don’t do it. Wheres the fun in getting a frame thats a compromise – just get one thats the right height for the main rider.

Maybe they’re on a budget, maybe they’re pushed for space…maybe the son hasn’t tried MTBing before and the dad is trying to get him into a hobby they can share?…in an ideal world we’d all be able to build our own bikes in the perfect size with no compromises but real life gets in the way sometimes.

I say go for it, at 5′ 8″ he’ll be fine on a medium, I’m 5′ 9″ and ride a 16 inch/small Ragley HT and was recently pricing up a Dartmoor Hornet build and would be going for 16 inch again….providing you’re happy at 6′ 1″ being on a medium bike then I don’t see the problem….Dartmoor have been progressive in their geometry (longer top tubes, slack head angles) before all the big players started shouting about it, they’ll be a fair bit of seat post exposed when you’re on it but if you like compact bikes (as I do) you’ll be fine.

Enjoy!

I’m on X-Fusion 160mm Sweeps and really happy with them, the RL2 damper has been great but I had to get used to it sitting in its midstroke during trail use, that’s just the way they make them, they are very plush and yet the midvalve tech stops them bottoming out on big hits…lovely for a man pushing 40 like me!

….also read that the new Roughcut damper can be retrofitted to my version so might give that a go next year when funds allow.

Further to my earlier post about a 3k+ Giant Trance self build, I do also have a Ragley Piglet that is bloody brilliant and I got from eBay for £300 as a part finished project, the forks were crap so I treated it to some new Revelations for £300, it has a second hand set of Pacenti TL28 rims that I had laying around, it runs a Deore 2×10 drivetrain from Ribble for £145 brand new….bars, saddle, stem, grips etc were all in the shed/under the stairs etc….brakes are the current Deore M615 which are brilliant and I got second hand on eBay for £60 the pair…that’s about it….a fantastic, durable, perfect for the UK trail ripper for less than £900….I love it and ride it more than the Giant FS in my previous post!

Yeah, second the nukeproof pedal suggestion….footwear is personal though, sometimes I wear old school Adidas Sambas with the clear/beige sole which is super soft and grippy but the sole is quite flexy, other times I’ll wear my 5:10s but they’re twice the price for just a stiffer sole.

If you like your current running gear then swap it over….You will likely need forks and wheels going from 26 to 27.5 which is no bad thing as there are some great forks around at the moment like Mattocs, Pikes, Sweeps, 36s etc

Your 3×9 running gear is deeply unfashionable but its quality XTR kit so I’d run it into the ground before going 2×10 or 1×11.

Paul’s cycles are great, I ordered a Saracen Ariel, it arrived with a dented down tube I assume from transit….I photographed it, sent them an email and they collected the bike and sent out a new one no questions asked…great service.

Well I’m now about experience how good/bad Giant are on warranties…

Excellent, not that you should need it, my ’15 Trance is built like a tank, impossibly light to pick up but incredible welding and oversized tubing I could stare at four hours.

Giant Trance frameset fresh for 2015, Giant abandoned their proprietary headset standard and went back to normal tapered head tubes making them a viable option again IMO….£1500….but it did come with headset fitted and Giant’s own dropper post….

X-Fusion Sweep forks £300
X-Fusion O2 shock £200
Saint brakes £200
Superstar Tactic/Tesla wheelset £250
Renthal bars £50
Magic Mary tyres £70 (F&R)
1 x 11 XT drivetrain £350
Charge Spoon saddle £20
Nukeproof stem £40
RaceFace grips £20
Uberbike race matrix pads £20
Shimano XT brake rotors £30 (F&R)
Shimano press fit BB £20

Jesus wept that’s about £3000 on a mass produced generic FS!….I’m going off to have a little cry now….the bike rides great don’t get me wrong, in fact I can’t fault it, the DW/Maestro system firms up under peddling and feels bottomless on big hits but this was supposed to be a budget build!….things do have a habit of escalating don’t they?!

Still, it’s not something I’m planning on selling, I’ll hope to be riding this in another 5 years time….at that point I think I may have had my money’s worth.
I’ve also enjoyed the buying and build process which took a good 6 months for me to find things at prices I was prepared to pay, it hasn’t been a credit card build either, as I’ve been paid each month I’ve bought components and have sold lots of my old stuff to bolster the PayPal account ready for the next bits to buy.

According to jambalaya the only thing which kept the IRA going was support from the US. The moment the US stopped supporting the IRA they had to give up.

To be fair the open and generous donating to the IRA in places like Boston and New York did reportedly come to an abrupt end following 9/11.
I thought it was generally accepted that 9/11 dismissed any romantic notions of IRA terrorism the yanks had harbored until then, once they’d experienced terrorism on their own doorstep openly supporting the IRA wasn’t viewed in quite the same way….I’m well aware the peace process was under way well before 9/11 though.

Never underestimate the stupidity of the electorate, that graph by Ernie of deficits and budget surpluses is a perfect illustration, the Tories were rattling along nicely between ’92-’97 with a rare budget surplus and things were genuinely looking good….so everybody voted them out and put nu-Labour in instead!….genius.

Seems everybody brought into the idea of ‘slimey’ Tories and based their voting on wanting rid of scandalous headlines etc rather than ensuring continued economic growth….Blair and Brown must’ve thought it was Christmas when they came to power in 1997 following 5 years of economic growth under the rival party!

Has an electorate ever been so successfully brainwashed as they were in ’97?!….Blair, Mandelson etc were quite the tricksters….also helped along by Murdoch’s press switching allegiance.

You should have to sit some kind of exam before being allowed to vote!

It’s all f###ed anyway, seriously….we’re a top heavy ageing society, unless we all want to pay more tax (election results suggest not) then health care will get worse from an NHS perspective.

Blame ourselves for not having enough children, blame ourselves for having them later in life, blame the elderly for living too long etc etc…..either way it’s f###ed.

At my NHS trust our call volume goes up 5-7% each year, does our budget?…haha, good one, of course not, we’re being asked to do more with less each year….it’s unsustainable.

Did I mention it’s f###ed?…

If the electorate in general don’t want to pay more tax and couples continue to have just one or two children then society will have to get used to the idea of paying for health care again or at the vert least some kind of topping up system on top of your central taxation.

Anyway, that’s the harsh version of what’s happening out there, the other view is to see healthcare as a growth industry, society isn’t getting any younger and all these oldies need looking after….set up a private care agency, if you’re already a nurse, Dr, paramedic etc moonlight in the private sector….hourly rates are enormous, scared rich old people pay a fortune to be looked after….despite what’s been happening with the economy in recent years my earnings have steadily crept up by staying in the NHS for my full time 37.5 hours per week and then using the private sector as a medic in the Police Custody setting, or working doing house calls for out of hours providers….the money is out there.

With regard to changing Dr’s contracts, yes there is some crappy stuff going on…..but the push to have GPs in particular working nights and weekends again can’t come soon enough….A&E departments are stuffed full of people at the weekend who should be seeing their GP but one isn’t available so they trot off to hospital instead!

Your best bet for a good retirement is to have about 4 kids and hope one or more of them do well and can help finance your old age!…buy a cheap flat somewhere too and rent that out to supplement your ‘pension’….but don’t have it in your name or the ba####ds will make you sell it to pay for your shoddy 10min slot of ‘care’ that social services have allocated you in the morning and evening….I pity anybody with a good life expectancy these days, thankfully the blokes in my family drop dead at 75 from heart attacks, sounds good to the alternative of a nappy and pureed food until I’m 90.

Have a good day folks!

There are also some pretty vocal reviews online (Dirt and Pinkbike are two I know of) where the debonair concept has been criticised as difficult to set up, easy to bottom out etc etc….my Trance ran a Monarch Debonair, it was fine, didn’t really notice any difference over the last FS I owned which had a Fox RP23….anyway I changed the shock to an X-Fusion item to match the forks (OCD is a terrible affliction!) and haven’t noticed any difference in performance again….maybe I’m just not ‘sensitive’ enough?….maybe most shocks are good enough now that what you choose depends on what badge you want visible on your bike?….cynical view perhaps.

I’d research the forums for the bike you own and the suspension type it runs and see what other owners are reporting, I know some suspension designs like a shock to behave in a certain way and if the Debonair version doesn’t allow that then it’ll just be throwing good money after bad.

It’s hilarious as only a few years ago 2.5 Maxxis High Rollers and Minions were derided as being unnecessary, wannabe DH racer, gnarpoon tyres etc….and now plus sized tyres are gaining traction (excuse the pun)….

I do think a lot of the new standards we’re seeing are driven by a cycling demographic that isn’t young….the western world is an aging one, middle aged men on bikes want to be comfortable hence the trend towards first 29ers and now plus sized tyres….you could add long travel full suspension to that too, unnecessary for most trail riding but comfort trumps all as middle aged cyclists with disposable incomes drive the market at the moment.

It is the new golf whether people like that tag or not.

Anyway, these tyres….honestly hand on heart I can’t think of a situation when I’ve had a super tacky 2.5 Maxxis on the front off my bike and wanted or needed more grip….in the dry tyres like that are phenomenal and in the gloop I switch to spikes anyway….I’ll obviously try one when my LBS gets them in but all I can think of with a 2.8 tyre is how much more drag they’ll be over my current 2.3 Magic Mary (which doesn’t seem to struggle for grip as is!)….bizarre.

I don’t reckon it’s on the way out

Neither do I, boost hubs will go someway to solving the flexy 29er wheels issue….and then I can see designers wanting another crack at DH bikes with 29 inch wheels.

I guess I just like small bikes, this whole ‘size up’ and ‘long and low’ thing seems to be passing me by!

Low, slack and compact for me please.

Short chain stays or not it was still a long bike for me….for context I ride a 26 inch wheeled HT, the Enduro-29er I demoed felt cumbersome at slow speed….i’m sure there is an element of rider error at play, it wasn’t my bike after all and I’m sure i’d get used to it and learn to get it up and around switchbacks like my current bike….but it was not the revelatory ‘eureka’ type of intuitive ride 29er evangelists rave about, like everything there is a certain knack to riding a HT, a DH bike, a 29er, a BMX etc etc….they don’t all ride the same and as much as some people hate to admit it, no bike is perfect and they all have their foibles….it tends to cloud people’s judgement when they have thousands invested in ‘their’ bike and they won’t hear a bad word said about it.

I don’t see where the low speed handling issue would be with 29ers, assuming wheelbase is similar –

That’s just it….a lot of the time the wheelbase isn’t similar, have you seen bikes like the 29er Orange-5 and the Enduro-29 in the flesh?….they’re flipping massive!….like DH dimensions silly, trying to force one round hairpin uphill bends on a singletrack trail wasn’t fun.

At 5′ 9″ I also felt like a passenger, I like my bikes a bit more compact even if they’re long travel, it’s why I went with a Trance over a Reign, it’s why I’m considering the DH rig in 26 inch wheels as opposed to the de rigueur 27.5 option….horses for courses, I’d love a Codeine in the shed but it just overlaps in too many ways with the Trance..

I hear about slow speed handling being a problem with 29ers. I hear it so often that it must be true, but I just can’t feel it.

It’s not necessarily the wheel size, it’s the wheelbase.

You can have a badly packaged 26 inch bike with stupidly long wheelbase and no turning circle and you can definitely have 29ers like it too!

I sometimes ride at QECP and the start of the Red trail involves lots of switchback turns to gain height quickly, on a short 26 inch HT they can sometimes be a pig to manoeuvre but when I demoed a FS 29er there I found them damn near impossible….now I know some of that is going to be down to me and having to adjust or learn new techniques but for that kind of nadgery slow climbing I felt the longer wheelbase of said bike was a hindrance….the flip side was the second part of the Red trail is mainly descending and it felt great there.

No bike (or wheel size) is perfect but they do all differ in some way and some are more suited to particular trails than others (see the 29er DH bike thread for a good chat on this subject), I’ve currently got a 26 and a 27.5 inch bike so I’m no evangelist when it comes to wheel size….i’d love a 29er but I’m struggling to think where one would fit into my riding?….I have a 650b Trance with 160mm forks for FS riding and the odd Enduro race, I have my steel 26 HT for general dicking about, uplift days, dirt jumps etc….and that’s about all I do, I’m going to be building a dedicated DH bike next year and 29ers don’t really fit that category….I could buy a FS 29er for racing purposes but that would mean selling (and losing money on) a perfectly good 2015 Trance so I don’t see the point there yet….can’t really see myself taking a 29er HT to the local dirt jumps either.

Looks like I’ll be waiting a few years for something to break before I get a 29er!

I’ve had one of those almost pointless dilemmas in my mind for months now about whether to spend, once it’s reached a sufficient level, my bike fund on one of these or a FS bike. (it fluctuates a bit depending on whether I’m riding my HT well). I’d love one of these.

Same dilemma I have almost daily….at work I idly put together my dream HT build totting up the price as I go along….PP Shan frame, Bos Deville forks, Renthal cockpit, stealth dropper, new XT 11-speed running gear, Saint brakes, Hope hubs, DT Swiss FR570 rims, Shorty front tyre, Minion DHR2 back, Charge saddle on Ti rails, RaceFace grips etc….it’d absolutely rip the trails….then I realise I could probably buy a new FS Stumpjumper for the same money and put the idea to bed again.

I have also perused the Curtis site and ogled those beautiful frames….worryingly I’ve also convinced myself that the £1000 price for the AM7 frame seems ‘pretty good value really’….I don’t know who I’m trying to convince, myself or the other half?!

Currently have a Mary front, Minion DHR2 on the back….as things get worse I’ll put a Geax Datura on the back….as things progress towards unridable I’ll put a Dirty Dan on the front.

It was my winter strategy last year and served me well….High Rollers, Minions etc just can’t deal with proper winter slop, you need spikes and Marys, Shortys and Daturas are where to go….the Dan is extreme but I still like to go on uplift days through the winter and in the FoD in mid November gloop it gets the job done!

For those on a budget, me included, Shortys are just ridiculous money….I don’t care how good they are!….i’d advise people to visit the On One site and buy some Daturas for about £15 instead.

Next year will be interesting, I didn’t race an Enduro in 2015 so had no idea about dwindling numbers across several organisations….for seasons prior to that events were selling out the day entries went live!….maybe things have peaked?
2015 for me was about finding DH races with a HT category as that’s what I wanted to do but next year with my 140-160mm Enduro gnarpoon built up I’ll look at doing a few….but by Christ there’s quite a few organisations now!…my fear as echoed above is that the number of potential riders will now be spread too thinly for an enjoyable event.

What was great about the early years of UKGE was that there was very little else like it, if you got an entry it was a great weekend, festival like almost….I took my better half to Eastridge and she loved it, couldn’t believe how friendly everyone was, music blasting out of the PA system and bonkers racing to boot…that’s what I’d like to see again.

With regards progression to the EWS, I suppose if you’re trouncing everyone in regional Enduros then it’s probably time to test the water with an EWS entry, how did Greg Callaghan progress?…he didn’t need to win a national Enduro title, neither did Tracy Mosely….I reckon if you’re racing DH and or XC at a national level then your transition to the EWS should be fairly straight forward once you get your head round the format.

I’d like to see a national series, for the guys and girls who race every weekend, live the sport and carry sponsorship then it’s a big deal but (and I hate to say this) it does almost need BC to step in and take control and formally nominate a national series…..otherwise it’s farcical like the numerous different belts for the ‘champ’ in boxing.

Interesting thread this, I’ve softened my stance on the wheel size issue, I was staunchly 26 but wanted a new FS and…well….there’s not a lot out there anymore in 26 so 650b it was.

I still have my 26 HT and it’s as good to ride as it ever was, spares will be available for years I should imagine given how many 26 bikes out there, good money making opportunity for someone to keep parts available to all those bikes.

With regard 29ers, I’ve ridden a few….test rode some when picking the FS, they genuinely did ‘flatten the trail’…..whether this is good or bad is what I’m undecided about, if it can be made to work in a DH bike then for racing it comes down to times and times only….if they’re faster they’ll catch on, for weekend warriors who want to have fun and feel the trail a 29er DH bike might be a step too far towards numbness on the bike.

Interesting from Tom about WC racers going back to 26….I’m assuming these are small teams or privateers as I can’t see factory teams losing face like that?….it does back up what I’ve seen at grass roots races this year, virtually everyone is still on 26 and going faster than ever do to improvements in forks, shocks etc and phenomenal brakes like Saints and Zees accessible to everyone….tyres too….Magic Marys have been everywhere this year!

I think in the grand scheme of things wheel size can help but it’s just part of the setup, far from the be all and end all.

I’d go with whichever one is Shimano but that’s just me.

….I know full well that’s the Jimbo actually.

I’d happily get one, bit different, last time I was at BPW every other bike was a Capra.

I was pretty surprised at that, no ifs no buts, don’t buy this. Even though I think I was pretty clear I couldn’t afford to buy a CCDB Air CS from them but I was ready to buy an Inline.

I like that from them, brutally honest….although perhaps if the shock is that bad they probably didn’t sell them full stop?

Great to see them getting plenty of practice in beforehand, I did wonder how much of a preview the riders get….also interesting to see the pros get caught out the first time they hit big features!….not just me then. 😳

The interviews with Intense are online, with the 2951 (as they called it) they had to shorten travel to 180mm to accommodate large wheels, proponents of 29ers will tell you this is fine as the roll over benefits of large wheels mean you don’t need the same amount of travel as on a 26inch bike…trouble is the theory doesn’t always translate to real life and the bike wasn’t as good as 200mm 26inch bikes that were around at the time….I believe feedback from test riders also said it was a pig to ride and on tech tracks it wouldn’t turn….I should imagine on some of the 10yrd wide smooth and swooping lines at some bike parks it’d be awesome but with a move to tighter tech stuff in DH this year with Lourdes, Val di Sole and Andorra in particular it would be like riding a barge….then again that Intense 2951 was 5yrs ago so maybe having now played with 27.5 designers could find a way to shoehorn 29inch wheels into a frame and get it all working together nicely?

Not sure why I love the so much, especially after years of only having a full suss. Nine times out of ten, I grab the Stanton when heading out for a ride.

Same here, despite my Trance being the better bike in just about every measurable way I still seem to spend more time on the Ragley HT, it just feels more lively and fun out on the trails….the low maintenance and abuse it can take appeals too!

Looks great to me and as someone else said, there are some riders in there this year perhaps more suited to the hucking and styling-it-up kind of riding the Hardline course seems to be designed for.

None of them are slow but the inclusion of Forte, Kerr, Lacondegeuy would seem to me that the organisers are hoping for some spectacular riding not just fast DH riding….someone like Lacondegeuy for example has no chance of winning this thing but he’ll put on a hell of a show, shame the other Lacondegeuy isn’t there too….some sibling rivalry always spices things up nicely!….maybe this is Luis’s chance to step out of the shadow created by his Rampage winning brother?

….and yeah, as others said Rampage is on soon and the top freeriders don’t want to break themselves before that one!

Dan Atherton said last year the whole point was to invite riders from different backgrounds and put them on the same course, Forte is from BMX, Luis Lacondegeuy is BMX, DH and freeride, Maes is an alien at just 17 years old rocks up and takes silver at the World Championships having spent a season racing Enduro…he’d be world class in whatever discipline he chose….then you have a solid BDS rider in Brayton who can turn it on for the cameras, ditto Al Bond….then the seriously fast WC downhill guys like Gee..looks bloody brilliant to me!…i’m going too on Sunday, best clear my phone’s memory as I reckon I might be capturing a fair bit of footage.

I tried an expander and XT cassette (brand new) and I could never achieve smooth shifting cross the whole cassette. The Praxis cassette shifts perfectly and has stopped me spending hours trying to tune my gears!

This seems to be a common theme with home made 1x setups, having the Praxis and eliminating this would be reason enough IMO.

I’ve considered it, for me it was the convenience of a finished article, not the usual bodge jobs that 1x conversions seem to consist of….most of them either have big jumps between gears or people leave the standard 11-36 cassette in place and struggle up the climbs.

When my 2×10 wears out it’ll be a choice between the new XT 11-speed stuff of stay 10-speed but go with a Praxis cassette.

Wrecker – the reason why we have so much success in DH as a country is down to properly organised series, such as Pearce rounds as regional, and BDS as national.
Whilst I agree with you, the regional series are there for a more friendly approach, whereas a national series is there to help the guys compete at a higher level, and step up to the international series if possible.

This.

If you want fun, low pressure, low key Enduros then enter regional one day events….but if you want to challenge yourself, if you want to see promising youngsters able to make a career out of racing Enduro then you need a national series to challenge, stretch and ultimately prepare riders for the step up to the European or World Enduro Series.

I appreciate this isn’t for everybody, so keep supporting the grass roots stuff instead but it would be good if Si Paton of the BDS decides to run a BES too….I would think provided the insurance issue is dropped, helmet decisions are left to riders alone and the pricing is sensible then it should flourish.

Call it something more child appropriate, like “fun hole” perhaps, or “glory hole”

Brilliant…do this instead.

Child to teacher:

“Daddy and I went to the glory-hole today, it was dirty but we had fun”

Cue social services on your door step the next day. 😆

Mavic EN or EX series for strength, they can weigh a bit though.

DTSwiss EX471….I believe it’s what a lot of the WC downhill guys use, Gwin’s infamous tyre-less run from Leogang in 2014 is testament to that, it held up as he pressed on at a frightening pace without a rear tyre!
If you want more than that the FR570 is monstrously strong, a lot of the Rampage/free-ride guys use them… they are heavy though.

I actually rate Pacenti, have the TL28 on my hardtail and despite my clumsy riding I haven’t broken them yet!… I’d be more than happy upgrading to the wider DL31 when the time comes.

Superstar’s own rims are now getting good reviews, the Sentinel and Tactic are quality bits of kit, I can vouch for the 650b Tactics as they’re on my FS, fairly light too, very tight tyre fitment…I suppose for tubeless this could be an advantage…the cheaper DS25 and EX23 are well reviewed, they’re not ground breaking but they offer good weight, sturdy build and reasonable price in fairly wide-ish sizes (25mm on the DS and 23mm on the EX)….which isn’t too bad when you consider Orange sell the new Five with 23mm rims and up until last year were still selling them with Mavic XM319!….just about the crappiest wheel Mavic do and only 19mm diameter.

Don’t be put off by the brand, if you’re just ordering a rim and having someone else build it then it doesn’t matter.

Ragley Piglet-2….bought on the basis of good reviews, solid steel build, decent all-rounder ability, sensible money….it was bought for my better half so she could join me on rides but I seem to have acquired it permanently as horses take up all her time now

…she liked the ‘interesting’ bright green colour and the cartoon-like graphic of a piglet on the top tube.

Nothing like getting the priorities right eh?…. sometimes she really does live up to gender stereotypes!

Seriously, educate the 4 year old what a lot of them were made by (along with clay pits etc) and call them what everyone else will call them….bombholes……don’t make the child seem like some sort of nerd to his peers!

This.

You have an opportunity to educate your child about WW2, the Blitz etc and plant the seed early that war is horrific and maybe create a passion for history in them which they’ll take through school and likely excel at as a subject.

I know most of us want to preserve a sense of innocence in our kids for as long as possible but if they’re asking questions about it then they’re probably ready to hear the answer.

Best advice on parenting I ever read was in a psychiatric nurses office, it was the opening paragraph in a book on child development and it explained that the role of the parent is to provide a safe base from which the child can explore the world…. simple as that.

Compared to a lot of the wishy washy nonsense floating around that really struck a chord as sensible advice.

Bearing in mind our continental cousins invented the term and the format it seems daft, arrogant and typically British to try and define our own version of Enduro, FFS just stick with what people know….that is timed tech, DH type stuff with comfortable transitions taking in a good days riding.

Leave helmet concerns to individual riders, leave insurance to the riders and have waivers for the organisers….if you want to race then these are big boy rules, you take responsibility for your safety and insurance not the organiser, no one is putting a gun to people’s heads and forcing them to race stuff they’re not comfortable on.

At some of the European Enduro Series and the EWS they have had uplift services running to the tops of some stages, I was under the impression Enduro was like DH but by making it multi stage you take away some of the pressure cooker environment of DH with its single race run only format….the novelty of Enduro was that you could have a bad stage and yet still be in with a shout as there were more to come….that was it’s USP from DH as far as I was concerned, with DH if you balls up your run you’ve lost and it’s a weekend wasted, Enduro took that pressure away and created a nicer atmosphere as a result.
As a pleasant benefit of transition stages I suppose rider fitness comes into play more than DH but results from the EWS don’t bear this out as even Sam Hill of flat pedals and a dislike of pedaling got into the top ten at the NZ/Rotorua round and Wyn Masters got on the podium so either Enduro racers aren’t as fit as they think they are or DH riders aren’t given enough credit for their fitness.

Either way, a softer UK defined scene with a bias toward XC would see me lose interest, that’s not why I ride and given the popularity of 140mm to 160mm bikes I’m guessing most other riders winch up the climbs in order to enjoy the downs too.
Sad to see an organiser go out of business, the UKGEs I did in 2011 and 2012 were great.

Look at the bikes on the ‘Rose’ website, not quite as extreme as the Capra in terms of travel and geometry but equally as good value re. components. I think they do a 150mm travel bike in Alu that might be suitable for what you’re describing.
The Granite Chief is the one I’m thinking of… If you’ve got your heart set on 160mm travel and Enduro type riding then they do one called the Uncle Jimbo which is closer to the Capra….ignore the crap names they’re great bikes.

About the same price as the motorcycle systems too!….I rode for years without a Scottoiler and never needed to change the chain, sprockets etc….my mileage on a motorbike used to be around 1000 miles per month and provided I lubed the chain weekly everything was fine, seems overkill for me on a MTB.

with a tried and tested timing system and time on my hands I’d be all over this as the goodwill is there.

Is it?!…about half the comments on any UKGE thread were along the lines of “how much?…I’m not paying that to ride the same trails I can ride for free the weekend after!”…

There seemed to be a misconception that Steve and the UKGE lot were getting rich off the back of ‘good willed’ mountain bikers despite Scottfitz of QECP and other organisers standing up and saying how expensive events are and how little money is made.

…..even if he was making good money (but the fact he lost his house suggests not) why shouldn’t the man pushing the National Series make a living from it?!

MTBers are a funny lot, think nothing of dropping a few thousand on a bike, £500 on new Pikes, £30-50 for a tyre, £200 for a dropper post….they now have their Enduro bike…but balk at being asked to pay for entry to an event to race like minded individuals on similar bikes.

I wouldn’t go anywhere near trying to organise a series and those that do have my utmost respect, most people I’ve met at events have been excellent fun, friendly, helpful etc but the keyboard warrior mentality must get tiring and leave organisers wondering why they bother.

I was tensing up on every corner, just waiting for the front wheel to go and just couldn’t relax and enjoy it.

That’ll be part of the problem…and it won’t just be a ‘death grip’ with your hands either, your whole body will be tense, the bike won’t be able to move around under you, your body positioning will be non existent and everything will feel awful waiting for the inevitable crash.

Start by consciously loosening your grip on the bars, this is psychological as much as anything but get used to the feeling of the bars (and by extension the forks, the wheel and the tyre) doing their own thing underneath you, bikes are stable above a certain speed (I think I read 9-10mph somewhere?)..they want to stay upright, it’s the human on them that causes the crashes!

Once you’re used to this make a conscious decision to relax your knees and ankles….relaxing your ankles will naturally drop your heels putting you in the correct position (particularly for descending) and relaxing your knees more will help soak up some of the trail buzz without relying entirely on the bike.

Also bring your head up, I’m guessing you’re now either looking at the front tyre or only a short distance ahead of it due to fear of it washing out, look further ahead and read the trail well in advance, you’ll see tricky cambers coming and can react properly instead of hitting them with little warning and tensing up.

Remember the old ‘Softmints’ advert on TV?…the one with Mr Soft walking along with an exaggerated amount of flex/bounce/softness in his stride?…that’s how I try to tell myself to be on the bike, not always easy and I often fall into bad habits, you almost have to give yourself a running commentary in your head of what you should be doing in order for these things to take hold….it will also stop you thinking so much about crashing!

I only have the one bike built up currently, a Ragley HT…I can do most things on it, surely the very point of a MTB is that they are versatile and can turn their hand to anything?!

If your only riding is XC racing and training for example then get an XC focused bike, if you only ride uplift days get a DH bike etc….but if you do a bit of everything the bike should reflect that.

The Ragley has been designed to run forks from 130mm to 150mm, I run mine at 140mm and it’s a great UK trail bike.
It’s also hardy enough to take on uplift days, compact enough to play on dirt jumps (I had it over at the Milford trails dirt jumps this weekend) and it’s comfy enough to spend all day on if I want to cover some distance.

It’s far from perfect though, it’s a heavy lump when doing a bit of hike-a-bike and the back end is less compliant than other HTs I’ve owned over the years.

My FS (when built up again) has a similar ethos, it’s a Giant Trance and should be able to make a good go of most riding when it’s finished…when you have one bike you have to be careful not to go too far in one particular direction (too slack, long travel, inefficient peddling) for example, can leave you frustrated on normal trail/XC type rides….likewise a bike with steep angles, twitchy handling, short travel etc may put you off trying more DH type stuff or put you off entering Enduros etc….