Endure (vb) - to undergo (hardship, strain, etc) without yielding
Enduro (n) - An unrivalled opportunity to practice the above 
Well, like most people I was anxiously checking three websites the night before the race - TCC, the Enduro organisers' own page, and the weather forecast for western Tokyo. However as time wore on, none of these offered any good news, with the forecast steadily worsening and no sign of the event being cancelled. Sure enough, looking out the window early Sunday morning showed heavy cloud, roads glistening with surface water and a few hardy people with their umbrellas up. But apparently the event was still on. I can honestly say, had it not been a team race I would have gone straight back to bed and stayed there.
I had already decided to take the soft option of the train to the event start, as I was recovering from a bad cold. However the soft option got even softer; instead of riding 8km to Yotsuya and jumping on the Chuo line, Naomi-san and I rode 2 minutes to the nearest station and got on the train there.
Arriving at Nishi-Tachikawa we saw a few others from TCC who had also decided to brave the weather. Peer pressure is a terrible thing! We huddled in the station concourse, looking across grey, rain-spattered concrete towards the locked gates of the park, and unpacked our bikes.
Eventually we could delay no longer and walked our machines to the sign-in area. There was no fixed shelter at all, although some of the better equipped teams had Easy-Ups, tents and so on. Fortunately for us all, Travis had brought a tarp which we managed to hang from the branches of a tree.
The TCC 'A' team had a last minute discussion about who would roll out first; and we decided Thomas should be our lead man, with me next, then Deej and then Phil. Our plan was to do three laps before changing riders, with a total time of about 25 minutes for a session. I saw several of the TCC team riders, including Naomi-san and Thomas, towards the front of the field for the parade lap, then the start of the race was called and the speed of the field increased. I waited in the 'Pit' area, next to the change-over lane, which gradually became more and more muddy and churned up as the race went on.
Thomas came in on schedule and we did a quick change of the ankle-band transponder and I set off for my first session. This was my first enduro so I was not sure of the course.
The first corner was slippery with mud that had been dragged from the pit/change over area so I tiptoed round, finally getting on the power as the straight opened up in front of me. Water was coming from every direction; flung up by the tyres of my bike, plumes of spray from other riders' wheels, rain falling from the sky. I couldn't see any groups at all that might offer a chance to draft (and a chance to get even more thoroughly sprayed), so simply put my head down and went for it. The rest of the course was OK with only one tight turn at the south-east corner to get round; the rest of the turns could be taken pretty much flat out, until the last turn into the start/finish straight. On my second lap I caught Sergey who had been out since the starting gun; he was still riding strongly and I tried to offer him a little shelter from the wind. We rode together till the end of my session, when he came in as well.
Waiting between racing sessions was an exercise in trying to stay warm. Any body heat built up over the 3 racing laps quickly went away. I wore an extra fleece, hat and gore-tex shell which went some way to staying warm.
My second session was pretty much as the first, although the rain was easing, and the start/finish straight increasingly resembled a mountain bike course. Some riders were having trouble with their cleats binding up in the mud, and Charles and Shinobu-san nearly fell down as they came in to change. Luckily other TCCers were on hand to catch them.
The clock ticked on, and we were still on-track, and managing fast change overs when we needed to, especially compared to some of the teams who seem very relaxed about the time wasted in the change-over area. In the last 15 minutes of the race, no changes are allowed, and we wanted to bring Thomas in just before the cut-off, so he wouldn't be out for too many laps. As it turned out, he did a single, fast lap and I went out to finish the race. I crossed the line after two laps, just before 4 hours. I didn't realise that the racing is over at that point, so was still going for it on my last lap, until I caught up with Naomi-san who told me the race was already over. Oh well.....I did go for it anyway on the second-to-last lap to make sure I got across the line before the 4 hour mark, so there was probably no difference in the end.
We ended up 8th, with one lap less than last year's TCC 'A' team which is not too bad considering the conditions and the lack of drafting. Congratulations of course to all the TCC riders; thanks to Sora-san for organising the race entries and the splendid bonnenkai afterwards and to everyone who turned up.
Interesting things I saw along the way:
- Several Moultons
- A recumbent tricycle
- More riders wearing Marigolds (rubber gloves) than I've ever seen, ever
- Endless variations on headgear to try to keep the rain out
- A Surly Pugsley
- A folding bike with a disc rear wheel
- A couple of fixed-wheel bikes
- A couple of Santas
- A rider in a dinosaur suit
