2025 Romaniacs Adventure Bike Class – 10 things we learned
Enduro21 took a brand new Yamaha Tenere 700 Rally to the 2025 Red Bull Romaniacs Hard Enduro Rallye in the new Adventure “Ultimate” bike class. Here’s what we learned racing a big bike at the world’s toughest multi-day extreme enduro race.
From the moment we heard Romaniacs organisers were planning new classes specifically for Adventure bikes we put our names down. Wanting a new challenge at the infamous race – though not particularly wanting the next-level slog of riding the main classes on a big bike – this felt like something to be in at the beginning and support, or rather to continue to support as Enduro21 has been behind Romaniacs for a couple of decades now.
Little did we expect how hard it would be physically, how massive a test it would be for a standard Yamaha Tenere (a test it passed amazingly but probably isn’t the best way to run in a bike!), how awesome the atmosphere and camaraderie would be among the thick of it and ultimately how much it would restore some lost faith in hard enduro sport…nor did we expect to go viral with a crash video.
With a week or so to digest it and recover, this is what Romaniacs ’25 on an Adventure bike taught us.
It’s easier but in no way easy on an adventure bike
From the get-go, in the city prologue, the big bikes had an easier task compared to the enduro bike classes. We’ve done the silver class here twice and know how hard this race can be – you enter this event with a certain amount of knowledge this WILL be one of the hardest things you ever do on a bike.
So as the sun was coming up on a Tuesday morning at the end of July, suddenly you’re riding over the extraordinary construction down aa main street in Sibiu. Even though they laid down some extra wood (later removed) to make it easier for the big bikes, the first thing you do at Romaniacs as a rider is become part of the madness and its spectacle.
These qualification runs are a minute of madness and not a patch onteh long, hard days ahead but they set the tone for us in the Adventure bike classes on the easiest of the many marked courses but a challenge enough given the size and weight.
How hard is it?
For 90% of the time it was not technically difficult in either the Adventure Ultimate class (the one we raced) or the Lite class. Only a couple of times each day did you need a good level of enduro skills to get through a section with the least amount of effort but nothing was impossible.
Make no mistake the organisers work incredibly hard to tailor each route (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Iron, Atom, Adventure Ultimate and Lite, Electric Expert and Hobby) to a certain level.
The only times it got technically hard were more to do with the size and weight of the bikes because something you would call easy enough on an enduro bike has a new dimension.
A handful of times during the four off-road days it was the congestion on track which caused the problems, making it harder than it would be if you had a clear run.
But, and it’s a big but, Romaniacs firmly remains a hard enduro rally so you will be challenged whichever class you enter, and it was a physical challenge to haul a big bike around for four days.
Romaniacs hills kill you
What makes riding any bike at Romaniacs difficult for many people is not so much the technical challenge of a hillclimb, or a steep descent, but how damn long the hills are.
Maybe you’ve ridden steep hills before in an enduro and, if you get up in one go, it probably takes you not long, let’s say 30 seconds to get up. Romaniacs hills go on for 30 minutes not 30 seconds.
A long, uphill rocky climb, something like an uphill dry riverbed, you’ve got a problem to keep momentum going on an adv bike and the physical effort to stand up on the pegs and keep working, moving your body, legging, clutching and pushing…it’s rapidly exhausting.
The downhills can be the same. We don’t remember any of the insanely steep downhills you get in Gold or Silver classes (and see so much on social media), only a couple of times did we turn the engine off and creep down, with the bike in gear, but never got off the bike to walk it down.
The problem is they go on so long that the physical effort of holding your weight back and controlling the brakes and bike is amplified massively and, after four days, hard work.
Invest in some wheels and fit enduro tyres
Changing the standard wheels to use enduro tyres was our one, major change to the standard Yamaha Tenere 700 Rally.
The Adventure classes had many different bikes from standard models like ours to something close to a MotoGP bike like Pol Tarres.
But the two big mechanical adjustments we’d recommend as vital would be switching the stock wheel rims to allow the fitment of enduro tyres and mousses (there are a lot of rocky trails), plus upgrading your suspension.
We fitted a set of Envy wheels to our T7 with a narrower rear rim size to enable fitting Mitas medium enduro tyres and mousses. These proved perfect and gave the right amount of good wear versus squish and grip on the big bike. They’re soft on the road but that’s not the priority here.
Don’t go soft or extreme like the riders do in the enduro bike classes because the weight of the bike, speed and power will destroy them. The medium set-up was bang on the money and lasted two days (we used two sets of tyres and mousses).
Having some suspension work done is an upgrade we’d do next time as well. The standard Rally edition of the Tenere 700 has upgraded KYB suspension but even so, we were maxed out from day one. It needed more stability to make riding as fast as we wanted less hard work on the trail. A bit more control of the chassis would help physically and reduce rider fatigue.
* Worth noting that on day two, riders in the Adventure Lite class, many of which had standard rims, found one of the hills really difficult. Dual sport adventure tyres made it a tough ask on a big bike. If it had been wetter life would have been harder for everyone also.
They love a dramatic ending each day
Right, you’ll no doubt have spotted some of the social media videos from the Romaniacs off-road day finishes, Enduro21 even went viral with one…
It’s a feature of Romaniacs that they like to build a few ramps and bridges at the finish to create a bit of drama for the spectators.
Some of them are stupid, to be honest, especially when viewed from behind the screen of a 200kg bike. Others look more dramatic than they really are and cause crashes because of nerves not because it was hard. If you have a bit of experience doing extreme enduro, or better still trials riding, they’re not so bad.
They usually a couple of choices: normally do the jump or a harder, slower “chicken line” which naturally takes longer but is, in theory, safer.
Even by Romaniacs standards – we doubt say this without experience or lightly – sending people blindly over a river jump into a soft, uphill landing is a bad idea. It is a miracle someone wasn’t very seriously injured on day three.
Not lacking the confidence to do the jumps, it was more the fact you arrive blind at the face of the ramp and have no clue of the gap, gear or speed over the edge. It was like being a lemming jumping off a cliff, only on a 200kg-plus Adventure bike.
As a consequence, riders in the Adv classes were blowing out their suspension and injuring wrists or ankles from day one and it was with that in mind we recommended erring on the side of caution…just watch out for the shoddy carpentry. The bridge “incident” was a right royal pain but it was a better plan than having no shock absorber for two days or a broken ankle.
You get a lie-in
One great thing about the Adventure bike category schedule is being at the back each day so we set off at usually around 9am. What a peach that was after so many years getting up at 4:30 and 5am to be at the off-road race start!
It’s called a rallye for a reason
Having done Romaniacs a couple of times previously we knew the score with the daily GPS routes, the time checks, the neutralised liaison sections and the general need ot be on the ball with your time keeping.
If you’re not used to this element it takes some brain space to make sure you’re following the rules and in the right place at the right time – although the organisers go to great lengths to help you.
It’s simple stuff really: you have a departure time given the night before, collect your GPS from the paddock start each morning around 30 mins before departure, get electronically ticked off at each check, take note of your time at the start of liaisons and service areas to check out on minute, and get ticked off at the end of the day before handing in your GPS.
GPSs are handed out each morning at the paddock or parc ferme with your daily route loaded in. They load the following day fresh overnight and also use them as a way of tracking riders aren’t cutting the course or speeding in neutralised zones. They’re also part of the emergency protocols for a race which they take seriously.
Riding the big bikes brought home this rally element of the Romaniacs Hard Enduro Rallye, more so than in the past. It made more sense and was part of the enjoyment.
Take some cash money
Your entry fee is a lot for this race but it does go a long way at Romaniacs. Hats off to the organisers for soaking up four new classes this year with the same level of planning and success.
From well before the race you get lots of info sent and there are no excuses if you don’t know what’s going on. It’s pretty clear from daily briefings and rider information on the RBR website, and even WhatsApp messages, what you should be doing and when.
We opted for the accommodation package too which takes away any planning you might have by sorting a good hotel, includes your daily evening meal and guarantees a hot shower.
The only niggle in terms of event planning came on the middle night at the marathon bivouac. No rider support from mechanics and teams between service point on day two to service point on day three meant you carry what you can and fix what you need to yourself. That’s how marathon rally stages work.
When we arrived at the finish of day two, a decent sized city with enough hotels to accommodate the 600-odd riders, we did a bike check and left it inside parc ferme in the town square overnight. It was an impressive sight.
But it would have helped to have a few tools at that point and can or two of maintenance spray and chain lube. There weren’t any despite the event having an oil and tool company as a major sponsors.
Taxi driver roulette & Russian Gulags
Opt for the accommodation package and your life is easier, especially on that marathon stage. You get off your bike, collect your bag and belongings (they van out to the parc ferme) and go find your allocated hotel for a shower.
Some riders get to stay in the fancy Ramada hotel, next to the parc ferme. Some of us were several kilometres away and had to take a total of four taxi rides back and forth from the parc ferme, the hotel for the evening meal and start the next morning – each time costing extra money.
What they don’t tell you is half the taxi drivers don’t want to take you anywhere because you’re wearing riding kit, and those that do will charge you three or four times as much as a normal fair.
Make no mistake the midweek overnight experience was a million times better than a decade or so ago when they put us up in something like a Russian Gulag. But still, some people had it way easier than others and it was a. good job we had some cash stashed.
Watch out for riders playing hide and seek
Riding the Adv classes makes life pretty easy in terms of navigation and following the daily routes. Most of the time you follow tracks other classes have laid down in the dirt and with the blue tape on trees, it is easy.
That said a lapse in concentration for a second makes a small navigation error dead easy. A rider in front might lead you up the wrong path or sometimes there are so many lines in different directions it looks like riders are playing hide and seek in the trees.
Sometimes you can arrive at a point in the forest or mountains where lines in the dirt go off in different directions and that’s when you need to get your head down and make sure you’re on the right path, zoomed right in on your GPS.
Occasionally the route planners make it deliberately tricky by sending you up a goat path close to, but not on, a wider track so you can never switch off completely.
FYI the course is marked with signs for each class at points where one class or more might take a different track (G for Gold, U for Ultimate and so on).
One GPS or two?
Some people use two GPS units to help navigation while others in the Adventure class were also using expensive tablets on their bikes.
Two is quite common, especially with the Gold class riders like Jarvis, Lettenbichler and Bolt, who have one zoomed out and the other set to 20 or 30 metres magnification. Jonny Walker had this on his Triumph Tiger 900.
If navigation comes pretty easy to you then one is enough – we only used one – although we did have a problem with the batteries running out after four hours or so of riding and had to switch out for a spare set most days. The organisers put fresh batteries in your GPS each day but they ain’t the best.
“Always trust the GPS”?
Despite the organisers saying, “if in doubt, always follow the GPS route”, occasionally the GPS path isn’t correct.
On days two and three the GPS route was physically in a river while the actual marked track was several metres away (and not visible on the GPS screen). Because we know the course planners here are slightly mad, you question if you should actually be in the river or not, despite it being impossible, even if we were using kayaks.
Their words “always trust the GPS” would have drowned you and your bike in this case and though they wouldn’t admit it, there are times when you have to trust your instinct and not the GPS.
Bike repairs? What bike repairs?
Ok, a slight issue with a see-saw and a bridge did mean the front fender needed repairing but otherwise the Tenere was completely up for this challenge.
Looking around the pit area in our camp there were some seriously damaged enduro bikes from the different classes, and some battered riders it must be said.
It’s hard to imagine the Yamaha designers had quite this in mind when they designed the T7 but not only did it withstand the crashes, it out-lasted other Adv bikes around us which were burning clutches, blowing out suspension issues and breaking components.
For the record we changed the front fender, fitted a new chain at the final service point after a stick brought the original chain off and bent a couple of links, plus changed the rear brake pads as a precaution on the final day. Apart from the that it was just two sets of tyres and two rear mousses (two days on each front and rear tyre).
One time the clutch got hot (the lever biting point came in closer the bars) on a tough uphill section but a minute letting it rest and cool before going again cured that. The replacement front fender was a sawn-off YZ250 front mudguard BTW.
* We’ll run a YouTube video all about the bike, what we fitted and how it stood up to the test asap.
A support crew helps massively
We paid for the services of a very experienced crew, Eurotek, who’ve been helping riders at Romaniacs and Sea to Sky and more major events like this for decades. They transported our bike to Romania and helped service it (and rider!).
In the past we’ve driven ourselves to Romania and been more DIY, but it proved to be a real bonus this time and we’re not sure we’d ever go back.
Having friendly faces, laughing with you and at you each day is worth a million dollars to get through the daily hard slog of Romaniacs. When you need help, you really need help and having those hands on deck was massive.
Having Sonya and the team in the service camp, doing those quick jobs (you only get 20 minutes), the jam and peanut butter sandwiches, topping up the hydration bladder with a Ride Nutrition tablet or two and sending us on our way was so well-worth it.
Romaniacs is the best riding you’ll ever do
To wrap it all up and tell you what we’ve told anyone who’s asked since we got back home from Romaniacs 2025, this was one huge experience and one of the best riding experiences we’ve ever done on a dirt bike. It was that good.
The T7 was a little unwieldy at times, and needed a suspension tune to be less physical, but the bike was so reliable and up for it you have to take your hat off to Yamaha for building a bike this capable and robust.
It also re-ignited our enthusiasm for hard enduro. After a few years of shenanigans where the Hard Enduro World Championship races are confused about what hard enduro really is, shifting events too much in favour of the Red Bull sponsored riders and away from where the sport grew, plus having done too many events where we’ve sat still in a queue for as long as we were riding, Romaniacs ’25 restored the faith in the sport. It was four long days but hugely rewarding.
The event is very well organised and they deserve credit for pitching four new classes this year and getting it about right first time. Plus for being brave with electric bikes where other high profile races (and the FIM) have simply made excuses. All are welcome at this race and it is all the better for it.
If you ignore all the madness of the Gold class riders doing their circus act, Romaniacs is probably the best enduro riding you will ever do. You can now do it on an adventure bike too. Try it.
Photo Credit: Red Bull Romaniacs + Future7Media | Andrea Belluschi
