Australian Cycling Forums - Bicycles Network Australia

As a result of today, last night and last saturday i have decided mountain biking is 50 million times funner than road biking. (road biking is still 50 million times better than sitting on a bus or walking.)
I have just recently finished building my version of a Mountain bike. It's a 1988 Tange Prestige GT Avalanche that i got powdercoated French blue, and built up with Deore xt. I also on saturday just gone got to compete in my first Mountain bike race at Mount Taylor near bairnsdale. It was a 3 hour twilight enduro which i did with my boss, we came 3rd overall which was pretty awesome! I was pretty happy with my lap times, fairly consistent, i thought it was a pretty challenging course with 4 decent climbs in 4 ks.
However whilst i had a blast on my first 1 and a half laps just before the last climb i broke my chain on my new bike, so i had to run up the hill and then roll down the downhill section towards the timing gate, i was pretty bummed that i didn't get to use my new bike for the rest of the race! It was all good though because i got to ride the spare Giant anthem 0 29er, which is a blast!

So i have decided, yes it's not as fast as the road bikes, it requires different skills, and you probably crash more, but it's damn fun!
Wether your in a race, tooling around in your street or having a social ride it's enjoyable and challenging.
I'm sure you'll all agree!!!

Keep on riding guys and girls!

Yup, getting muddy and riding with the front end feeling like a bowl of soup is FUN !!!!

Oh it's way fun all right. But the funnest bit must be having access to a 'spare' Anthem...just in case!!

christophers94 wrote:As a result of today, last night and last saturday i have decided mountain biking is 50 million times funner than road biking. (road biking is still 50 million times better than sitting on a bus or walking.)
I have just recently finished building my version of a Mountain bike. It's a 1988 Tange Prestige GT Avalanche that i got powdercoated French blue, and built up with Deore xt. I also on saturday just gone got to compete in my first Mountain bike race at Mount Taylor near bairnsdale. It was a 3 hour twilight enduro which i did with my boss, we came 3rd overall which was pretty awesome! I was pretty happy with my lap times, fairly consistent, i thought it was a pretty challenging course with 4 decent climbs in 4 ks.
However whilst i had a blast on my first 1 and a half laps just before the last climb i broke my chain on my new bike, so i had to run up the hill and then roll down the downhill section towards the timing gate, i was pretty bummed that i didn't get to use my new bike for the rest of the race! It was all good though because i got to ride the spare Giant anthem 0 29er, which is a blast!

So i have decided, yes it's not as fast as the road bikes, it requires different skills, and you probably crash more, but it's damn fun!
Wether your in a race, tooling around in your street or having a social ride it's enjoyable and challenging.
I'm sure you'll all agree!!!

Keep on riding guys and girls!

I completely agree, i fact I was initially surprised by the amount of fun one can have on these machines!

Oh, it's fun alright. Glad you've discovered it.

My teenager would say "Like, Duh! Captain Obvious! "

I got to share the fun with my son and two other dad/son pairs in a "Brady Bunch Sixes" team at the Mont 24 in Canberra last weekend. We started midday Saturday and finished midday Sunday. The event was huge. Over 3,000 riders and an average of 700 on the 19km course at any one time.

I'm glad i told my race partner to bring his Anthem, partly because i'd just finished building my bike that day and partly because it was just there.

Trailgumby, i'm glad to hear your laps were longer than the 4.5 k ones mine were i could only imagine the hecticness of 700 people on a small track. Was it mostly cross country? Ours had a part of the newly opened down hill track, which had a fun jump at the end. Sounds like it was a great event!

Christopher

It was an excellent event. Yes, XC trails... although the first roughly 5km is all cimbing You gotta go up to come down, right? Not much fire trail at all. In some places they've put in passing lanes to facilitate safe overtaking.

They put a lot of work in to make the event a little different each year. This time they did a *lot* of work on the track, inlcuding building new sections: loooong berms on the section in the vid, on the final kilometre into transition lots of new flowy singletrack. More overtaking lanes on the singletrack. There was also a new section called Todd (because it has a wood bridge - boom-tish ) that was a bit of an "oh shoot!" moment the first time I encountered it, going up and over this narrow timber ramp over a large fallen tree. Two nasty climbs (Organ Grinder and Angle Grinder respectively) were ditched in favour of more circuitous and interesting winding climbs.

At the top of one of the climbs mid-lap they had a guitarist and then a drummer to surprise the riders and take their minds off their discomfort as they rolled past. It worked: we were all going "WT? " Somehow one of my fast mates managed to go through the tape and crash into the pergola and platform the drummer was on ... how, I have no idea - and he isn't telling

These guys know how to put on a mountain bike event. They've just announced the Kowalski Classic as a 50 and 100km point-to-point race for close to the end of September, combining Kowen and Sparrow Hill, and I'm seriously considering doing it.