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

Mielec?

I'm probably up for Swinley on Sunday.

Getting a Grim Donut?

Ok, I'm getting the new Chisel Comp. Deposit paid. ETA 2 weeks.

ETA 2 weeks.

soon in today's climate

Chisel Comp

The fancy red one?

Chisel Comp

excellent gravel bike!

Mulling over what a Klein would look like if they had survived to the present day.

e-bikes

Long low and unified.

Yep. Signing up for Otway Odyssey 100.

Just what I'm after. In fact if it holds up the wolverine might have to move on.

I have something similar as gravel bike too :)

Gonna try and do some XC races though. Watched one recently, and it looked miserable, underwhelming and hard. So probably right for me. At least the risk factor seems self selected mostly and the course features mostly low consequence.

@amey is still in training for his first XC race

I will never race

Not even E-cargo bike crits?

XC races ... miserable, underwhelming and hard

Sounds about right. It's like time trialling. It's nice when it's over.

Well, TT is probably an even more expensive bike purchase with an even narrower range of applications, plus crashing at high speed when you're cross eyed rather than sliding down some muddy ravine. Given that I had my share of hospital this year that one is a no-no for me.

It's a lot less boring than TT TBF

Otway Odyssey 100

Just watched a few bits of this video. Looks like a good course!

https://youtu.be/7lKYlLyFox0

From what I heard they're going back to an earlier version that starts on Apollo Bay, and is supposedly better?

Either way, nothing in that video looks scary or undoable to me, so I reckon it'll be a great intro into MTB mixed with a decent amount of distance and vert that will hopefully be okay given my fitness will carry over from road and gravel.

Also the Otway is a magic place. Been there before, but without a bike.

nothing in that video looks scary or undoable to me

Looks like a decent bit of singletrack there. As that guy in the video said, it's when you start getting really tired that potentially painful errors can occur :-)

Absolutely, and at least for me 3000m vert over 100k is nothing to sneer at even when it's not off road. But I've got 20 weeks to get ready, which is 5 good blocks of training including some good gym work in the first 8 weeks. It'll be a tester for my neck and shoulders for sure, given that they're still not 100% from my broken neck in Feb.

I think one of the best things to do in a long event is to get better at the technical parts and the descending, as you can then use these sections of the race to rest, both physically and mentally. If you're really pinning every downhill and/or struggling with stuff you're not used to, your brain never really gets a break