Dakar Rally 24

Wow what a fantastic couple of days with the Adventure Riding Academy in Malaga!     

 Great riding, great crowd, great weather (well at least for the 2 days we were there eh guys?) – What more could you ask for? Set up by Patsy Quick (of Desert Rose Racing, rally support fame) the Adventure Riding Academy offer the unique package of tuition and support from novice all the way up to Dakar level.     

After a busy week working at Burberry and preparing for a work trip to Hong Kong the following week, Toby and I met at Victoria station on Thursday the 18th of February at 3.20pm on the platform for the 3.30pm Gatwick Express. I should add that Toby and I met at 3.20pm minus my kit bag which was the other side of the station in Left Luggage! (Nothing like fitting in a bit of CV training every chance you get so the mad-heavy -weight-bearing-sprint  was err…obviously all part of the plan…!)     

Patsy picked us up at Malaga airport, and I think the 4 time Dakar vet and owner/manger of an international support team and rider training company made a positive impression on Toby! This was confirmed when we met the Adventure Riding School/Desert Rose Team as they included multiple Dakar vets Zippy (Clive Town) and Matt Hall and local trail guru Paul. We we’re also lucky that the other clients (Chris, Vince and Paul) were great guys and experienced in their own right with Vince having done the Heroes-Legend Rally (along the old Paris- Dakar route) and Paul was preparing for the Tuareg Rally in Morocco in March. With all the experience and advice, time in the bar with the guys can be just as valuable as the riding time (honest Lucy – it’s all research!)     

Apart from being lucky with the weather (apparently they’d had enough rain for 5 years in the week before we arrived, it was then lovely for our two days!) We were also lucky enough to get a tailor-made package as we were straddling the end of one two-day course and the start of another.

DAY 1     

So on our first day we had Matt Hall leading Toby and Myself followed by Patsy and Vince – that’s what I call a good instructor-student ratio! All of us were tooled up with KTM400exc’s (which I wanted to get re-aquainted with as it’s a candidate for my training bike) We headed out to an area East of the hotel to get back into the swing of things after both Toby and I hadn’t been riding for 6 months. The terrain was great either wooded or bracken covered moor and mostly with a dirt or rock covering. But with trails everywhere! (OK some are only goat tracks – but still rideable!)     

The KTM400 admires the view to North Africa

Matt and Patsy were great, teaching us various general trail and technical skills such as extreme downhills on and off the bike,  with the engine off, and clutch braking and more rally applicable skills such as obstacle/river crossings requiring team work to manually haul the bike across. Not all the techniques were new (such as pre-loading the front suspension to lift or float the front wheel over obstacles) but knowing them in theory is very different to being able to do them whenever required! They are always worth practising and the that’s the great thing about these weekends  so you can practise and learn! (and why we were there) Racing Hare and Hounds events every month is good for fitness and consolidating skills but you haven’t got time to try anything new and can’t risk it in a race situation anyway!     

The most helpful thing I’ll take from day 1 is also the simplest – HEAD UP!     

Matt was shouting this at us, as we attempt technical rocky and rooty climbs and it was not in vain! Looking well forward makes such a difference to your balance, planning, composure and ability on the bike. But thinking about it afterwards I came to the conclusion that it’s good advice for any sport (for largely the same reasons) and taken further – looking ahead and holding your head up high is good for life in general (both physically and metaphorically!) So remember….HEAD UP!     

DAY 2     

That was more difficult the next morning after beers at the bar (rally research) the night before  we didn’t go mad but it was already dehydrated after a day on the bikes! But we were soon freshened up by a short blast up the road to the Sierra des Nieves mountains. I chose to ride a 690 today for a bit of variety and I knew it would be well suited to todays riding….     

Today was more rally focused. This means less technical trails- more gravel tracks and rocky mountain pass roads that requires a nice smooth flowing style at about 65% effort. This is for a number of reasons:     

• At 65% effort you should still be able ride at 70-80% of your max speed (in any sport and mechanical effort the last 10-20% of speed always requires a disproportionate amount of extra energy) so the tortoise and hare scenario is very applicable, but that doesn’t mean you can pootle round on the Dakar, you have to cover up to 900 kms a day so have to be going at a fair pace all day everyday, so you need to be able to do it all day…
• At 65% you’re saving yourself and your bike and more importantly you aren’t right on the edge so you can react to the unexpected when it happens (as it will, in the shape of a car coming round the next blind mountain pass or turning a corner to find the track gone under a landslide).
• 65% also allows some brain capacity to be given to higher mental tasks such as looking down to quickly read the road book directions, checking your bearing and making mental adjustments to your trip meter reading etc whilst trying not to hang the back end out over a cliff edge or letting the front dive in soft sand.

So we learnt another life applicable maxim – 65%  makes it easier and gives you spare capacity. Rallying is like life,  BETTER IF ITS EASY – WITH CAPACITY TO SPARE!     

We had a blast along some great dirt, rock, chalk and gravel roads. Even though we were in a National Park (that you can legally ride dirt bikes in!!! How cool’s that?) The terrain was so varied it was great, one minute you’d be going through a lush pine forest on mud then gravel roads (with the sun streaming through the pine mountain vista views, feeling like your in some American dirt bike lifestyle advert!)  only to climb up above the tree line (but below the snow capped peaks) over rock and chalk. The roads were good training, and there’s nothing like a single lane track with no barriers but a few hundred feet drop off to make you try and ride SMOOooth! !!          

A nice piece of feedback from Matt let us know that we are on track as far as ability and pace are concerned!   

We got back for 4pm so Toby and I could catch our plane home, the only benefit to come out of the 9 hour journey home (usual end-of-day-Easyjet-delays meant missing the last train home and getting back to SE London at 1.30am!) was the planning session that Toby and I did. We looked at what experience we’d need to get before 2012 Dakar and lined up rallies and events until the end of 2011. It’s not finalised as we wanted to run it past Patsy but look out for updates to the plan soon!  If you’ve made it this far you should also check out Toby’s own write up and blog at his Journey to Dakar blog.

So a big thanks to Patsy and Matt for some great rides and training and to Zippy, Vince and the Pauls for the advice and banter and a great weekend!     

Cheers – I can’t wait for the next Adventure Riding Academy weekend at their new venue at Ringwood!