RACE WRAP | AEC PUNTERS

There’s a fairly simple reason most trail riders never enter an Australian Enduro Championship round: they reckon they’re not good enough. Racing at national level sounds serious. There are factory trucks, ridiculously fast blokes, transponders, scrutineering, special tests and people who can disappear into the bush at speeds most of us wouldn’t attempt on a fire road.

Steve and Macca were exactly those blokes. Macca had done a handful of Transmoto events but had never committed to a racing series, while Steve had only been riding for three or four years and had never raced at all. Then ,ADB tester Jeff Briggs decided he was doing the 2026 AEC and figured it’d be more fun as a boys’ trip.

His recruitment strategy was beautifully dishonest. “I told Macca Steve was keen. Steve wasn’t keen. I told Steve Macca was keen. Macca wasn’t keen. So I just persuaded them without even knowing.” Salesmanship at its finest!

THE SALES PITCH

For Macca, the appeal was finally having someone to go racing with. He’d always loved enduro riding and had wanted to race, but rocking up to an event alone was enough to keep putting it off.

“I’ve always wanted to race but never really had sort of someone to go and do it with and sort of just rocking up to a race event by myself, so always been pretty daunting,” he says. “When Briggsy said, ‘Look, I’m doing it this year. I got a couple other boys keen,’ sort of just made that option a bit easier with the three and four of us travelling around together.”

Steve was an even bigger gamble. Most of his riding had been on tracks, he’d barely trail ridden and he certainly hadn’t spent years preparing himself for national-level enduro. “It was something that I’ve only been riding for three or four years, but sort of same thing in the back of my mind. I thought it was always something that I’d like to try. And yeah, who doesn’t love a boys’ weekend away with a couple of good mates?”

WELCOME TO THE AEC

Then they arrived at Roma. Before Round 1, Steve had never even ridden over a log. The opening test had 24 of the bloody things. Throw in a roughly 500-metre dry creek bed littered with rocks and suddenly this national enduro idea was looking slightly less intelligent.

“I’d been to one race. I just went to spectate with Brigsy a few years ago, so I sort of had in my mind that it was going to be something similar to that,” Steve says. “Then we got to Roma and we had time to walk the track. Logs everywhere and there was a dry creek bed that went for about 500 metres of just massive rocks. Every round was something completely new for me.”

Macca had plenty more bush experience, but racing the terrain was another thing altogether. “It was definitely an eye-opener to what they expect you to race on opposed to what I normally just go on a trail bike ride on and ride for five or six hours and cover 40 kilometres, where we’re going out to race flat-stick on these conditions.”

HOOKED AFTER ONE

Macca remembers sitting on the start line at Roma wondering whether he was about to get swallowed up. Even his Transmoto experience wasn’t much help because he’d never been the starting rider.

“Definitely nervous,” he says. “You had no idea on what times people were doing and sort of starting off, am I going to get passed? And it was dusty too, so you’d catch dust in front of you.”

The unfamiliar transponder system, timing and starting procedure quickly stopped being intimidating once they actually did it.

“Once we got that first lap out of the way and sort of knew the track and what it was like, then they seeded us after that. I tried to settle in somewhat of a groove, but no, I loved it. Once I did the first one, I was hooked.”

THE DUNGOG DESTROYER

If Roma introduced them to racing, Dungog introduced them to suffering. Steve was accustomed to doing three 20-minute motos. Instead, Saturday dished up close to eight hours on the bike before they had to wake up and do the whole bloody thing again on Sunday.

“Going into Dungog and riding for a full eight hours almost on Saturday and then getting up to do it again on Sunday was just brutal,” Steve says. “After the race, we walked across the road down to the creek to have a bit of a swim and I could hardly walk. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But yeah, I was glad that I just finished honestly.”

Macca reckons they covered close to 200km on Saturday and another 150km on Sunday. “Getting up Sunday morning to get back on the bike – as soon as you attempt to throw the leg over and then your arse hits that seat and then you got to grip the bars at all… But as soon as you’re sort of five minutes into riding, you loosen up a bit.”

Brigsy had an altogether different medical emergency. Chafing. “We had to go to town and get him Sudocrem,” Steve laughs. “It was like he had the biggest carrot up his arse walking.”

Brigsy’s defence? “I went in Dungog and bought like a tub of Sudocrem just so I could race the next day, just lathered my arse up.” National-level athletes, ladies and gentlemen.

THE BOYS’ TRIP

The racing was only half of it. Bikes were loaded into the trailer, everyone piled into one vehicle and they pointed it at whatever part of Australia the AEC was visiting next. They generally stayed in pubs or motels rather than camping, which meant hot showers, decent beds and enormous country pub dinners.

“Big country pub meals, which is probably the highlight of the trip, to be honest – the food,” Brigsy says. Then there was Macca. “Old Macca, he’s a sweet tooth, mate. Dessert every night. I’ve got a photo of every night having massive desserts.”

Roma set the standard for the road-trip chaos. Macca’s Silverado ran out of fuel on the way there, then torrential rain turned leaving the property into a four-wheel-drive event of its own. A property owner offered them a “shortcut”, which went about as well as shortcuts generally do.

“Mate, we tried to go out that way. I was bogged to my eyeballs and trying to turn the car around and boys were pushing,” Macca laughs. “We were third in line getting out. We ended up another hour and a half, two hours behind, and there was mud on the roof of me car all the way down the side of the trailer. Just an adventure, just a typical boys’ weekend away. Mud, four-drives and motorbikes. Good fun.”

And surprisingly, doing it as a group made the season reasonably affordable. They estimated each weekend at about $800 per person including race entry, fuel, accommodation and food. Sharing travel and accommodation was the secret, while neither Steve nor Macca chewed through a new set of tyres every round simply because they were racing.

FAT OLD DADS

All three raced Veterans, which Macca quickly discovered did not mean a field full of old blokes wobbling around.“When I told a few people I was doing it, I was racing a Vet class, a few people were like, ‘Oh, you’ll do pretty well in that.’ I don’t think they realise that you got the likes of Geoff Braico, who’s an ex-Australian champ, racing your Vets. You’re not racing against a bunch of old dudes who ride once every six months.”

But crucially, the field was big enough that Steve still found people around his pace. The seeding system meant he wasn’t constantly worried about ruining somebody else’s race and familiar faces soon became mates. By the end of the season they were messaging guys they’d met in the start queues and pits and organising rides.

“Even though they’re the front runners, they don’t walk around like they are,” Macca says. “They’ll still give you the time of day and chat to you. The whole event itself and the community was really welcoming.”

WOULD THEY DO IT AGAIN?

Absolutely. Macca now feels confident enough that he plans to tackle the NSW off-road series, even if it means turning up alone – a massive change from the bloke who initially found the idea of entering a race by himself daunting. Steve is keen for more racing too.

Nobody suddenly became Wil Ruprecht. They simply got better, found their own competition, rode places they never would have visited otherwise and discovered that the national championship paddock wasn’t nearly as intimidating as they’d imagined.

“If anybody’s interested or keen to do it, just get there,” Steve says. “There’ll be people that are very similar pace to them. The events are set up really well. If there’s anybody that’s keen to do it but nervous, I’d just say, just give it a go, just turn up. Once you get racing, the nerves go when you’re too busy to think about it.”

Was all the money, driving, sore bodies, chafed arses, pub meals, mud-covered Silverados and weekends away worth it?

“Absolutely,” Steve says. “The whole experience was really good. It wasn’t just the racing. It was travelling with your mates being able to talk about bikes and share your passion with other people.

That sounds like a bloody good reason to enter.