Romaniacs Here We Come!

2013 Redbull Romaniacs

I am happy to announce that we will be headed back to Romaniacs for 2013. It has taken me some time to get things sorted out, but it has all come together. This year I am taking on a bigger challenge, I will be competing in the event.

As you may recall from last year, I had the opportunity to travel to Romania to help blog the 2012 event. With a bike, GPS and computer in hand, I traveled around the course to provide live updates for the RedBull Romaniacs website during the race. As the events unfolded, I ended up riding much of the course anyway.

That was an unbelievably cool opportunity. The event was so much fun, a great mixture of beautiful trails and challenging terrain. But for all that, riding around as a spectator is just not the same as being a racer. So this year I will be racing. To be more specific, I will be racing AND doing the event blog. I will be doing live reporting from the course as I race.

How can I do that you might ask? Actually I will be relying on Neena for most of it. She will be along to help me a the main pit each day. The plan will be for her to write the blog using the details and photos that I can give her. So perhaps it would be more correct to say that Neena will be blogging about me as I compete. I have all the details arranged with event organizer Martin Freinademetz and chief blogger Christian Panny.

I will be getting a bike and race support from the Husaberg factory. That means I will get to pit alongside Jarvis, Galindo and Gomez.  I will be riding a FE350, the bike I feel most at home on. It was a tough call between the TE300 and the four stroke. We will just have to see how it plays out.

Dreaming of Romanics

I have to confess that one of my biggest challenges was deciding which class to ride. I really wanted to ride expert, but I had some practical issues to consider. Based on what I saw last year, my skills may not be up to riding the expert single class. I really need to ride the team class to have a helper buddy in the worst sections. I was not able to find someone I could pair up with for the expert class. It would need to be someone with nearly identical speed and skill so that one rider would not hold up the other.

Furthermore, I don’t have the best knees anymore. The one I injured in January is healing up well, but the ACL is gone. I believe it was torn a number of years ago. I compounded it with a crash in January that resulted in a partial tear of the MCL along with some bone bruising and minor fractures. But the MCL and bone are healing up well on their own. The point is, that I don’t really need to be jumping off the bike from any height riding extreme terrain.

With all that in mind I have chosen to ride the Hobby class. This is what we would call the sportsman class here in the states. I rode most of the Hobby course last year and it was a good challenging ride. If it rains, even the easiest sections could become extremely difficult.

My plan is to post here each evening about the events of the day. If I am too tired, I will have to task Neena with that job.

That is about all the news for the moment. Even though I am getting lots of support from the organizers and Husaberg, it is still a big commitment to get everything together for the race. I am on the look out for a major sponsor to step up to support the event content here on Enduro360. So if you can think of anyone, send them my way.

I will write more about our preparations in the coming weeks. I have already started on my training program for the July event . So stay tuned.

RedBull Romaniacs Website

2013 Romaniacs poster