On Saturday there was a 'Funduro' in Koringberg up the N7, so I thought I'd check it out. Plan at the moment is to get at least one solid proper off road ride in a week, and much better at an event than just thrashing around Zone 7 on my lonesome. I'd received the K700 knee braces last week, so I spent two hours at Zone 7 late Thursday anyway just to see how they felt. Definitely a little less comfortable than the Leatt knee guards I had been wearing, but that makes sense. Actually on Saturday I didn't even feel them, so that's a result!
I thought a 9.30 briefing, followed by a start at 10, would leave plenty of time to walk back to the car park and fetch my bike. Wrong! Even through it was a fun ride, my plan was to give it a bit of a whack to up the training intensity. But by the time I got back to the KDX I already heard bikes racing off... bugger! There were three classes: fast, medium and social. Plan was to go off in medium and see how it went. So much for that - by the time I got to the start I was right at the back ... and to make matters worse all the haai-speed-kwads had already left.
Unlike my last event - the Botrivier race - I've now had a bit of time on the bike - and am feeling much more comfortable. So I gave it a bit of welly, and overtook about 10 quads before the first hill climb. But then I was stuck behind another three of them and the track was narrow so there was no passing room. Quads go slowly in technical terrain, and make a shitload of dust! A bit disappointing, but I can now attest that the Dragon Vendetta goggles I bought are awesome at filtering out dust - I could see, even if I was choking!
Managed to zip past a few at the summit but there was more slow following all the way down the other side, and then onto a few km of open dirt road. Now a kwad loves open dirt, and they immediately gassed it and set off in a huge cloud of dust. Nothing to do but sit up and keep my distance - passing in that would have been suicide.
After a few more km we hit some more tight track and then the bikes and quads in front slowed to a crawl and I saw a queue of about 20 quads and bikes at a huge mud pool a hippo would have been happy to call home. Everyone was looking a bit tentative and I decided I was riding a lot quicker than everyone in front of me, so zipped around to the front and plunged in. By now the water was a huge, stinking mud hole, where several bikes had already drowned themselves, but the little KDX held her head high, coughed a few times and then charged through like a filthy little warthog. I saw one quad rider arrive at the finish much later covered in mud head-to-toe, front and back, so obviously some didn't get off so lightly!
Then a bunch more open riding, a technical mini-river-canyon section and some open fields with drainage drifts. The upside of starting at the back was that I got to pass bikes all lap, which does the ego good, even if you're really pretty average. I think I'd passed all the quads by now, which was a relief from a dust perspective. The lap was a good 50% longer than at Botrivier and there was a lot more fast, open riding. For the first time on the KDX I was gagging for a more open pipe, as I was spending a lot of time with the throttle pinned, gee-ing the bike for more. I think it might be time for some Boyesen's reeds and a Platinum 2 or FMF. Damn. And I thought I was going to get away without spending money on this bike!?
Before I knew it, we were up the last hill, down the other side and at the start/finish. I joined about 20 other bikes waiting half an hour to start another lap, cause there'd been an accident on the course and the ambulance had to clear out first. Dewald/Weskus popped over and said hi - cool to meet another Wilddogs rider, as to be honest I knew nobody else there - and another KDX rider to boot! Nice one, mate!
Thanks to Dewald's mate Bob for the pic.
Then we were free to go and I headed off again. The break had taken the edge off a bit, and I took it a bit slower this time. Also my hands were starting to bite. I'd fitted some new Pro Taper grips the day before, and this was the result:
Pretty nasty. Either I must go back to the Pro Grips I was using before or get busy with sticking plaster. Or I could always just harden the f&@% up!
I'm pretty tall, at 6'3", and I must say I still feel that the bike fit is a little small on me. I've got some tall Renthals on, and some Rox Raiser adapters which move the bars a bit forward, but I might look into some pegs that are located half an inch further back. Doesn't really make sense that one size of bike fits everyone from 5'3" to 6'3". And it's not so much the bar height as the horizontal distance from peg to bar where I'd like a bit more. Older bike designs like the KDX seem more afflicted with this bar-in-lap setup than more modern designs, but there's no fancy new bike on my horizon so I got to get this one to fit properly.
The rest of the lap passed without incident, but I did notice that both brakes started to need an awful lot of travel at the lever before biting, and the gear change started to feel quite slow and rubbery - so I think a gearbox oil change is probably way overdue. Some proper maintenance need this week. Both hands were killing me by the end of the lap, so I decided bike and I had had enough, and called it a day.
A tyre on my borrowed trailer blew out on the way home and buckled the mudguard into the bargain, but even that didn't ruin an awesome day out. My plan is to do every funduro and race I can fit in between now and the Amageza - it's definitely the best training on offer. It's also time to get onto the MX track. I've been focusing on the enduro loop at Zone 7 up to now, but I need to get more comfortable in the air, after jumping most of the drainage drifts on the open sections on Saturday, and nearly losing the front end on one of them.
All according to plan, so far, though. The KDX is doing just what I wanted - pushing the technical skills, making me more adventurous and aggressive, and upping my speed in the tighter sections. And it's just a hell of a lot of fun. Seriously, I've had amazing days out on the big bike, but this just takes it to another level without fear of expensive damage - I mean, these things were designed to be tossed down rocky slopes after all!
Topic: Racing Panda's AWESOME AMAGEZA 2014: START TO about halfway. (Read 51077 times)