Enduro Glory Part I Prelude

Before I begin my rambling about the race, I would like to introduce you to Enduro3 adventure race. 

Held once every year, it is one of the main attractions of Pune. The route is changed every year but the general area and finish point is same, being Panshet. Sponsored by National Education Foundation the race is claimed to be one of a kind adventure race in India.The race mainly has team participants of 3 persons whihc can consist of all men, all women or mixed. Apart from it there is the open category which is the longest and the hardest. Then comes the amateur which is not as hard as the open category but still poses a lot of challenge. Then there is the corporate, family, kids categories. the race encourages female participation by offering highest price money to mixed categories. More info can be obtained at the following link - 

http://enduro3.com/

The decision to take part in the race was as spontaneous as deciding to eat out on an evening. It was contemplated about for a month but never considered seriously by me or Nachiket. It was on the insistence of Padmini just before 2 hours to the close of applications that we decided to participate in the amateur category. Thus Team Lifecycle Racing was born, thanks to the sponsorship of Lifecycle Mall.  We would be a broken team, as all of us were recovering from injuries. 

I was recovering from my knee injury from the Mumbai – Pune race that was just 2 weeks prior to the Enduro. Nachiket had a bad knee as well and Padmini had a sore shoulder. Except for Padmini the only female member from our team, nobody else had done the race before. Nachiket and I were both been until recently sweating it out on our roadies. We were totally out of touch with our MTBs. Padi too wasn’t in touch. I had anticipated doing the race a month before and had trained alongside Ludmila, climbing Sinhagad with our bikes on our shoulders. That was plain crazy, carrying a 15 kg bike awkwardly on your shoulders and negotiating your way up the steep slopes of Sinhagad that too nonstop in about 45 minutes.

Sinhagad Training with Luda

Anyway with hardly any time to train as a team before the race, we sit and discuss logistics and strategies for the race. An evening with the Captain came a long way in preparing ourselves. Me and Nachya went and bought stuff for the race just 2 days before the race. Cleaned our bikes and made sure everything was ok. During all of our team meetings our main objective was to not get lost and at least complete the race that was the aim. Winning we hadn’t even considered. We were just going to give it our best shots. Little did we know that we were going to win the damn race.