Vital’s Bikes: Unaffiliated Podcast - Community Conversation

If anything DH riders and athletes in general are more professional in their training and racing nowadays, but a lot of times when an athlete says they are here to win, crush their opponents etc… a bunch of people online talk shit: “you need to be more humble”, “you aren’t good enough to talk like that”. DH is smaller but even Loic was getting tons of comments on Vital and PB calling him arrogant and hating on him because he said he wants to beat Jackson. Which of course he does, if he didn’t he would not still be racing downhill. In bigger sports like road cycling you see this all the time which leads to riders giving interviews where they say nothing. There’s also the aspect of riders not wanting to put additional pressure on themselves which makes sense. 

Please don’t change the fantasy system, if you do it’ll be the same as pinkbikes and theirs is boring as hell since starting to play the vital one, you pick your team and they have a crash in qualies.. great, fantasy team wrecked for the whole weekend. 
The Vital system encourages you to come back over the race weekend and make tweaks based on what you see .. it rains for finals day? Shit better change the team, rider B had fast splits in qualies but a minor mistake? That’s a sleeper, I’ll add him etc..

I think some tweaks to scoring, not when the lockdown happens, would be good. I don't recall the exact rules. It did feel that it was more of a math challenge instead of who would win as far as points go as the season went on. Possible put heavy points on the top 5 and way less on the other results. Make it more of a rifle and not a shotgun approach. 

Spomer,

Hope you get your health straight. 

It's called vasovagal syncapy.

I know because over the winter I had breakfast with my parents. Dropped a bowl while doing dishes and cut my shin open. 

Like an idiot, I bent over at the waist, looked at my shin and said something like " fuck that's going to need stitches". Not very big cut but right on the shin bone. 

Immediately got very lightheaded, fortunately managed to sit down before fully blacking out. 

Woke up in the kitchen, with my mom, dad, and 2 very nice firemen. I couldn't think well enough to make a decision if I needed to go to the hospital. So I got to meet 2 very nice paramedics on the ambulance, a handful of Dr.s and nurses as "the guy who got attacked by the dishwasher."

Then about a month later got a full cardiac workup.

Never even got an explanation of why it happened, just got a funny story and a new scar. 

I had a bad reaction to the 2nd dose of the COVID vaccine. Passed out, fell, and put my head through my bathroom door. 

+1 to keep the fantasy team lock after Q2. It's way more fun to play than the pinkbike one.

@notthatbryan - crazy story! and yeah, i forgot "syncopy" in the term. the human body is fascinating.

re: fantasy, i think we'll keep normal timing after Q2 like last year and will discuss rider values. thanks for the input, everyone. 

Thank you for having me on the show! And slight, but important correction… I am a Psychologist 😬 ✌🏾👊🏾

Just saw this yesterday.. After a mental health day yesterday and listening to the Pulp Philly review today, this will be the listening for tomorrow's commute.. Should be good..

When competing in the rain, I always try and remember that little kid me would have loved to play in the rain. Everyone is bitching about the rain, and I'm thinking " I get to play in the rain".

This was so good... I can listen to JRich all day.. Obviously very smart, well spoken, and his story telling ability is amongst the best. Thankfully, he said he's not going to read the comments...

The part about the ants really hit home for me. I remember being at Nellis around 07, I had an awesome weekend. Wasn't outside top 3 all weekend, a couple of wins.. I was stoked, but I couldn't get too excited because I knew I wasn't going up against the heavy hitters that were NBL east coast guys..

@Jason_Schroeder your mountain biking reminds me of my bmx racing. I raced mainly because I loved the riding. Everyone telling me that I should go pro, but I didn't because there would be less opportunities for me to race. And, I knew that outside a select few, you weren't making a living at it back then..

Great pod guys... Definitely should bring JRich back..

Thanks for your time! This made great listening on a training slog of a ride I was in the middle of. I've come to racing pretty late in life and I'm trying to figure out how to get my head in the game knowing that my racing "hobby" isn't going to amount to much. Your thoughts were super helpful and I'm looking forward to hopefully hearing more! 

This Vital podcast has become one of my favorites.  Thanks for the good listening.  Where are the podcast notes?

I second this! Always a good listen. Good work boys!

what's the story of oregon enduro series? I raced a couple when they were in year 2 or something, but don't know what happened there......

When Schroeder went over the split times, I came to a rather obvious realization. He did something very different in sector 3 that amplified the advantage he pulled in sector 4.  Would love to see what that was.  It was a BIG jump in time.  Tonight I want to go back and look at the last few hundred yards of sector 3 to see what that chunk of track looked like.

The Enduro = WRC racing is spot on. Both are awesome forms of racing that are held back by how difficult it is to do good coverage. 

I’ve been enjoying the coverage of EDR that we’ve had for Loudenvielle. Elliot Heap is really good, especially at the rider interviews and the highlights are a decent mix of raw videos and head cams. Very enjoyable. 

I agree 100%. Those guys looked like they were racing but having such a great fun time. And the scenery. OMG. How to not be distracted by the mountains and crash. Concentration 😀

The only thing is the death of ews has taken some media engagement out of national/regional level racing as well.  Which does decrease overall participation as well as limits the opportunities for people to get paid to race them.  

In the UK the bigger enduro events like Ard Rock/Moors, Ex, Bolly etc all sell out within minutes. I do a few local ones too and the numbers are probably slightly down on what they were 5-10 years ago but still getting a couple of hundred entries for each round which seems decent numbers. 
the Misspent Summers newsletter was also saying that the numbers of entrants for Loudenvielle were up on previous year/s which is a good sign. 
I think enduro for those not looking to make a living out of racing is still doing well.

Oooooh Megavalanche, always love anytime it's mentioned. Unsolicited opinion here since I've done it twice, in 2019 and 2021, and I agree with some points in the podcast but disagree with others.

TL;DR: if you're thinking about it and have the chance, do it. It's incredibly fun.

The thing I agree with is do not let go of your bike on the snow. You will continue sliding, the bike will stop. Getting back to it will mean a long slog on a steep (black) ski slope in mushy snow. Not fun. I tried to stay on my bike in 2019, but in 2021 I jumped off it at the top of the second slope and just slid on my butt. Seemed less prone to problems that way. R+iding in that slush is an utter pain, the minute you ride into someone else's rut, you're gone, so tripoding or even quadpoding (feet off both sides) is more or less the way to go.

As for bike choice, I don't think you need to go overly heavy. I did it on my Bird Aeris AM9, which is a 150/150 bike and it was perfect. The main event is not that rough anyway plus it's likely you'll be stuck behind people and not going full speed, so a lighter bike makes sense. The rougher part is actually the quallies in general which are also more important as they determine whether you get into A finals or not (which was our goal both years I did it). Nevertheless I didn't feel like I need more bike* in any of the races I did.

Maybe I'm a bit special, but same goes for tyres. The first year we tried to do it the 'right' way - I had a HR2/HR2 combo in EXO/DD and Nukeproof ARDs front and rear. For 2021 I rolled with either dual Assegais or an Assegai/Aggressor combo (depending on which rear wheelset was on for the race), EXO/EXO in either case and the ARD in the back only. It was totally fine for me.

Length wise, I think I did both of them in about 50 minutes to an hour and I'm nothing special riding wise. It's long, it's not easy, luckily at the time I was fit enough and if anything, enduring long descents was my strength. I think I'd die today.

Going up to Pic Blanc in 2019 was... an experience. I was nervous AF; we qualified very well (I was 13th in our group and thus started from 5th row) and the nerves got to me not knowing what to expect. In 2021 I almost didn't care, in part because I did what I wanted two years prior, knew what was coming and because we were concluding a 10 day trip that also included racing Enduro2 in Les Arcs. I was basically ready to go home

If anybody is interested in tons of (mine and friends) GoPro footages, here are:
A montage of our group from 2019 from Nejc Černilogar
My 2019 quallies
My 2019 finals
My 2021 quallies (started lower down than usual)
My 2021 finals
Bonus, one of the longer Enduro2 stages shot by Nejc from 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esyrVDpFePc
In the above video the left of the two guys starting in front of us is Jakob Smolnikar, a madlad who was 13th in 2021 Megavalanche. He also has his run on YT and you can see roughly what it looks like at the sharp end.

*I replaced the AM9 with the Aeris 9 in 2023 based off the races I did in the few years before, thinking going full enduro makes sense, but it turns out that coupled with a lot less riding that I do since 2023, a 160/160 (or even a 180/180 bike with a different link) just doesn't make sense and I miss my 150/150 bike. It's plenty.

Shout out to the Vital team, the insights and discussions have been spot on and incredibly interesting. Keep it coming!

Also, regarding the "2 clicks too slow" discussion... TL;DR: Not all clicks are created equal.

Below is a 20 in/sec rebound sweep for a popular fork damper. This means the damper is tested at a constant shaft speed of 20 in/sec while measuring the rebound force at each detent, from fully closed to fully open.

In this case, the damper produces roughly 75 lb of rebound force at full closed and only 6 lb at full open. That's a healthy adjustment range, however the settings at either extreme are likely not usable for most riders.

Ideally, the optimal settings fall somewhere in the middle of the range. However, if the resolution between clicks isn't consistent, then two clicks in one part of the adjustment range may produce a very different feel than two clicks elsewhere. 

so rad you guys beat us to it. here is the latest bikes: unaffiliated

Tag along for another decompression conversation where we chat about the Mountain of Hell mass-start race, Connondale’s Bad Habit that Jason’s been reviewing, how heavy is too heavy for a trail bike, the subjectiveness of bike setup and what components are ‘good,’ bar width, bar ends, and auto-shifting e-bike gearbox motors. Enjoy! (Oh, and it's Robert Plant, not Jimmy Page hahaha)

Love the podcast.

I did Megavalanche in 2018- best/coolest race experience I've ever done.  Dying to go back someday.

I actually signed up to Vital just to say:

I love the podcast. Specifically the unaffiliated recent stuff, but I'm having a great time going back and listening to everything older. It's an added benefit to be in Washington and have the regionality be relatable, having been to some of the same places and events, and worked with some of the same people.

Keep up good work!