Surviving Hard Enduro - lessons learned from my first season

Last year was my first season of racing hard enduro as a beginner/intermediate rider.
Having done a bunch of other off-road racing, hard enduro was something I wanted to try for a long time, as I enjoy slow technical riding a lot more than the super fast stuff. So in 2023 I went ahead and signed up for every hard enduro race that I could get to within a day or so of driving, which ended up being 9 events overall.
I feel like I learned a lot throughout the season, and wanted to share some lessons that might help other novice riders get started in hard enduro.
I tried to keep it somewhat short and briefly go over what I feel are the most important items for your first hard enduros. Including fitness, nutrition, format of the events, bike setup, tire setup, and strategy.
I started this past season on a 2022 Husqvarna TE150i, which I used for the first 3 events. After that I moved over to a 2023 GasGas EC300 for the rest of the season, and it is what I'm riding as of the making of this video. Both bikes have their advantages, but there is definitely a good reason why 95% of the bikes at these events are 300cc two strokes.
Hope you find this video useful and feel free to leave comments/questions!
Chapters
1:22 Events
3:40 Community
5:45 Riding Techniques
8:50 Fitness tips
11:15 Bike prep
15:19 Before and at the races

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