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

Trinity MTB from Australia

Yeah this is cool. Been following that guy on insta for a while, the axs gearbox one is brilliant.

the axs gearbox one is brilliant

😂

When you get an axs bit in original retail packaging, it usually comes with an axs branded tea coaster. Made from cork, has a nice premium feel to it.

I’m not going to state in public how many of them I have now but I think that one day I’ll be able to trade them like currency.

I would like an AXS/Effigear gearbox for my imaginary Nicolai

Not wanting to start a premature thread, hope this is OK in here.

I'm lookin at Lon Cambria next year.
Think we're gonna go Shrewsbury - Aberwystwyth(sp?) but not so sure now tbh. Something about wind is against you that way, I dunno. Which way is the elan valley 10 mile descent?
Should I go on an MTB? it seems there's a lot of 'road'.

I've never done owt like this trip and always just take my road bike 'as is' onto any singletrack while we're out and about.
I want to be in MTB mode for the er mountains and shit but I dunno how much gnar there's even gonna be!

Let me know how that downsizing works out for you.
My surprisingly capable rigid stooge only makes me want to buy a very capable full suspension bike that I will never ride...

Hmmm, but it never rains in Yorkshire, right? Right??

Hardly ever.

Avoid the roads and you'll be fine

To be fair it didn't rain on race day

I'm still incredulous at that, especially as it's a Dane. Don't they teach young Danish riders that you never ride through a puddle because you don't know what's under the water?

I'm sure @Hulsroy has taught his daughter about this already

Especially after witnessing first hand, someone disappearing into a bog in Epping Forest

Has the remains been found? RIP

Bit of an early review of the Southern Enduro Series (for those uninterested in progression or racing I'd advice you to skip this).

I've been riding mountain bikes for a few years now after a 25 year break, I've been to the Alps a couple of times, I've had some coaching (some good, some not so good) and I've begun to work out what type of riding I find most rewarding.

This summer I'm heading to the Alps for a couple of weeks, one in July and one in August, and wanted a suitable bike for this - an Enduro bike fitted the bill I thought.

Now, the stuff I usually ride doesn't warrant that big a bike, so rather than leave it hanging in the garage for much of the year I thought I'd start racing Enduro, therefore getting the bike out every other weekend - and providing me with a big skills upgrade as well. Hopefully.

I've attended five, and raced four, events - Twisted Oaks, Milland, QECP, Pippingford and Tiverton. Some of those were a Mash-Up (turn up, race each stage as many times as you can within the time, best time counts) and a traditional Enduro (practice the stages in the morning, then ride them all in order, setting off at your specified time).

Twisted Oaks is a bike park in Ipswich, it's a great place - and somewhere I'd likely never have gone without the race series taking me there. The racing there was a mixture of established bike park trails, and some amalgamation of different (but existing) trails to create new, longer ones:

I took the Chicken line around some of the features (gap jumps, basically), but had a great time, rolling in 45th of 69. Looking back, this was my comfort zone - dry, corners with support, not that rooty.

Milland was next, it was much more natural - trails that had not so much been built as ridden into a hillside on private land. This was much narrower than the trails I normally rode, and more natural. The practice was a little hair-raising, but I really enjoyed my race runs. Looking back, this was still (relatively speaking) within my comfort zone, similar to trails in the Surrey Hills albeit a little steeper and less frequently ridden.

Next was QECP and it started badly when I didn't read the riders briefing email and went to the wrong place. Having RTFM I went to the correct place, parked and wondered whether I'd need to be towed back onto the fire-road, such was the mud. I set off on the practice, and crashed on the first stage - loose, steep, wet, all things that I generally avoided riding and it showed because when I had to do so it didn't work out that well. I bent the mech hanger when I went over, something I discovered at the bottom of the stage when I couldn't change gear.

I cave-manned the mech back into a rough alignment and ran through stages 2 and 3 - gear selection was ok, honestly not that much of an issue as so much of the riding was pumping rather than pedalling. However, none of the turns had any support, many were off camber, almost all were loose and filled with wet roots. Plus, it was so dark under the trees that I was struggling to see where I was going. Old eyes!

Fundamentally I was well out of my comfort zone, having zero fun, and then it started pissing down halfway through stage four. I remember thinking "I'm in the Fun category and this is fucking miserable, bollocks to it" and DNF'd off to my van.

After I'd stowed the bike I managed to get out onto the road without a tow by the simple expedient of rolling out backwards - the van just span the wheels when asked to go forwards.

QECP was an eye opener - it was nothing that I enjoyed, or was familiar with, and I had to be able to ride the stages fast to be in contention, which I could't do.

Next was Pippingford, slightly new in that you were invited to turn up on the Saturday for a track walk with free camping ahead of race day on the Sunday, which I decided to do.

Arriving, it was incredibly windy, I nailed down my little awning tent which gave me a room within which my cooker didn't get instantly blown out, and then blown off the surface it was on.

Track walk was fun, although what was interesting about it was that a lot of the features looked bigger on foot than they did the next day on the bike - I just smashed down stuff that looked intimidatingly steep when I walked down it sideways.

Pippingford was fun, stage one was long and fast, had banked turns and jumps - much more what I was used to and enjoyed. Stages 3 and 4 were interesting - flat, loose, sometimes severely off camber corners with (you guessed it) plenty of roots. But, it wasn't raining and I could see them - and this race was a mash-up where you could session the stuff you thought you could improve, which for me is a key part of learning.

I tackled 3 and 4 repeatedly, falling off I think five times, a few times at high speed. But, finally, I made it through both without having to get back on the bike at any point, but it really highlighted where I needed to work on my riding.

I messaged a chap called Paul who I'd had some coaching with previously and we spent an hour or so in the woods near Shere, focussing on flat corners and loose off camber - and really just the footwork required for those. This really helped and I went to Tiverton feeling better prepared.

This was a long drive, so I went the night before and stayed in what appeared to be a Best Western transported from the 1980's, but it was warm and dry and the dinner wasn't totally awful.

It had, however, been pissing down relentlessly which didn't bode particularly well for the race on Sunday, but that did appear to be a theme of this race series. I went to bed looking forward to the next day.

Sunday was bright and sunny and the car park was steaming as water evaporated - I took this to be positive and ate a full English breakfast so large that it almost required two plates.

The venue was, literally, a field next to a hill - driving to it the van had both wing mirrors in hedges at the same time, at some points.

The stages were by turns tight, then fast, never very steep but with some short steep features. They were all very muddy, and very rooty. Corners were generally either flat or off camber, although in some turns a rut had started to cut in, but often this just exposed a network of roots that had previously been just below the surface.

But - it was fun. My session with Paul had given me the technique (or, more accurately, the bones of the technique) that enabled me to stay on the pedals through sections that would have been very tough previously. My speed through flat turns was much higher than before, and I caught two riders in one stage (admittedly the longest, faster a more open stage of the day).

I was 7th of 10, and a county mile from the faster riders, but I'd finished without a single crash and knew that I could have pushed a lot harder on all of the stages (see: lack of crashes).

I'm in Morzine for a week, then it's QECP again, and after that the Ard-rock Enduro I think, all of which I'm looking forward to.

It's still early in the season, but I'm getting more out of racing than I thought I would, I'm learning, I'm using the new bike and I'm having fun - I'd recommend doing some racing if you have the time, it's sometimes type 2 fun, and crashing is definitely a fairly regular thing, but it pushes you in ways that you will likely never encounter if you (like me) just ride stuff you know you'll enjoy each weekend.

Nothing brings on riding like racing!

Lovely write up. It’s reassuring to read how some has been fun, some not so much but also you are recognising areas for improvement and then putting appropriate action in.

I can relate to not enjoying wet roots especially off camber. The more I ride the more apparent it is that I need to practice basic techniques away from jeopardy to get confident. A combination of needing some coaching and then riding with others of a similar skill level who are willing to session things. Another rider I go out with is like me and doesn’t enjoy narrow chutes. So next time we are together the plan is to practice modulated braking on fire roads, line choice on simple trails (so we can consistently get our bikes to go where we want them to go) before going back to technical chutes.

There is a German YouTube coach called Roxy who repeatedly stresses that learning is almost impossible when the terrain leaves us feeling stressed or out of the comfort zone. It is becoming more apparent to me. I have had a couple of coaching sessions where coaches were happy with my progress (when I wasn’t entirely confident) and then moved to a more challenging location where my mind just went “fuck this” and I bailed. Effectively losing any benefits of what had come previously. Can I ask which were the coaches you enjoyed (and possibly PM me the ones to avoid?)

..just ride stuff you know you'll enjoy each weekend.

Sounds good to me. Will keep at it. Thanks!

There is that, of course. My way of thinking there is that the broader my comfort zone, the more "things I'll enjoy" there are available, so the greater the choice.

Like eating shit until it doesn't taste so bad. I get you. Wish I had the time

Have you thought about a breast plate ? And full face?

Looks fun

Me? I have a full face but frankly I’m not going fast enough at the moment to put it on.

I don't think you always need speed. Slip a root and face first into a tree. If you have it, wear it I reckon. Better to wear it than regret it.

I disagree. It's a race so you have to weigh up the risks. I'm probably about as likely to smash my face into a tree at a Southern Enduro as I am faceplanting the tarmac at Herne Herne hill and I wouldn't dream of wearing a full face on the velodrome!

Fair enough. Perhaps I am a lot more accident prone!