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8 April »
Events »
Cory
I’ll be using this space to provide updates on the events that are taking place at the 2006 Sea Otter Classic. Don’t expect full race results but do expect outgoing links to websites that are offering solid perspectives on the event.
NorCal MTB Racing. Our friends over at NorCal MTB Racing are participating in the event and providing solid updates on what’s going on. Head on over — it’s well worth a visit.
Update (8 April 2006): Pinkbike.com. Pinkbike has a short piece that covers the early stages of the event and provides some great shots at new gear. There’s a new trail bike by Titus, spec’d with a Fox 36 and some carbon brakes by Magura. And, although I’m not a fan of the colour, the pink Specialized Epic that Sabine Spitz is riding for the coming season looks hawt.
Update (8 April 2006): Super XC race results. Mountain Bike Action has a good recap of the action that went down on the second official day of Sea Otter. In the women’s field, Gunn-Rita Dahle annihilated the competition — she won be over three minutes during the 60 minute event. You can find full results at the Sea Otter Classic website.
Update (11 April 2006): Full race results. With this year’s edition of the Sea Otter Classic wrapping up over the weekend, full-fledged race reports and event recaps are popping up all over the place.
Bike Magazine has a load of pictures archived for your viewing pleasure in its 2006 Sea Otter Classic image gallery. Mountain Bike Action posted a good recap of the cross country event — check out the site’s main page for features on Sea Otter’s other races.
And for those of you who had any doubt about which pro woman is in dominant early season form, Gunn-Rita Dahle won the final leg of the women’s cross country event by 4:39 (and only 4 women finished within 10 minutes of her).
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7 April »
Sneak peeks »
Guitar Ted
Following up on Guitar Ted’s interview with the guys from Niner Bikes are photos from their new fully: the R.I.P. 9. More information to come as it’s made available. More photos after the jump.
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Niner Bikes was founded by Chris Sugai and Steve Domahidy, who both fell in love with the big-wheeled mountain bike format a couple of years ago. The pair saw a great business opportunity in the burgeoning 29″er movement and they jumped head first into their new project after many conversations and plenty of thought.
Niner Bikes focuses solely on building 29″er frames and the frames are designed in house, with great attention to detail. Prototypes are subjected to countless hours of testing in all sorts or terrain and production models are gauged according to rigorous quality controls.
Recently, the duo sat down to answer a series of questions from our very own Guitar Ted. Read the rest of this entry »
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This week, the 2006 Sea Otter Classic unofficially kickstarted the industry hype machine for the season and we saw Shimano jump on board with the release of information on changes to the XTR lineup for 2007. Expect the news to keep on flowing until Interbike closes its doors in the fall.
Original content
On Monday, Guitar Ted finished off his introductory series on the 29″er, providing a brief summary of some of the 29 inch wheeled bicycle’s downsides. Ashwin provided all of you gear nerds with a new project on Tuesday — a do it yourself saddle setback measuring tool. I came up with writer’s block for Wednesday and bailed on my planned review of the 2005 Giant Trance frameset. Dan bailed me out on Thursday, giving us all a cool writeup about Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park, an 80,000+ square foot indoor riding spot in Cleveland, Ohio.
Elsewhere around the ‘net
NSMB.com posted up another Marzocchi release talking about suspension tuning and, while the piece discusses Marzocchi suspension in particular, the concepts can be applied to almost any fork. They also threw out a great gear shot, providing readers a glimpse at Norco’s sexy new Team DH. Dirt Rag has an interesting item looking at the industry’s gradual movement away from International Standard brake mounts towards post mounts. Bike Magazine published an article by Hans Rey about riding in the Phillipines. Bike Magazine also released a good feature on tubeless tires that discusses both the pros and the cons about going tubeless. BikeMagic has a good overview of the 2006 Giant bike lineup and the start of a series showing you how to diagnose worn bike parts. Graham from Go Clipless gave us his thoughts on Shimano’s upcoming releases.
For you 29″er fans, be sure to keep an eye on MTBR.com’s 29″er forum for the next little while — there should be plenty of announcements to keep you happy.
No fancy links for this week — I didn’t spend a whole lot of non-work time in front of the computer.
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We came, we rode, we smiled.
It somehow seemed appropriate that our final trip of the year to Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park, located in Cleveland, there was wind, cold temperatures, and plenty of rain. It is, after all, because of the nasty winter climate that made Ray Petro decide to open an 80,000 square foot North Shore-style playground in an old warehouse in West Cleveland, Ohio.
For the past two years I have been organizing bus trips from St. Catharines, Ontario down to this one-of-a-kind riding centre, located about four hours away. While the logistics of running this type of trip are pretty crazy, the end result is 40 or 50 guys and girls taking a full-size coach bus down the I-90 through New York, Pennsylvania, and into Ohio.
I’ve never been able to enjoy the party atmosphere that is the bus because I drive a 24-foot truck packed with tens of thousands of dollars worth of bikes but I figure if I’m the one organizing the trip, I only trust myself to be responsible for everyone’s rides on the way to and from Cleveland.
When we arrive at the park, we ride for a good six hours before heading home and, by the time we’re done, everyone is completely exhausted and smiling from ear to ear from the experience. Read the rest of this entry »
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Brain cramp. When I sat down to write this evening, my plan was to crank out a review of the 2005 Giant Trance frameset that I built up a couple of months ago and have been riding with much enjoyment. But, things happening as they do, I ended up drawing a blank, despite having copious notes for reference and a whole bunch of clever comments to go along with my points.
I’ll fill you in with the review in the next week or two but, suffice it to say, I’m looking seriously at selling my bigger bike since it’s only seen action when I’ve felt like taking the oh-so-nice Fox 36 out for a ride.
Race season heats up. 1 April saw the first cross country UCI World Cup race and other mountain biking events are swinging into action all over the place. Endurance events like the Trans Iowa Race V.2 is set to take place at the end of April (more on this event from Guitar Ted in the coming weeks) and the scene in British Columbia has a pile of sanctioned mountain bike races over the next month.
Feel free to plug your own local series in the comment box below. Where necessary, I’ll edit any legitimate links to make them more search engine friendly and / or readable for site visitors.
Other stuff. NSMB.com’s Money Shot contest is still open to the public. Bust out those cameras and, maybe, your best work could win you some sweet gear, including a 2006 Rocky Mountain Slayer 90.
Danika Schroeter is a local (for me) downhill racer who’s looking to compete on the World Cup circuit for 2006. While she does have support from a number of corporate sponsors, she’s looking to raise cash to cover part of her expenses during the season. And don’t mistake her for a wannabe — she’s the three-time defending Canada Cup champ and is currently ripping it up down at the Sea Otter Classic.
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When it comes to setting up a new bike, one of the most important steps is setting where the saddle is located on the rails (also known as the ’saddle setback’). If you have no idea about how to find your own saddle setback, one of my previous articles for The Biking Hub discussed some of the the theories related to saddle placement and provided a couple of ways for you to go about finding it.
Once you’ve figured out your ideal saddle placement, remember to document that position and be sure to have a good way to recreate it, either on another bike or on your current ride. If you’re switching frames, make sure you understand that not all bikes have the exact same angles and you’ll need to have some way to compare the geometries of each frame with the other. Of course, after you understand that different frame geometry will mess with your saddle setback, you’ll understand that you can’t use the same position on the saddle rails between the two bikes.
This writeup is meant to give you a fighting chance of recreating your ideal saddle setback on any bike. After the jump, I offer a couple of tips that can make the process more trouble free, as well as showing you how to make a custom setback tool that makes positioning your saddle a breeze. Read the rest of this entry »
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3 April »
Events »
Cory
The first leg of the UCI World Cup cross country series was held on the Caribbean island of Curacao over the weekend and, mostly, the big names finished where you’d expect them. The races were shortened because of high temperatures and high humidity — something that many riders had difficulties with on the day. Read the rest of this entry »
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This is the last entry in the series and, after spending some time looking at the benefits of the 29″ wheeled bicycle, this time I will explore some of the disadvantages of going with a 29”er.
The typical reasons people give for not going with a 29 inch wheel are not going to be found in this article. Popular arguments against 29″ers — the wheels are too ’slow’, the wheels aren’t stiff enough, 29″ers corner poorly — are either misconceptions about technical elements or are issues related more directly to a rider’s skill level than the 29″ wheeled bike. This is especially true since wheels can be built especially stiff, bike speed can be gained by different gearing, and cornering is actually better on 29”ers if the rider knows how to use the correct techniques. Read the rest of this entry »
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