Enduro: World's toughest ride

The Red Bull Romaniacs event in Romania has a series of near-impossible obstacles for entrants to negotiate. Three Taupo men are competing in it this week. Photo/ROMANIACS

The other side of the world's a long way to travel when you're looking for a tough-as-nails challenge.

But that's exactly where three Taupo men have headed this week - to Romania, to compete in the gnarliest off-road enduro motorbike race going.

Taupo riders Mark de Lautour, 49, his son Greg, 19, and Mark Haimes, 51, will spend the next five days tackling what's been billed as the world's toughest extreme multi-day motorbike challenge - the Red Bull Romaniacs.

The event sees 350 riders split into four different classes, from gold (impossible to ride) to iron (difficult, but not impossible) covering a variety of obstacles, from rocks to river crossings, mud bogs and near-vertical cliff faces.

Four days of it are spent in the mountains riding for long hours in extreme situations, with huge altitude changes.

Riders must carry a GPS and survival equipment and complete each day within a pre-determined time limit.

This year is Haimes' first entry in the Red Bull Romaniacs, while Mark de Lautour is about to ride his fifth Romaniacs event, and his son Greg his second.

De Lautour senior says while there's no doubting the Red Bull Romaniacs is extremely tough, it's also great fun, and that's what's seen him return time and again.

"It's just different, and the countryside is pretty cool," he says. "You travel up to a couple of hundred kilometres a day and you don't do any tracks twice so that's 800km of not doing the same thing, just out in the wilderness.

"There's no fences and no boundaries so one minute you're riding through someone's back yard, next minute you're on top of a mountain.

"There's a lot of places in the world you can't do that, so it makes it a little bit unique."

De Lautour senior has had some good results in the Romaniacs too, taking second place in the expert class (the predecessor to the silver class) one year and says the course has become harder each year.

Haimes said the Romaniacs event had been on his bucket list for some time and it had been good to have a challenge to train for.

He has been preparing for the event for six months, working on his core strength as well as his riding.

"There's a lot of pushing involved and dragging your bike and trying to get through different obstacles but a lot of it's also time on the bike," Haimes says.

The Taupo riders will be riding Italian off-road enduro Beta two-stroke motorbikes that they're hiring specially for the Romaniacs event.