Hobbies
The Trails of Enduro
Ten years ago, a life-long love of dirt (motor)bikes led Juan Corredor (Design Engineer, Witte) to Enduro – a form of motorcycle sport run on extended cross- country, off-road courses. Enduro consists of many different obstacles and challenges over a long course and riders are usually competing against a time clock instead of other competitors. The focus is on endurance through tough terrain. While you may be more familiar with the dirt track racing of Motocross, Enduro has a few defining characteristics: courses are mostly natural
terrain, marked out through woodland, with unique man-made obstacles added for excitement. Juan loves this sport, not only for the adrenaline-pumping races through the woods, water and dirt but because of the people he meets. There is a great sense of camaraderie amongst the riders as they challenge themselves to be better and help one-another to be successful. Riders, including Juan, need to know how to fix and maintain their own bikes – sometimes in the midst of a competition and it isn’t unusual to see other competitors helping out a fellow rider. The competition season runs from October to June in the southern part of the US and Juan usually competes once or twice during each of those months. When he is not competing, he is out on the
trail every weekend practicing for 5 or more hours a day. The last four races that Juan has competed in he placed 4 th or 5 th and is looking to move up a level at the start of the next season. He now has three bikes and can choose which bike to use based on the technical difficulty of the course. If the course is known to be really challenging, he picks the bike with the best suspension and electric start. Is Enduro safe? Unlike motocross, Enduro isn’t necessarily about speed and jumps. “Safe” might be a stretch…. but, according to Juan, if you get the right power of motorcycle for your skill level, and you seek out advice from experienced Enduro riders, your chances of getting hurt will be greatly reduced. To his point, Juan’s first day out on a new motorcycle, he went to ride with friends, lost control and ended up breaking his wrist. Since then, he has had a few other accidents, but nothing severe enough to keep this adrenaline junky off the trail.
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