road ride to Lardner Park, the venue for the final moto. I was so cold from riding through the fog that when I went to change my tyre my hands were still numb even though we had been waiting in the sun for 15 minutes. Once I had thawed out I went and had a look at the track which looked pretty fun, with fast straights, lots of off camber corners and some tighter stuff at the top of the hill. It was apparent from the first race that dust was going to be a problem so I focused on getting a good start to keep my vision clean. When the gate dropped and I found myself battling for the lead I was so relieved not to be riding in the cloud of dust that the others had to deal with. I conceded a slight gap to Matt Haskins but kept the same distance for most of the race until a couple of laps before the finish I started to catch him up and made a push to take the win but a few instances with lapped riders and increasing amounts of dust as I gained on him meant that I had to settle for second place.

Verdict
I enjoyed the four day enduro because it taught me alot about pacing myself and concentrating on finishing each test cleanly, racing against the clock was an alien thing for me and I think I still prefer racing against other people but I'm glad that I did the event and thought that it was a great experience.