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ENDURO MAG SUMMER 2015

MONT 24... REBOOT | BULLER - MTB SUMMIT | HIGHLAND FLING TURNS 10 | BONKING? | 5 BIKES TESTED

# 29

JAMES DOWNING INTERVIEW

JAMES DOWNING INTERVIEW

THE SEARCH PERFECTIONFOR

THE SEARCH PERFECTIONFORTHULE

B24THULEB24

Cover photo : Ryan He can shred these trails just as well as he can build them. One of the driving forces behind the creation of Mt Buller’s Epic Trail, Ryan De La Rue, carves it up.| Photo - Andy Railton

ENDURO 29 4

Contents page : Mont 24 Hour, October 2014 | Photo - Auroraimages.com.au

ContentsREGULARS

ED NOTE 7

GEAR CHAT - BEN WATKINS 8

NEW GEAR 1ST LOOK 10

PUNTER VS. PRO 36

SUBSCRIPTIONS 110

THANKYOU 112

FEATURES

THULE BRIGHT - B24 13

WEMBO SOLO WORLDS 2014 19

MONT... REBOOT 22

INTERVIEW - JAMES DOWNING 27

THE 10TH EDITION OF THE

HIGHLAND FLING 40

HELLFIRE CUP 49

THE AUSTRALIAN MOUNTAIN

BIKE SUMMIT @ MT. BULLER 60

WHYTE - THE ENDLESS SEARCH

FOR PERFECTION 71

YES CYCLIST DO BONK 107

B-SIDES

BIKE TESTING

INTENSE TRACER 27.5C 78

TREK FUEL EX 9 27.5 82

CANNONDALE TRIGGER 3 86

ROCKY MTN. INSTINCT 970MSL 88

PRODUCT TESTS 94

LONG TERM TESTING

PIVOT LES 27.5 PART 2 80

SRAM XO1 GROUPSET 92

ENDURO 295

#THATLOOKSLIKEAROCKYMOUNTAIN

PUBLISHER FREEWHEEL MEDIA ADAM MACLEOD

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Crew Issue 29

As is the tradition, in the New Year we usually step back a bit, spend time with family and friends, pack in as much riding as we can, look back at the year that was and look forward to what the next year will bring.

What were your riding highlights and lowlights of 2014 and what are your goals in 2015? Complete your first marathon race? Set a personal best time or place higher than before? Get a fatbike and ride across a desert? Race Gravity Enduro? Find the perfect wheelsize for your riding style and trails? Nail that perfect cornering technique? Master training with a power-meter? Make new riding friends, find new trails or just have more fun on the bike?

For me, I had an unusual year riding-wise, with many months off the bike (no need to feel sorry for me, I was having a fine time travelling overseas) but I had the great

fortune to break those months up with two weeks riding the famous climbs of the French Pyrenees. Having so much time off the bike has inspired a huge hunger within me to ride again. However, perhaps surprisingly, I have a hunger to try different things on the bike this year.

In Brasil, I met an Austrian guy, Peter, who packed in his dream IT-job at Microsoft in America to ride his bike 15,000 kilometers over a year from San Francisco to Salvador with a bunch of guys following their 75 year-old capoeira master (master of a Brasilian martial art/dance).

Unsurprisingly, Peter had some crazy stories but what struck me most about his 15,000-kilometre journey was that he just bought a bike (well, first he bought a recumbent, but quickly realised his mistake and before leaving the States bought a Surly with a Brooks saddle), packed some

stuff and just headed south. Over a year, his body adapted from doing zero kilometres per week to doing up to 800. He stopped wearing knicks because his body became one with the Brooks (also, it’s not that easy to get good replacement knicks in Central America). He also ended up donating most of the gear he started out with, ending up with just the bare necessities in his panniers.

Peter’s story and journey were fascinating for many reasons, but for me, it was a healthy reminder of the amazing places we can go on our bikes, the things our bikes can teach us about ourselves and of what our bodies are capable.

It has inspired me to try new things on the bike in 2015 and I feel like it’s going to be a good year.

Enjoy Enduro 29 and have a great 2015.

ED NOTEWelcome to Enduro 29.

While hot and sunny weather had many riders scrambling to find a suitably protective SPF-rated sunscreen around midday on Saturday 25th October for the start of the Thule Bright 24 Hour, unfortunately it had the opposite affect on the local snake population, which was out in force during the early laps of the race. There were reports of black, brown and tiger snake sightings and it wasn’t until a few hundred mountain bikers had blasted around the track that they retreated - probably a wise move given that snakes usually come off second best in altercations with 29-inch mountain bike tyres. That said, they were successful, at least, in giving a few riders a scare. A good preview perhaps, of another classic Australian summer of mountain biking! By Ash Hayat | Photos Outer Image Collective

2014 Thule B24 2014 Thule B24 ENDURO 2913

ENDURO 29 14

t was straight in to singletrack as the course departed Pioneer Park, a convenient location – just a few minutes ride from the Bright town centre – which provided fantas-tic facilities for the race village.

Central to this was the huge expo-style tent, measuring around 50x20m (or an impressive sounding 1000 square metres!), which had been erected on top of the local netball courts, and which had been kindly donated to event organisers by the Alpine Shire.

It provided a fantastic, fully covered and weatherproof area, although sunshine was the only element that riders required any shelter from over the weekend. It hosted registration, race transition, timing, results, mechanical support, sponsor exhibits (including demo bikes) and food and drinks. There was a coffee van, microbrewery bar, craft chocolate and hot food, all supplied by the expanding gourmet food industry in Bright, surely one of the Victo-rian High Country’s premiere tourist towns.

With its close proximity to Mount Hotham, Mount Buffalo and Falls Creek (via Tawonga Gap and Mount Beauty), Bright has become one of Australia’s top summer road cycling destinations, adding to its position as a key winter ski resort town. But in recent years, with the development of the mountain bike trail net-work (including a notoriously demanding down-hill track), the offroad cycling scene is now also making a big contribution to local tourism, with the town hosting the 2014 Mountain Bike National Championships back in March this year (and hosting it again in 2015).

As this year’s B24 was held on one of the mountain bike calendar’s busiest weekends in recent memory, it wasn’t overly crowded. Despite this, there was a great atmosphere in the village and thankfully very little time spent queuing for toilets, showers, food and coffee, which can often become endurance challenges in their own right at many 24 hour events. Admittedly, there was a short wait for riders curious to try out the Arctic Mist mobile cryotherapy service, which is understandable given that it’s not every day you get the oppor-tunity to immerse your “whole body into a fine nitrogen mist, which is cooled to temperatures of approximately minus 140 degrees.” Used by some AFL clubs and other professional ath-letes, inventors claim “cryotherapy speeds up your body’s natural healing process, increases recovery and performance”…possibly worth

waiting in line for.Now in its second year, the B24 is a unique

event in that it offers two distinct race formats running simultaneously. There’s the traditional race (where relay teams or solo riders compete over 24 hours to do the most laps) and the more social Esprit de Corps (“team morale” in French) format that allows teams to complete laps together as a group. The Bright Brewery Hellfire team, no doubt fuelled by their tasty

Hellfire Amber Ale, took out this event with a total of 30 group laps.

The solo men’s category boasted the deepest talent pool in the traditional event, and looked set to be a battle between defending champion Shane Roberts (from Echuca), 24-hour specialist Scott Chancellor (a Melbour-nian currently on-loan to Canberra) and the Baum Cycles duo of Ryan Moody and Scott Nicholas (the latter on a single-speed).

It was great to see the local Victorian boutique frame manufacturer involved in dual capacities as both event sponsor and race entrant. The Baum Cycles Mixed Team of four put in a great performance to take out their cat-egory (finishing third overall) looking resplen-dent on a fleet of beautifully finished Extensa titanium hardtails.

With Chancellor pulling out after about 10

hours, and the Baum duo both forced in to ex-tended stoppages, Roberts defended his 2013 solo victory, eventually completing a gruelling 25 laps, over five laps clear of second place Wes Samson and third place Fergal Meehan.

A few riders were using this event as a lead-up to the 24-hour Solo National Champi-onships (held in November in conjunction with the JetBlack 24 at Mount Annan) including Mount Beauty’s Tory Thomas, who returned

I

“I’ve been away from endurance riding for such a long time, and I was struck by the marked differences between XCO and 24-hour disciplines. I giggled when a racer

charged through transition and yelled ‘chamois cream’ at his support crew – no-one else seemed to find it amusing.” Tory Thomas

The Baum Cycles Mixed Team of four put in a great performance to take out their category (finishing third overall) looking resplendent on a fleet

of beautifully finished Extensa titanium hardtails. .

ENDURO 2915

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to 24-hour racing after a 10 year absence from the gruelling discipline in which she was crowned National Champion back in 2004.

Tory (and partner Tim Retchford) had planned to race for 12 hours at 24-hour pace, providing her with some much needed night riding and pacing practice. Tory, having come off a busy year racing World Cup and Commonwealth Games XCO, admitted that she didn’t stick to the plan. “After a few laps I was feeling frisky and really enjoying whizzing along the trails with Tim,” eventually pulling out after eight hours, realising her mistake in hindsight.

“I was feeling confident about the 24-hour Champs until B24. This race was a good learning experience and a harsh reality check, reminding me how critical pacing is in 24-hour.” (Tory needn’t have been too worried though as she managed to stick to her plan well enough at the 24-Solo Na-tional Championships to take out another title, 10 years after her last one.)

Tory has a nostalgic relationship with 24-hour racing, it being the first mountain biking discipline that she focused on before achieving success in the shorter Cross-Country Olympic (XCO) and Marathon (XCM) formats. “I’ve been away from endurance riding for such a long time, and I was struck by the marked differences between XCO and 24-hour disciplines. I giggled when a racer charged through transition and yelled ‘chamois cream’ at his support crew – no-one else seemed to find it amusing.” There definitely is a special brand of humour that emerges during these events.

The 16.5km course took in much of the twisting and swoopy single-track along both sides of the Morses Creek including Wombat’s Lair and Rollercoaster. The majority of the climbing was despatched with in a gently rolling four-kilometre section of fireroad before some fantastic pine forest descending. There were even a couple of decent log rides, which - although probably not enough to get trials specialist Andrew Dickie’s heart racing - did still manage to claim a few victims.

At the bottom of the famous Gorilla Warfare descent it was obvious that something special was in store. A short climb through a wooded section dubbed Angel Flight Alley had been heavily decorated with numerous cutout paper angels, fairy lights and coloured pinwheels providing riders with an incentive to make it through the overnight laps. The display was aimed to help raise awareness for Angel Flight, a charity that co-ordinates non-emergency flights for financially and medically needy people.

Hot daytime temperatures eventually gave way to cool and damp over-night conditions, but this didn’t detract from the race atmosphere, with spectators in skeleton-style Halloween costumes and some coloured laser

light displays at various points on the track helping to keep spirits high. The night-time entertainment was not reserved for riders on track though, with an outdoor screening of Sandra Bullock and George Clooney’s most recent blockbuster, Gravity, from an actual film reel projector, a nice inclusion.

In the traditional format event, it was the Thule Vets Male Team of six that ended up claiming overall honours with 32 laps, closely followed by the Hampton Cycles Male Team of four who managed 30. Presentations were gratefully wrapped up under the shade of the big tent and a Special-ized hardtail frame was auctioned off to raise funds for the Angel Flight charity.

The fantastic facilities, food, drink and entertainment make the B24 a great little festival in its own right. Being situated so close to the centre of town means less meticulous planning is required and more options are on hand for food and last-minute supplies. Add in some quality mountain trails and Australia’s only mobile cryosauna and you can see this event turning in to a major drawcard in years to come. - ENDuromag

ENDURO 29 16

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“It’s when you start gettIng uphIll raIn that you know It’s really bad” explaIns darrell, our shuttle drIver. I was a lIttle perplexed as to what he meant by ‘uphIll raIn’. darrell explaIns, “you know when the wInd really gets goIng, It’ll actually blow the raIn back up the valley and then straIght upwards Into your face. that’s not pleasant at all.” It dIdn’t sound pleasant at all. Just when I thought luck was agaInst us In regards to the weather, darrell cheerfully muttered a phrase that I got used to hearIng a lot of durIng my tIme In the uk, “we’re lucky, It’s actually quIte mIld today”. yeah rIght…

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RS-1 29” FORKRockShox

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RRP:$2399.00

ver the last few years we have been seeing pretty interesting changes in the mountain bike components coming into the market. For a long

while there were only modest upgrades made to component lines from the big players, maybe an extra gear or a few less grams or just a bit of a redesign here and there. But in the last couple of years, there have been some products that are real game changers in the way bikes are set up and ridden.

SRAM and Shimano have been leading this charge, with SRAM coming out with the revolutionary XX1 and the X-Sync (Narrow Wide) chainring and Shimano countering by recently releasing electronic gearing (for on, and now off, road). These products have caused a real shift (so to speak…) in the way bikes are designed and set up and these revolutionary technologies are now becoming the new-norm.

Now Rock Shox, a flagship brand in the SRAM-group quiver, bring us an upside down XC race / trail fork with a new front hub and axle configuration. The set-up is approximately 200 grams heavier than Rock Shox’s current top end race fork, and the entire set up is a fair bit more expensive. The real question has to be: is the RS-1 just marketing hype to help you part with your cash, or is it a game-changer? Either way, this fork is no small re-hash from Rock Shox…it’s a big roll of the dice.

Upside down forks have been commonplace on motorbikes and dirt bikes for years, with greater clamping interfaces offering precise steering and increased control. They have also made several notable appearances in the mountain bike world over the years. The most notable of these appearances is the Maverick DUC32 fork, designed by none other than the father of Rock Shox forks, Paul Turner. For whatever reason, and despite being an excellent fork, the Maverick fork didn’t catch on, but just over ten years after the first DUC32s appeared on the market, the company Paul Turner started has brought out the RS-1, and is pushing it in a big way.

When you look at the construction of the RS-1, the design makes a lot of sense. The main body of the fork, the CSU (Crown, Steerer tube and Upper legs) is one continuous carbon fibre mainframe. Nearly all other CSUs on single crown forks are made up of multiple components that are press-fitted and bonded together. These areas are subject to flex, so by Rock Shox making this junction on the RS-1 fork into one continuous carbon piece, the amount of joining interfaces is reduced from one or two to none. The other interesting point is the bulk of the weight of the oil, damper and air spring is moved into the lower legs, both lowering the centre of gravity and decreasing the unsprung weight of the fork.

With all of these features brought together this should be a fork that feels very different to the others, and it does.

I fitted the RS-1 to a carbon Rocky Mountian Vertex hardtail I have been riding for a couple of years. The fork it replaced was a Rock Shox Reba with a DNA damper and 15mm Maxle. I also ran the Roam 50 wheels with the new Predictive Steering hub for the test. The Roam 50s are a lightweight, aluminum rimmed, trail wheelset. The rest of the bike has reliable yet light kit, so the forks and wheels were right at home. Initial setup of the fork was easy, the cable guides are neat and easy to thread up. There is the handy Air Spring chart at the bottom of the spring leg so you can get a starting point for setting up your air pressure. The rebound increments are well distinguished in both indexing and fork feel. The only thing I initially struggled with in set up was removing and inserting the Maxle axle, as on removal the damper side lower leg extends out slightly further than the spring side and twists, which made it a little tricky to reinstall the wheel.

My first frolic with the RS-1 was a night ride in Castlemaine where I went in search of the rockiest trail in the area. For most of the ride all I could think of was not smashing those beautiful black stanchions on a rock. Towards the end of the ride I relaxed a bit, pushed the limits a little, had a stack (no

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