ALL THINGS ENDURO

thx for the input!

don‘t understand why someone‘s neg propping you for giving on site feedback and how it really went down.

Does'nt seem like Bex to play the hard done by victim role................

Damn just saw on Jesse's IG feed that their Enduro bikes were stolen. First Frameworks now them...ugh! really sux. 

Whilst it is fairly obvious WB don't give a flying rats ass about Enduro because they can't monetize it (it must be losing them money) I can't seeing them letting go of the IP without a fight against any possible rival series.

This probably deserves its own thread (Spomer, feel free to delete this and make one with this post), but enduro style racing has two different points of demand, racers and spectators. Sometimes these two "customers" or "users" will want the same thing, sometimes they will not, but ultimately I'd argue they are two very different points of consumption. This thread is muddling the two together, which makes it hard to debate. 

Making enduro interesting to me as a racer means I'm going to write a lot about what I want to see at the regional/national level.  I'm not racing EDR/EWS or pretending to anymore (only did once anyway). When I talk about what I want to see as a fan, that's going to aim at the EDR level, and I am going to want to talk about an abstraction of the real thing (being any storytelling is an abstraction...that's how stories work). 

As a racer, I want to see...

*Single day events that start early and end way before dark. Sitting around waiting until way late into the evening for awards always drives me insane. Multiday races might seem cool, but literally every single one I've done could have been made into a single day event in the first place. Like 99.9% of racers in the US, people have jobs, families, stuff to do outside of racing. Single day races make it far more accessible IMO. You want to make the drive more "worth it"? Cool, take a day off from work and sample the local trails. You'll have a blast and those of us who need to work can go back to work. 

*Emphasis on getting through the day swiftly. Kind of goes with ^^^ but I like putting at least a little bit of pressure on transfers (as a "pro") because I really don't want to make a long day even longer by snail pacing every climb because everyone else is conserving energy (plus I often would beat the timers to a stage). We are supposed to be racers, lets go race. Don't misread, I'm not asking for an XC race. But if I have to ride up each climb at 130bpm, that is comfortable. I can still chat. But we're moving. 

*More raw cut trail for that event. I know, this is really hard in the US. But this is what drew me to the sport. What really turned me off to racing was when I'd show up on a Thursday PM for Friday practice only to learn all the van life bros have been there for a week practicing the well known trails that are likely going to be the stages for Saturday's race. Gross. Not fun. Not what I want to do. 

*Fun courses = fun racing. So often there would be a stage in a race that was there just to be there. Pedal pedal pedal turn. Pedal pedal pedal turn. is not interesting to me. Its the worst, and it became fairly common to throw something like this, or some kind of "one speed or you die" bike park trail in the mix. Hated it. 

*Culture improvements. When I first started racing, everyone was having fun and was outgoing. The last few races I did, you'd think someone's kitten died in the pits. People were so closed down and awkward. Compare this to (offroad) moto, where people are sharing parts, beta and stories and it seems clear we've lost something on this front.

*Pricing. To be honest, I'll pay handsomely for 4-5 stages in a day of racing on raw/real/trails somewhere cool. But if all we are doing is riding a lift to 3-4 well established trails and paying $250-350 for the race where everyone else has been practicing all week...I'm out. 

*Cool locations. Its a lot more fun to go somewhere you might otherwise not go to race. 

As a fan, I broadly just want to be able to digest the "story" of the event in roughly 5-10 minutes. In the future I'd love to watch the final stage live if there was sufficient build up and coverage going into that stage - plus comprehensive coverage of that stage. Being that aint happening anytime soon here is what I'd want. 

*Audio interviews from people who know the sport leading up to and following the event. 

*Photo/Video of the tricky sections or the make or break. This doesn't need to be high quality, if its captured by *someone* I'd like to see it and have it put into context by the person in the know

*Interesting bike setup/technology pieces woven into the storyline. 

*Photos that "puts me there". Sven has an otherworldly way of doing this. 

*Getting me to romanticize about bike adventure and racing. 

Small rule changes don't change my feeling toward all of ^^^ this. 

I'm not holding my breath on any of this. I'd honestly be more interested in "single crown DH racing" or similar at this point. Seems more fun, and I don't care how known the track is. 

Even if it was substantively different before and in some ways better, the talk is as if there aren't trade-offs, as if every detail can be ordered independently to suit someone's "great again" ideal. Probably not true.

@jeff's post makes me think of pedaling through the pits at my first enduro and passing who I must guess were the Lord and Lady of mountain biking, seated in their slick camping chairs and travel fire pit beside the $100k sprinter and Muffy (I'm guessing) says to Buffy (one must suppose), "Oh, he's riding that." This was in 2014, when enduro was great the first time

I thought helicopter-shuttled adventure racing or maybe tech-company curated sleepover camp for adults stage racing were untouchable in the chase for trashiest mtb discipline, but don't sleep on enduro.

Is it just me or did anyone else think the OFFICIAL highlights vid from last weekend was really boring? Everything about it, boring and felt so corporate. It's mountain bike racing, it's loose AF, thats how the highlights should show it! Unfortunately, it did not.

It may not be the most exciting video, but it gives an idea of the terrain for this weekend's race. 

is richie injured? can’t find anything but PB fantasy league makes it seem like it.

charley murray has all poland stage POVs on his channel

https://www.youtube.com/@CharlesMurray1/videos

Certainly, I'll get downvoted, but it makes sense for Enduro racing to be on e-bikes in the near future.

1) That's where the consumer market is going as in people that like these sort of trails are commonly buying e-bikes.

2) What's the current ratio of climbing to descending in Pro enduro racing? 5 hours of climbing for 30 minutes of racing? Wouldn't it be better to have 2.5 hours of climbing and 1.5 hours of downhill racing? Isn't that a more marketable product, among other factors?

As someone who was pretty against e-bikes just a few years ago and now owns one along with my trail bike, an enduro e-bike really is a better solution when chasing the steepest trails.

Poor enduro. Pros are 3 stages in and no one on either site has posted a live timing article. 

I don't see why people are getting worked up about wether or not there should be e-bike racing or not, they could be on gravel bikes and no one would know with the coverage they are giving us.

https://live.ucimtbworldseries.com/edr.html

Yeah. I have that. But there’s usually an article on PB that has write ups on each stage and such. Not blaming any of the journos, it’s just a sad indicator and a result of it happening as a prelude to everything else with the “real” action starting with DH. Misspent Summers is at least carrying the enduro torch. 

After stage 4.  Awesome to see Marco up there!

Agree, also sad their course previews aren't getting more exposure because they're hilarious!

sven and squid POVs from ews were (are) the best! the algorithm hates them (prob b/c it's real, not fluffy #vloglife) and comments like the one below (on the current misspent video) were rampant when we ran them...totally missing the point of the whole video. they're loose, sketch and about to explode at any moment. of course the footage will be shaky and have bad angles. that's what makes them so rad IMO!

Times must have been tight if the GoPro didn't finish up in a pint. Here's hoping that Sven got his jar of amber nectar at the end of the day.

The governing body and title sponsor youtube did a much better job this time around with more uncooked practice footage and a course preview. But it's still the rider vlogs keeping the stoke alive. Glad to see the squid course previews back too. It's like riding with your friends. 

Race is almost done at this point, I'm sure some sort of instagram updates are there, just getting buried by the algorithm, and ads for Hims and fancier-than-Ikea-put-together furniture. 

Less than a second difference for the win in both the men and women

MARCO OSBORNE IN TENTH!!!

Randy sent it!

Holy crap, Chloe Taylor got 3rd! Gowaan then!

Love the shaky, closer up footage purely for the reason that it's likely closer to what you'd see riding these tracks. Not the superwide super smooth footage. Time and place for both. The former shows how rough the tracks can really be though. 

In the raw practice video from Round 1, they had EDR and EDR-E in the same video. Even before you could work out what bike they were on (E or not) you could tell because the way you have to ride the ebikes is so different. On the tighter, techer sections the non-E riders were taking way more interesting, creative lines that looked fun - and the style of riding I prefer to do myself - whereas on the eebs they were just lifeless and ploughing through stuff. It's just the nature of the beast - much heavier bikes, necessarily long stays, all that jazz.

It's just not for me, and I couldn't care less about watching it. That's before you get into the rules/fairness side of it too - there's plenty of chitchat about certain riders having spicy motors, and the scrutineering doesn't really seem to be up to much. 

They barely seem capable of just running events these days let alone handling that level of business. 

All this said, stoked to see Charlie take the win! Doing his own thing with bike setup, coming across as a sound dude, seems to just love racing his bike. Gutted for Lukasik to get pipped on his home race, but at least it was to someone like Charlie!

And, last but not least, despite the bubble we are living in e-mtb are a pain in the a.. for any hiker/nature lover: they allowed a lot of unfit people to ride bikes in remote, severe environments. 
I honestly think they shall be banned from non dedicated trails and gravel roads to avoid a generalized MTB ban on the trials, especially in the alps. 
 

Not into the politics of ebikes, but if I want to watch something with a motor go up a technical climb, I'll tune into Erzbergrodeo