A 24 hour Enduro!

So there’s this crazy event called ‘Dawn to Dusk Enduro’, it’s basically a 24hr enduro race around Walters Arena down in South Wales. The race starts at 7pm and finishes at 7pm the following day, the aim of the game being to get as many laps in as possible during the 24hrs. The first twelve hours are on a shorter ‘night loop’ with the following 12hrs being on a longer ‘day loop’.

We competed in this event last year (2022) as a 3 man team, which included us 2 & Dad. All was going well until Dad dropped his bike, he ended up damaging tendons and fracturing some bones in his thumb so we rode the rest alternating the laps. Cut a long story short, we did ok, it was brutal on the bike, body and mind! After we got our finishers medals, we looked at each other and said “well we ain’t doing that again” – our wives laughed us! About three days after the event, once our bodies had recovered… “I reckon doing it solo would be good crack” – our wives response “we knew that was coming!”

When we decided to head to Dakar, this event sprung straight into the diary for training. Not for fitness but for the mental side of it. This event is a total head game, when do you pull in? When do you stop for food? Do have a small sleep? You’re tired, you’re aching, blisters have started in places you really don’t want them to… and that’s just three hours in! Only another 21hrs to go!

We put the entries in; Carl went for the 24hr solo and Craig opted for the 10hr night race, only because he had other things on. We also managed to persuade our brother-in-law Scott to enter the 24hr solo as well, he’d never raced his bike prior to this, fair play to him for that! Before we knew it we were heading down to Walters Arena to give it a go. We also had Carls’s wife Marie, Scott’s wife/our sister Kristiana & their friend Miles come with us, to help keep us fed, watered and kit prepped.

It had been raining most of the week down there and the bad weather was to continue through the race. All prepped and ready to go, we got down to the start line and off we went. Carl was first off in the expert class, followed by Scott in the clubman class and then Craig in the night race. We all got absolutely covered within 5 minutes of the first lap, it was a mud fest! It wasn’t long before we were back in swapping goggles and getting the helmets with the lights on as it went dark. Craig came in, as his head light was shining too high, which he altered. Carl came back in, the old helmet he’d put the light on was falling to bits and irritating him so swapped it for a helmet with no light. He also noticed that he’d cracked his LED head on the bike and couldn’t see much with that at all, luckily we had “borrowed” a spare headlight from dads bike so he could swap it. Scott was pulling in for fuel and food/drink but kept it going nicely.

As the night went on, come around 01:30am in the morning Carls bike started to throw steam out, he pulled over to check the bike and there was steam pouring from it. He could barely see and the rain coming down, in Carl’s words “my head was gone, I was done, I wanted to get some sleep and see how I felt when I woke up”. Around an hour later, Scott pulled in, feeling pretty tired and noticed that Carl’s bike was parked up and his kit was on the floor at the van “When I see that Carl was done, it seemed like a good time for me to pull in and get some sleep”. Craig was on one, his laps were looking good, although it was super rough and very challenging. He kept it going, every time he stopped, Miles was there to help clean his goggles, fuel the bike up, get Craig a drink and send him back out. Then as Craig come through the finish line at 5am (ish) the chequered flag went up for him, which meant that he’d won his race! What a result, 20 laps done! He then pretty much climbed into his bed and went to sleep.

As the morning broke through… Carl & Scott were still asleep! They were both woken up by the siren of the 12hr day race starting, meaning they were now half way through the race. Carl still not keen on going back out, had noticed that Miles had cleaned both bikes and they were ready to go back out. Marie and Kristiana got the breakfast and coffees on the go, and then the motivational talks started to get us both back out there. Carl went out and did a lap of the longer ‘day loop’ which took around 50min to complete, the track was brutal! By the time Carl came back in, Scott was ready to go back out so they both went out together for a chilled ride around. There were bikes everywhere, some guys were stuck on climb, so Carl & Scott stopped to give them a hand before setting off again.

The day went on pretty much the same, chilled riding, no rushing just trying to get through it. Scott mentioned “that’s it now, the bike is riding me, I can’t hold much more”. Good old Miles was keeping the bikes going each time we pulled in, the girls were getting food sorted for us and that good old “goooo onnnn, get back out there” talk. Carl made the decision to get 20 laps completed and he’d then call it a day, Scott thinking the same that he’d get one more lap in as well, so we both went back out to get the last lap in.

That was us done, 7pm came, the chequered flag went up, all we had to do was cross the finish line and collect our finishers medal and say “I’m never doing that again”. We packed up the bikes & kit, drove down to McDonald’s and smashed a few burgers in us, we were done! After a decent nights sleep, we were on clean up, the bikes and kit were a mess, it took us around 5hrs from start to finish.

So was it worth doing? No… Yes… No… Yes… Yea looking back it was a great event, well ran by the D2D guys. Although it was hard work all round, it did exactly what we wanted it to do, test the endurance of… everything! I’m sure it’s on the cards for next year again, all three of us have said that we’d do a few things differently.

We wanted to say big thanks to Marie, Kristiana and Miles for all the help & support throughout the event, we genuinely couldn’t have done it without you! Carl & Scott would probably still be asleep there now if it wasn’t for you guys. Also a big shout out to 24MX & Raven for supplying us with literally a full kit to do the race in, it was awesome and looked very cool!

Thanks for reading this Blog, if you haven’t seen the Vlog on YouTube, head over and watch it, it’s a good one. Thanks to Kristiana for capturing it all.

Cheers

Carl & Craig