Gushing alert – Yes, today there is a LOT of gushing… Like, embarrassing amounts… I need to preface the post by making sure that my eventual literary and essentially physical gushfest about being on mission again AND the new Nomad 3 is totally transparent, and I fully confess to nausea inducing levels of frothing. Adding to that, like a Tiger that patiently waits for a taunting Zoo visitor to jump into its pit, I am going to unleash a savage attack of photos and words, so get the coffee first.

This trip is all about ENDURO baby… So, with that in mind, its important that we give an outline of what a day of ENDURO looks like. Astute readers may notice that it looks suspiciously like a day of trail riding, but please don’t be easily fooled. Allow me to elaborate on all the key ingredients that go into an awesome day of ENDURO fever.

1. The EnduROO

Difficult to source, but Dok did well to turn on the first key ingredient to a quality day of ENDURO action by having an EnduROO lined up for us. The wolf asked me why a giant Cat with arms was in the backyard, a sure sign its time for him to move out of Asia:

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EnduROO – Comes standard with built in Enduro bum bag

It was noted throughout the day, that no matter what we did, no one could match the jumping of the EnduROO. The plan for tomorrow is to ambush it, to either have a boxing match or burgers, depending on who gets the upper hand. The Teacher outlined to me they are protected here, but I’m sure there’s a loophole if skippy is trespassing.

2. The EndurUTE

If you have a normal car, station wagon or even a van you definitely can’t go ENDURO man… Van’s are more for DH and cars are firmly in the XC nerd zone. #Dirtytip: If you show up at the car park with a BMW 1 series that’s colour coded to your bike (true story) then any number of atrocities could ultimately be inflicted on you. Yes, the only way to make sure your day is full ENDURO is to have a UTE maaaaaaate or a cool SUV (A full list of acceptable vehicles to be published at a future date). Luckily for us, Herr Doktor has the codes for such a set up and quicker than you can say “Fuck those guys are a marketers dream” we were lined up and ready to go.

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SO close to perfect matching until one guy fucked it up and got the black frame… Sigh….

Before we could get underway though, Wolf mistakenly took a call, thinking it was the Santa Cruz marketing department calling, when in fact it was the Little Red Riding Hood Dept wanting to know where he ass was at… Like a seasoned PRO he deftly managed the situation while making sure all key product logos were displayed in bold white font for the shot:

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“Wolfie is fine honey… Yes, its quite hot and the traffic is terrible in Mumbai…”

As you can probably appreciate at this point… The build up is an essential component of ENDURO, so make sure you have plenty of faff time built into your time table. It was time for us to make a quick exit though, before a Google Drone could acquire the Wolf.

3. Enduroing all over the fucking show

Once you’ve logged enough faffing time, done a couple of laps of the car park, attempted & failed to pull wheelies about 7 times and posted a couple of pics on Instagram then you are fully ready to get the ENDURO action underway. As a guide, this therefore means riding as slowly as possible to the start of a real ENDURO trail. If you encounter a hard technical climb along the way, fight as to who can ride up it the slowest, AKA, the most ENDURO way possible. Keep knee pads on. Here the boys display the correct form at the start of the aptly named ‘Rocky Balboa’:

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Dok with a mild height and reach advantage…

Not only did Dok take the boxing round with a TKO, he also led the way with jumping style. Clearly inspired by Motoman’s antics in Whistler, plus with some crafty local knowledge on board, he set up making us take turns lying down in landing zones to snap pictures of his radness… A bit like being asked to sit under Godzilla while he bashes one out, if I can draw an appropriate parallel:

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Can you Fllllyyyy bobby?

I decided that it would be way more ENDURO to conduct a rear suspension bottom out test and confirm that my new Mavic ENDURO wheels (Yellow being the key give away of their eCredibility) could stand up to a good old fashioned casing:

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Might have to turn down that 2015 invite to Rampage…

Ohhhhhhh… Good to see my casing form is still epic. Finesse. Wolf’s black and white kit form was also as epic as my jumping form, here we see a shot of him getting furry on it down the top section of ‘Luvin Shovels‘:

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#doyouevenhaveawolfinyourcrewbro

Not to cause confusion with Downhill, but a key component of ENDURO is to jump off stuff as much as possible, the Dok displays the correct form and local knowledge here to provide us this little gem:

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“I told you not to flinch cunt!”

After a few trails its critical to schedule some mid ride ENDURO Faffing. Its our recommendation that you start with talking about stem length, holy fuck anyone with a stem over 50mm is in trouble… Helps if you also stop in the key entry point to a berm:

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“Is that a fucken 65mm on there?”

I have probably made it sound like ENDURO is all about riding around slowly and copious amounts of faffing, shit talking and consuming gels when you don’t need them. Yes, its all those glorious things, but then when its ON, its motherfucking on. Its occurred to me recently that fitness isn’t too bad at the moment, or so I thought… Towards the end of some of the runs here I was panting like a goat on heat:

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There’s an outside chance that the devil wheels may have carried a little more speed…. Damn it…

Speaking of the devil wheels, allow me elaborate on that for a moment, beware a mini bike rant:

4. The ENDURO weapon

So… Perhaps one of the most important aspects of the day, for some its even more important than the riding itself, so its worthy of mention. Yes, the machine. I have to say that my initial impression of the Nomad 3 couldn’t have been more incorrect. This… Thing… Is… INSANE! Holy fuck its brilliant, not just for its silky sex kitten lines and finish either:

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I just want to spend all my time and money on you!

Not sure where to start really and I think it deserves its own post in the near future, but this bike is simply amazing. My MTB fever was sky high after France, but this thing has taken that fever, multiplied it significantly and then doubled down on it in an exponential fashion. I LOVE riding this thing after one proper day on it.

It’s like riding the old Nomad, but suddenly everything is 70 to 100% better, even in ways you didn’t realise the old bike was lacking. Time and time again today I arrived into situations were I thought I would crash, get off line or be bogged down and oddly, as if by some sort of carbon sorcery black magic the thing just fucking blasts you through whatever it was and you’re on the other side going faster than any of your brain cells had been able to conceptualise.

I am literally having to rethink my approach given how capable this weapon is. It almost dumbs down trails, but then it makes you go so much faster it instantly reintroduces the complexity it had just removed. Does that even make sense? Am I frothing so much I now sound like that ineffectual idiot you want to spit water on in the meeting you are reading this post in? (send me a pic if you do, that’s golden material). All I know is that its love at first real ride with the Nomad 3.

5. The Artisnal ENDURO lunch

Given the high volume of ENDURO/Faffing activity from a solid morning, refuelling correctly is a critical element to a full eDay. The best way to ensure that you’re fully compliant is to find an Artisanal bakery/cafe and select its finest gourmet items. To best outline the correct process to follow, we have created this super easy to use Montage to follow:

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#Dirtytip – Possibly not the best approach if you have an afternoon riding session plan. Wolf displays the correct 4 to 5 Sauosage rolls suck face

The ENDURO lunch also needs to be washed down with a Solo, or any other local fruit/sugar based fizzy drink. For example, if you’re in France then you would swap out the Solo with an Orangina etc. Possible downsides if you have notoriously bad gas.

6. The Enduro Dessert

Your partner will love ENDURO as much as you do, invariably you don’t outline that it will take the WHOLE day, but its so rad that eventually they’ll understand and not want to stand in the way of your extremely important multi location pilgrimage. With that in mind, we decided that it would be important in the “spirit of ENDURO” to go and check out the stages that we’ll be racing on Saturday. Yes, call us French if you’d like, but I was that keen to race against the locals 100% blind… Especially when it turns out they have been conducting animal experiments using the Goat and the old Honda gearbox bike:

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The Goat goes large… So fucking rad he doesn’t even need a full face helmet

As a general rule of thumb, this is what you need to check to determine if its appropriate to walk slowly up a climb: “Can I ride it normally on my 29er?” If the answer is YES, then get the fuck off an start slowly pushing immediately. Ideally talk about Enve wheels or the EWS nonchalantly as you go. This is how its done:

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“Yeah, I will look at some ENVE wheels soon… Maybe Chris King hubs… Which colour decals guys?”

The Goat farm was a bit of a contrast to the morning session at Kalamunda, but with variety being a key feature of ENDURO, we were pretty happy to be able to get some French style secret training/cheating in on the Sunday race course. Views weren’t too shabby either, on ya WA:

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Gonna ENDURO the fucken Goat down

You know that you’re getting into some serious ENDURO when you start to ride in between taped off track… I knew I should have brought my eSpecific gloves FFS. Here Dok shows correct Goat Farm form as we explore the set up for race day:

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Like doing a u turn in an oil tanker…. In the Suez canal…

Being a bit rammed for time with the arvo ughh ughhh double up session, it was soon time to retreat to the Dok Lab and commence the essential post ENDURO ride check list:

  • Stroke your bike and outline how awesome it is
  • Check pinkbike.com
  • Upload to Strava before you shower, high 5 about PR’s
  • Talk about how rad the riding was
  • Feed the wolf a recovery gel
  • Say “Fuck yeah man” a LOT

Then, essentially, cap the day off with a proper ENDURO dinner, which looks something like this… Some may say that it looks a lot like a DH dinner @ 1am in Whistker, but nuh uh, its SO different – Take note of the salad in the top right and the fact that these are also Artisanal Pizza’s, #sofuckingendurorightnow:

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Rammed with veges, so basically ENDURO health food

So, that pretty much sums up day one here in Perth and I hope, gives you some valuable insights into what it takes to have a fully Enduroified day, the weekend is now upon us, so go out ASAP and try this formula. Just please make sure all your kit matches first and was purchased in the last 3 to 4 months max.

I’m a day behind in updates, but hold the phone as there is a super Saturday update to come!

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