Our friend Nick Simpson spent last week up at Mammoth Mountain, CA. Check out this short video riding Twilight Zone.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Mammoth Mountain - Twilight Zone
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Whistler video part 2
Josh Maurer and Jamie Perugini are still up in Whistler riding and testing products, check out their latest video...
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Oakridge, Oregon Super D - Jordan Lopez
Good Morning All,
The 3rd round of the Oregon Super D Series - Oakridge is a wrap and one to look back and learn from. Going into this race I was not going to be able to race on my GIANT Trance, this was due to a mistake made at my local bike shop which caused my fork to need to be sent back to SRAM for a full rebuild. With this happening and still wanting to race, I was forced to ride and race on my Dad's Blur LTc. Mind you, this is a very nice bike, but it is a size to small and it is set up for more his style of light riding.
The race course (Alpine Trail) was one of the most aggressive and physically demanding trails of the series and of my season. With 750' of climbing and 4,000' feet of descending in just over 12.25 miles, it is a lot more up than the numbers let on. We were able to get in 1 rough practice run on Friday (I rode with car lag and was dehydrated) and 2 more on Saturday. With each practice run little issues that I knew going to affect my race run kept popping up. They were the lack of chain guide and the overall size of the bike. With each run, the chain dropped off the ring at least 3 times and at each occurrence, I had to slow down significantly and allow the chain to climb back on. The other issue was the overall size of the bike. Being almost 6'4", my normal bike size is a XL and with my Dads bike being a Large, the 90mm stem and the seat post were both to short. I was forced to compensate with my riding on the stem and put the seat up as high as it would go, which was still about an inch to short. I knew this lack in post height, would caused me to not be able to pedal efficiently up the 3 steep climbs losing valuable time in the race.
All my issues and fears came to a fruition in my race run, which started strong, but when pedaling out of a corner, I dropped the chain out and off and proceeded to go over the bars, off the bike and down a small hill. I got back up and had to pick up the bike and slowly crank chain back on. This exact situation happened again about 6 miles later in one of the flat rolling sections of the course, but in this crash I slammed my right leg, just above my knee cap into the bars and a golf ball sized welt immediately popped up on the muscle. After struggling up the last long hill, I reached he last bit of the course which is all down hill and was one of the best parts of the whole race; steep and straight. Just to make things worse about 3/4 of a mile from the finish line I got a rear flat tire (yes with stans too) in a mild rock section and because of the flat I spun out and came to a complete stop in a long sweeping corner soon after. I proceeded to limp the bike to the finish line in 14th place with a time of 49:14.
I was definitely disappointed with my race but I had yet another great weekend hanging out with friends and having the ability to race in Oregon. With every race, the Oregon Super D seems to improve and with over 116 people competing in a little town in Middle Oregon the sport of Mountain Biking and All Mountain Racing get propelled in the right direction
My next race will be the 4th and final round of the Oregon Super D Series which will be held in Sandy, Oregon September 3rd & 4th.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Summertime in Whistler
Our friend Moritz Zimmermann is also up in Whistler BC, read his account from week one.
Almost a year ago my brother Jonathan and I decided to save up as much money as possible, leave our homes in Germany behind and do something awesome for once: Spend our summer in what has to be the best place in the world if you're at least somewhat interested in the sport of Mountain Biking... fast forward and here we are in Whistler, first week into our summer vacation!
In fact we arrived in the Pacific North West around 2 weeks ago since we decided to spend a few days with some friends in the US. After a long 9-hour-drive we finally made it to Whistler exactly a week ago and have been riding the park every day since. Luckily the weather has been rather nice lately so all the trails are running very fast right now... except for Una Moss which is still covered in snow. Note to self: Don't ever ride again ride a fire road covered in snow. It's simply not worth it.
Apart from the, we've been having a blast so far. The bikes are working like a charm and we haven't had any mechanicals so far (knock on wood...). When we got over here, we received a pair of shiny Podium pedals which work amazing. In fact it took me a while to get used to the outstanding grip they offer - you know that feeling when you're wearing brand new Five Tens? Finally I don't have to worry about my feet blowing off the pedals anymore. Thanks to Jimmy and the rest of the crew!
A few days ago Jonathan and I decided to spend a day shooting some pictures up on the mountain instead of riding all day long. This proved to be a rather interesting experience. Every time I head out to snap photos I'm surprised by how many factors you have to keep in mind when shooting a rider going down the hill and for the rider, constantly switching between pushing up the hill and riding down in front of the camera can be as exhausting as riding all day long. We're fairly happy with the way most of them turned out though. Keep your eyes open for some more updates in the next weeks - after all, we'll stay here for another 5 weeks... good times to be had!
Cheers from Whistler, BC
-Moritz Zimmermann
Josh Maurer - A Line, Whistler BC
Josh is up in Whistler right now doing some serious product testing, it looks like he is having fun too...
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