Race Face Ambush (?) . The D30 ones are snug with good coverage.

Bought Nukeproof Electrons on my first bike. Rode that for 2 and a bit years, then put them on commuter. They are still going as good as new and I’ve not had to touch them.

Bought some Vaults last year and already had to replace the bearings.

Just had a look at the Welsh Gravity Enduro series and one’s in October are all trail centres. Do you use additional trails or it is just a mix of the usual sections?

The mashup Welsh ones are normal trail centre trails. At the last one in Cwmcarn they removed the mx gates to link a few sections together into one stage.

Demo’d the new 120mm Scott Spark the other day. Geo is perfect, really fun and playful but pedals well and the travel soaks up bumps well. For Afan if I had to choose a perfect bike it would be a SC 5010 (£££) closely followed by the much cheaper Spark.

Put one on in Feb, it was dead by the start of March with a big slash down it. That was silkworm 2.3.

Its quite narrow and square compared to a 2.35 Rock Razor. I prefer the Rock Razor as its still going after 18months use and it suits my wider rims better.

but the One Up is pretty good.

I had the light weight One Up one, it had a bit of flex in it, and it kept getting clogged with mud and sticking. After a month it just snapped in 2 in a field.

Just fitted the Rideworks one, feels like a quality product and it doesn’t flex. I’ll be testing it tomorrow.

I’ve ridden an ebike and it was great fun. Riding bikes for me is all about fun, and if there’s a shortcut to fun, i’ll take it. However the 15mph limit and descending performance was a bit disappointing. Great fun on techy climbs though, transforms them.

My issue with ebikes is that as they aren’t really compatible with mtbs in a group ride, so they could quite easily become the norm. This would be fine in my eyes, except for one thing. The cost.

It seems like mountain biking has disappeared up its own arse a bit with £5k bikes being so common, but at least at the moment its very easy to build up a good bike cheaply. This means that its not hard for young kids to get into the sport, either with an old bike from the shed or a second hand one.

With even the most basic e-mountainbike costing £1500, and a “proper” one costing £3k+ I can’t see how many young people would be able to get into the sport if it becomes the norm. Sure, there will be second hand ebikes, but how long do the motors/battery last before they need a £££ service or new battery? (Maybe its 10 years but I doubt it given how long most MTB equipment lasts, they can’t even make a dropper that works longer than 18months)

Why does this matter so much? Well I can’t help but feel that the sport is pushed by the youth, not the middle aged IT managers. Trails are built by kids on school holidays, not by Dave from Accounts on his 25 days annual leave.

My hopefully ungrounded fear is that if ebikes become the norm the sport of mountain biking will just be Audi’s and trail centres. Sure it doesn’t stop any individual from doing what they want, but a sport is stronger when everyone’s goals are at least fairly aligned.

The new sparks look great, with the 120mm versions having better geo than my stumpjumper (although a little less travel)

Yesterday I demo’d the new Spark 29er, a Scale 910 an a Niner Jet RDO.

The new 120mm Spark is a really good all round trail bike. Accelerated well, good on descents and the geo is spot on. However I wouldn’t really call it an XC race bike (although you could do it), might be good for marathons, but for all out racing the Scale was on another level.

The Niner was the best of both, despite having more travel it pedaled better than the Spark and descended 10x better. It is however twice the price.

Here’s a perfect example of the need for good taping at races.

I borrowed a 30 mm tool from a friend:

Are the race face ones specific to their BBs?

“Unfortunately you don’t meet the requirements of the survey. Thank you for your time and effort.” :D

Do I still get a chance to win the seatpost?

A cam I can set up on the trail and turn on remotely before i ride past (is this possible). I read somewhere you can get an iphone app or wrist watch for some cams to control it but not sure of the range? Maybe I could set a timer for this?

I have the GoPro with the remote control. I never use the remote control, I just set the camera in position, press record, ride back up the hill and ride down past again.

I’ve used the Sj4000. Its a great price, quality isn’t as good as GoPro, but its good enough. If you’re budget is £100 you’re probably better off getting a cheaper camera and then mounts/tripods/straps etc with the extra cash. Plenty of good cheap bundles on mounts on eBay.

Regarding framerate, more isn’t necessarily better, unless you want to slow the footage down. The standard is 25 or 30fps. However, you do see many people upload footage to Youtube at 60fps without slowing it down. Personally I don’t like the way this looks, and it also means you need more light to get a decent picture.

Find a big muddy hill. Ride down said big muddy hill trying to stay upright. Repeat until May.

In hindsight I would wait & get it done at a service interval. I went from 160mm to 180mm.

Thanks. I really did put a lot of force in so good to know it’s not just me.

At the risk of breaking the cardinal ‘what tyres?’ rule.

I go Mary Super Gravity Vertstar front and Mary Super Gravity Trailstar rear.

Last year was muddy slop and the start of the week, then bone dry for the rest and that combo was great. That was 99% DH stuff though. In addition, the front tyre looked brand new after a week, and the rear only slightly scuffed. I am fairly light though.

From my experience, in order of importance:

Dh casing tyres
Compeed
Mech hanger

Otherwise just make sure your bike is running at 100% before you go, and take the tools you’d take with you for a big ride out in the middle of nowhere, chain tool/link , cable ties etc.

I have 35mm internals, and 15psi feels like about 25psi on my 23mm internal rims. So for the same pressure you’d be less likely to ding.

You can still ride up the climb if you want to. Main reason is minimising exposure to the elements in Feb and an awful lot of locals go up the concrete road anyway, keeps it fairer for all and its a lot shorter

Thanks for the clarification!

mini enduro being noted as a series getting it right.
Just looked at their bpw event, £47.50 for 3 stages?
What is so good about their events they can get such good entries when it costs more than an uplift day?

At the Fod race, one thing I’d say they nailed was the taping. Taping off the trails in some interesting ways so you couldn’t just use the obvious line, especially at the end of stage 1.

On the subject of Dragons Den ideas, has anyone come up with an ash tray that attaches to your top tube? When smoking during races I’ve found it hard to put cigarettes out on trees as I ride past, and I don’t want to risk damaging the frame by stubbing them out directly on it.

Is Twrch fully open?

I prefer Fod to Cwmcarn. :)

The trouble with timing the transitions, and them counting towards toward the race time, is that the races would be won and lost on the climbs.

The EWS format is that transition times don’t count towards the race time, unless you go over the limit. So if the transition time is 10mins, and it takes you 5mins, there is no benefit to you. However, if it took you 12mins, then you may get a 10 second penalty for instance (5 seconds per minute late)

Funny this..most of the Enduro events I’ve done have been timed on teh downhill sections (and placing comes from that) but you DO have a limit on the transition.

I’ve struggled to find any now which have timed transitions. I know the BES did. I can understand why organisers get rid of them as I can imagine its a huge headache to sort out, but I do feel it added so much more to the day.

It’s a fantastic format & I’d really like to ride some MTB equivalent events.

What you’ve described is pretty much what the old Enduro1 format was – and I assume the UKGE, EWS etc.

The transitions were not just fireroads, they included fun singletrack, and the transition time was shorter for the elite class than the sport etc. Being late was something like a 10 second penalty per min.

When a rim is described as “asymmetric” I thought it was the position of the spoke holes in relation to the sides of the rim, not that one side of the rim hook/interface is different to the other? Surely?

Ah ok, but on these the hook and interface is asymmetric. There’s a deep groove on the bottom side in that pic, and the hooks are a different shape.

As it is, it’s simply downhill with a walk in-between, not too unlike golf

Ha ha ha ha! :D

Enduro1 used to have cutoffs for transitions and penalties for late arrival. I had a bit of a shocker at the last triscombe round and arrived at most stages with about 30s recovery before racing the stage.

Ha! That was my first enduro and mirrors my experience exactly! That was also my favorite enduro. The timed transitions made it feel like a proper race and added a sense of urgency.

Every other enduro I’ve done hasn’t had timed transitions and has felt a bit like a half day by comparison.

Pretty sure the 2.4 has huge knobs compared to the 2.3.

Since when did big loops put people off?

anecdotally, speaking to people at races, and reading comments online, quite a few people just seem to want to push up the climbs at a steady pace, and then race the downs. The Afan mashup in Feb – for instance – is not using the main Whites climb and instead using a road as transition (not sure the reasoning, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that too many people complained about the main climb ) To me this seems like it’s missing out on a huge part on what makes enduro interesting and different from DH, but if that’s what people want then thats that.

Are there 500 riders in the UK who want to/are available to qualify for the EWS (and all of the trips abroad this would entail),

Not everyone who enters a national level race necessarily want to step up to world level, it’s just about having a level above regional.

This is currently working fine in both DH and XC (and CX?) in the UK, so I don’t think it’s crazy to assume it can’t work for enduro.

Mini Enduro – he gets about 300 odd riders – he’s fighting them off. No disrespect to that series, but that’s an entry level series

No Si, that’s a successful series.

True it’s successful,but I totally agree with Si in his vision that a national series needs to be a big step up from a regional one.

I LOVED the MiniEnduro I did last year, but you can’t have the next step up from a one day, 3 stage event with no timed transitions, no seeding etc. be the EWS.

The reason I don’t race is it’s just too expensive.

The BES guys did post a detailed breakdown of costs per event on their Facebook page, think it was something like £25k for a weekend.

I remember the Enduro1 events where there was no practice, had to ride the stages as you saw them, def a different type of skill to a DH.

My first enduro race was an Enduro1 one. Still by far the best enduro I’ve done. Timed transitions (with fun descents!), no practice, a full day out on the bike rather than the multi-stage DH which other events seem to favour.

Strava Turn up, ride against a clock.
Enduro Pay £75, turn up, ride against the clock.

That’s your opinion, and fair enough. But my opinion is they are nothing like the same experience. If Enduro racing costs ~£50 day to organise, so be it, I think its worth it. The main issue I have is travel time makes a weekend event into a 4 day affair quite often.

Just saw this. Was going to book Dyfi this week. Gutted. That’s a big loss for enduro in the UK.

The health of the organisers come first though.

I did wonder why entries were so much lower when compared to Ard Rock etc which sell out in minutes?

Bought some Race matrix for Morzine, used the standard Shimano ones for first few days then switched to Race Matrix, took a run down to bed in (first couple corners were interesting! ) but never seemed to quite have the same bite as the Shimano ones. By the end of the week the Race Matrix were finished.

Bought more Shimano ones and instantly noticed they were better. I’m not saying the Race Matrix were bad, just that they weren’t as good as the Shimano ones, and they didn’t last very long so I won’t be bothering again.

The shallow knobbed versions of the hr2 (which I think is all of them apart fromt he 2.4s, but not sure…) just aren’t that hot tbh. Quite sideways too. DHR2 kicks the arse of it imo and weirdly is a great front tyre in the dry

Yeah the dh versions of hr2 have huge tread by comparison.

I used this chart to try and work out which rear for a UK winter and without going double Shorty (no hard compound version so would be draggy) or 2.0″ Beaver the next option is the Hr2.

Currently got MM trailstar HD pacestar and think it’s a good setup. HD is showing signs of wear after about 4 months but other than that it’s a good compromise on speed/mud grip.

Last year I had a Shorty/ HR2 3C combo and whilst I loved the Shorty the High Roller just never cleared of mud on slower descents and I ended up pushing up climbs as the rear tyre was just a ball of mud. I changed mid winter to the MM/HD and the HD felt faster, this was backed up by Strava times on my road ride to my local trails (pinch of salt).

It sounds crazy but the Rock Razor is more versatile than it looks, I’ve had good experiences with it in the mud, on steep stuff you do need to brake earlier but it’s very useable.

Upload them all to Google Play Music (it’s free) and then just stream? If you want them offline then you can download them.

For parking, this is the usual spot:

PuddleTown Forest MTB Parking

https://goo.gl/maps/VuC64SnJ8Mt

As for routes, you’re probably better off just having a nose around yourself, there’s a lot of trails, but no real “route” as such. If you join the Ride Puddletown Facebook group they have a map of some of the main trails on there, although it’s a few years old now and the forestry work changed a lot it’ll give you an idea.

Just got back from riding the forest, it’s held up well with the recent rain and plenty of new stuff keeps popping up. Okeford Hill (formally UK Bike Park) is up and running again too.

Or you can slide a couple of cable ties down past each seal which will let the trapped air out.