Road To Romania with Chris Birch – Red Bull Romaniacs 2011

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Chris Birch will defend his Romaniacs title in 2011. Road to Romania is a six part series that documents this journey and competition. Part One sees Chris back at home in New Zealand where he reflects on his preparations and the path that lead him to victory last year in the toughest multi day Enduro in the world, The Red Bull Romaniacs. Check out the a muddy and challenging Enduro race from Riverhead in Auckland, New Zealand where Chris starts his long Road to Romania.

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Join me Chris Birch on the road to Romania Enduro riding I mean it looks pretty similar to Motocross but rather than just going round around in circles on a closed-in track we’re out in the mountains during big days normally we’re on the bike for about sort of six

Between six and ten hours in our race and covering big distances there’s no real strict definition of what makes an Enduro course is riding this is a bit much my family’s hugely supportive of the racing Monica when Alberto had absolutely zero interest in motorbikes at all and now

She’s put through mechanic boss really really valuable having here at the races it’s just so nice to have someone there that’s purely there for me my parents are both bike mad and follow everything that I do that’s really nice actually to come back here and still be able to go

Riding with my parents the three big ones for this year the biggest races are erzberg and Austria Ripple romaniacs in Romania and the roof of Africa yeah Red Bull romaniacs is uh that’s the my favorite one by far that’s five days in the cafe thin mountains yeah that’s just

The big one that I want to win obviously won it for the first time last year nice to try and defend it I think there’s only one guy two of one big ball of Romania expected there it’s a shield free it’d be really cool with the second

Person to do that most of the the really nasty stuff in Romania is in the forest in the cafe in mountains so there’s lots of big climbs in the sense and big altitude changes they love to put you down through rivers and swamps and anything they can find the first

Romaniacs I did we did enough climbing to actually get from sea level to the top of Mount Everest Martin the organizer his favorite thing is ridiculously steep downhills like downhills that you can ride down you’ve got to get off and hold on to the bike and slide down together and then there’s

The the guys that make all the man-made stuff that rather than just make a straight Bridge across the river they’d rather make a seesaw or a shaking wobbling bridge that gets people falling off yeah the finish line on the top of the building’s pretty unique to romaniacs it’s this half-built hospital that they

Never got around to finishing it and yeah it’s pretty pretty gnarly to build this big sketchy slippery ramp onto the roof and then you’re about seven or eight stories up riding on the peak of the roof to the Finish Line the first year I did romaniacs it was

Just me and a friend coming out from New Zealand and we had to had the bike and kind of did our own thing you know that’s how we’ve always had it in New Zealand there’s we don’t have huge support so we’re actually pretty used to sorting things out for ourselves and

Since then you’re getting a bit more success and the events got bigger we now have the full backing of Kate of Acadian Factory the build up for romaniacs over the next month or so it’s actually really full-on it’s starting with this race in New Zealand a

Bit more mud training so that’s a big part of Romania and we don’t get to do much of that in South Africa the the race coming up is I think around five of the New Zealand Enduro championships it’s going to be really mud lots of deep clay deep ruts and tree roots

Yeah there’s actually a really strong competition the New Zealand Euro championships now they’re the top sort of half dozen guys have all got a lot of international experience and they’re all training really hard and it’s not an easy series to win anymore the big thing today is to just get that experience in

The mud and not do anything too stupid try not to get injured try not to trash my bike too much and just yeah enjoy the day really foreign looks like I’ve got somewhere around second so not a total disaster it’s not really the result I wanted but you know

It’s good to get the practice in the mud it’s a good reminder that I need to brush up on those mud skills before romaniacs we don’t know if 100 if it’s going to be wet or dry but if it’s wet I’ve got to be prepared and it’s doing

Things with us that will make that happen