Let's offroad / mountain bike / mtb / ride dirt

I'm in. Major slacking right now.

EDIT: fancy Surrey Hills somewhere Friday instead? I know the hills pretty well.

That's a fucking good trail, that is. I'm gonna go ride it tomorrow.

Got a pal from Bristol potentially coming too so Swinley a bit more convenient for him... also not sure I'm good enough on a rigid bike for Surrey.

Dirt crowd, what's a good starting point for an XC bike to look at?
Was thinking about doing 4hr XC marathons ...

Dunno,

• how much money are you willing to part with?
  
• do you have a preference for the type of material?
  
• full sus or hardtail? (basically speed & comfort vs. durability and less maintenance)
  
• do you value made in UK?
  
• will you do any other off-road riding, i.e. social trail riding, 'shredding the gnar' etc
  

• up to 2500 AUD ish
  
• Light
  
• Hardtail because light
  
• Nah, based in Oz
  
• Not sure, but so far I have been doing social off road stuff with my Wolverine and 2.1s on 650b and it somewhat worked ... Not interested in doing crazy downhill stuff or anything with jumps in it ... main thing is I want to be able to do XC marathons because that's the first time I saw a race and went "I could do that, that looks like fun"
  

I want to be able to do XC marathons because that's the first time I saw a race and went "I could do that, that looks like fun"

Hmmm yes well we all make mistakes I guess :)

For that money I'd look at racey Alu hardtails from Scott, Trek etc.

Trek Procaliber would be my choice
or Cotic Solaris if you want to have fun on it outside of XC racing

Ha! The best thing about it was that I was watching at the sidelines, teeth clattering, at 7 degrees and pissing rain ... god knows why that struck my fancy

Yeah they are fucking horrible would not really recommend.

Unless you are going to win? I found the quality of the field was super high what with high barrier to entry: both £ and level of Nutter required to get up early on a cold wet Sunday and race around the woods in lycra for four hours.

Dunno, to me it sounds like fun ... I am targeting the Peaks Challenge Falls creek next March again, plus some other smaller sportives and whatnot, so have to keep a good level of training up till then ... and right now, I am a bit bored tbh. I need those 4 hour rides, but winter is just starting and I don;t have much of a crew to ride with, so a 4 hrs race sounds like just the ticket to work on my threshold power ...

Also, it looked a lot less sketchy than a crit or a road race with a nervous bunch.

I'd probably go for one of these, in whatever budget suited

https://www.canyon.com/en-gb/mountain-bikes/cross-country-bikes/exceed/

So ... Exceed CF SL 6.0 Pro Race is as far as it'd stretch, rly ...

Exceed CF SL 6.0 Pro Race

Perfect suffer rig

Grand Canyon AL SL 8.0 / 9.0 looks like a more versatile bike if you don't mind a bit more heft.

Could easily pay more for that for a carbon XC frame, with none of those useful bikey bits attached

Well they have to make the money back somehow on the development effort that goes in to a frameset that only ten people worldwide will actually buy!

True. Not everybody can be a pro sponsored athlete like me

Take these steps:

1. Eschew XC marathon suffer fest carbon torture rig
   
2. Buy LLS (long low slack) pure bliss rig and get loose.
   
3. ???
   
4. Profit
   

You forgot the bit where you try to do a SDW there-and-back

Noone else for Swinners tomorrow then?

billy no mates

@t_w is coming too actually... Right?

I'm parenting and there will be no trailer based MTB antics I'm afraid.

LFGSS Leigh Woods / Ashton Court sesh one sunny summers evening? I reckon there are enough of us on here

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^ hell to the yes