Vital’s Bikes: Unaffiliated Podcast - Community Conversation

Luckily, you all wear vans slip ons all day airy day. Whew. 

The kneepads-always-on crew clearly ain't from my neck of the woods.  If you do a big climb in the southeast in July or August, removing your shoes to put your kneepads back on at the top of a climb gives you the opportunity to also remove your socks and wring the sweat out of them.

Bonus of taking knee pads on and off is that you can link that activity in your mind to disengaging the climb switch on your shock and unwinding LSC on your fork back to its normal setting.   For me, those two things always go together.  Otherwise, I'd forget about the climb switch half the time and have to stop a hundred yards into the descent.

Ew. 
So you take your socks off. And you put your socks back on? Your soaked-with-sweat socks? 

I was gonna say this whole core discussion was definitely over (including these guys saying that the Les Gets finish line barbarian wave is too much) but forget all that:

You’re barefoot for a time before pulling sweaty socks BACK ON and dropping in? 

I’m obviously 2 legit to discuss this topic but there’s no other word for it. Core. 

I dress for my rides once and undress once. The only acceptable knee pads over ankles move is the post ride carbonated beverage of choice moment where I’m too smoked to have proper motor function and too close to cramping. Seriously, how gnarly are the cramps you get taking your shoes or knee pads off? Those mf’rs are rare but hot damn they do not let go. 

Thigh cramps are like getting electrocuted.  Whole body spasms.  CORE

Re: R.I.P. Enduro World Cups show. As you all said, enduro is certainly not dead, especially at the regional level.

One point that wasn’t brought up, maybe because y’all didn’t watch it, was the coverage Red Bull provided years ago before the WBD takeover with On Track. As a recovering XC racer/enjoyer of long rides, that show is what originally got me interested in following enduro and entering regional enduro events.

WBD tried to recreate a version of it last year, but it missed the mark, IMO. Red Bull also sort of recreated the concept with Race Tapes, which I thought was excellent coverage.

For me, what made those shows work was the storytelling around the personalities, along with the behind the scenes, adventure style look at the racing and the communities surrounding it. It was more than just race coverage.

So the question is: Can shows like On Track or Race Tapes provide the kind of coverage and storytelling that gets people Stokedddd to watch? - Siiickkk Bro (lol).....

(me desperately finishing up moto podcasts about mxon drama so i can watch podcasts about the current enduro mtb drama while i wait for more mtb world champs info to come in while excitedly awaiting the pro mx finale while trying to plan a snow valley trip on the weekend but wondering if i should avoid it cuz theres a race closing the trails while putting sealant in my new schwalbe radials while hiding from a heat wave)

SUMMERRR 

One thing about the decline of world Enduro I always noticed was that a lot of the riders, especially the French, believed their job was solely to win the race, with next to no brand, location or even lifestyle promotion. I can name a dozen sick french riders from the early years that you probably would struggle to find any edits or interviews of from back then.

Contrast this with Santa Cruz bikes who mostly (and I don't mean this offensively) sent out a few riders tot he EWS to get nice photos and clips of. Like we all know Iago Garay and can probably remember incredible images of him.

I really enjoyed that one.  Looking back, the early years of EWS really were something special.  

Something to keep in mind with the recent Crankworx announcement is they were also instrumental in the founding of the original EWS series in 2013. Good reason to be optimistic. 

The Enduro Mountain Bike Asociation (EMBA) was formed to established the EWS and became the de facto governing body of the new series.  EMBA itself had four founding members: Chis Ball, Enrico Guala, Fred Glo, and Darren Kinnaird (Crankworx GM) and they would become the four original EWS board members.

The origin story I remember is that the four of them wrote the proposal for the creation of an enduro world cup series and when the response from the UCI was a hard no they decided to do it themselves.  The rest is history.

As the EWS grew and EMBA evolved into ESO I'm not sure how it all played out, but there's definitely plenty of institutional knowledge among the Crankworx crew that goes far beyond just the events they hosted over the years.

Two things to mention after listening to the latest episode:

The UCI cancelling the World Cup series for enduro but retaining the World Champs is the same thing they did to 4X in 2012. Surprised nobody's brought this up as a comparison yet. (Obviously, the two disciplines aren't exactly the same, but how many other times has the UCI cancelled a series while clinging to the right to hand out rainbow jerseys?)

SSCXWC is an awesome event, and I remember when cyclocross legend Sven Nys (then recently retired) showed up to the event in 2016 and maybe-probably deliberately avoided winning to not have to get the tattoo. Josh Bryceland also showed up that year -- Pinkbike actually has a great photo gallery.

We all missed the true spirit of enduro:



Googles and half shells...

what we need now is every rider to wear that kali football helmet with... fox purevue glaggles

THIS + THIS 

One question, is at least the last podcast a bit low on the volume for anyone else? I had the volume in my car maxed out and still hardly heard some of the words... 

I still celebrate the culture every winter (to keep my sinuses warm on sub freezing rides). 

I tried that a few times and found it severely impractical as it pushed the helmet forwards, often off the forehead (forwards). Granted, I was (and am) running a POC helmet at the time and had it tightened around my head quite a bit, forming a lot of free space between the back of the shell and the adjuster, which then gave it the space to be moved forwards. 

A full face sits on the head differently and more fully for it not to be a problem.