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Great write up! This made me pretty nostalgic and has me thinking about coming off the bench. You guys have been doing something special for a good while now. Really cool write up and use of the gopros.

Race Cascadia #1 Race Report with their GoPro experiment Full story - https://www.vitalmtb.com/community/Race%20Cascadia/blog/05/12/2026/entr…

it is if you know where to look for it.

If you are Alabama-far south, Besides Gravity Carolina’s races, don’t sleep on Bump N Grind outside of Birmingham the 2nd weekend of June. High quality promoters(this is year 32 of the XC race!) decent-enough field depth in intro classes.

I'll check them out, thanks!

I think I know the races you’re talking about… have you tried a Gravity Carolina’s race? Newer promoter out of Charlotte, I’ve done a couple and thought he did a great job. They’re racing at Rattlesnake this weekend, then Kanuga in a couple weeks.

That's too bad, local enduro is so much fun with a good organizer! Speaking to the two governing bodies commenting, I've raced both Cascadia Dirt Cup races as well as a Montana Enduro Series race (Jackson Hole) and both organizations are doing a great job. MES is definitely less intense, which I was expecting going into the race. The California Enduro Series does a fantastic job as well and I have raced several rounds of their series. I also raced the EWS that was in Sugarloaf, Maine in 2022 and for what it's worth I thought the above promoters were...

I'm curious about enduro racing, but being in the deep southeast the only organization consistently putting on races is the corniest fucking thing around. I kinda want nothing to do with them.

Chiming in to say that I've been a huge fan of Race Cascadia since I did my first enduro at capitol forest in 2015. I was a high schooler and riding a $500 hard tail. My brake pads wore out, my chain broke, it was ridiculously muddy and I got last place. I was hooked. I also got to race 2022 EWS rounds in Scotland, Austria/Slovenia, Italy and Whistler. I also did the Tasmania rounds of the first season of "EDR" and saw some of the changes that the Warner Brothers merger/takeover created. I also backpacked between most of these...

Another Montana Enduro organizer here. The short answers are yes and yes. This is exactly what the Montana Enduro Series does for the Montana Bicycle Guild: The MES raises money for MBG's trail work and trail advocacy. Every penny from the MES goes back into the nonprofit trail org. we've used this model since 2014. Putting on enduro races has helped us build and maintain some really great trails, and helped us make our community a better place to live and ride bikes. This model works if everyone has the right mentality and priorities. If those aren't aligned, it can...

As someone who's never raced an enduro, but has considered it for several years, a huge turnoff is the Friday practice days. I've got a limited number of vacation days, most of which get claimed by my family, especially around the holidays. I actually like the idea of blind racing Saturday better than practicing for a day before. I know one of the Downieville races is done like this now, and have a buddy who did that as his first race and loved it. Sure locals will still have the edge, but they will regardless. I guess it's harder to...

The locations of the "Trans" races are very appealing to me but cost is a concern. Trans Sierra Norte is a DREAM event, but you know what is even more appealing? Not spending thousands of dollars to go sleep in a tent, and instead getting a house rental with friends and hiring a guide. I'm in my 30s and not going pro anytime soon. I'm not competing for the top spot so I don't understand why I would shell out the kind of money to "race for fun" when I could grab a few friends and ride the exact same...

For real I'd do some small for fun events if it was only 12.5 mi days. I don't want to spend money to race at distances that my out of shape lazy tail could barely finish much less try to "race". There's the occasional one here I should try.

The trail org I'm involved with is doing just that this spring, hosting an enduro race to encourage more involvement from our community in trail work and advocacy. We're going to try and copy a lot of the stuff Trans-Cascadia has done with trail days beforehand that allow folks to trade sweat equity for entries. To our group, an enduro race seemed like the best format to get folks talking and foster those relationships. Hope yall can get something similar going without too much hassle!

I'm not a racer (I used to race XC a long time ago) but I do help build and maintain a small network of trails in rural Northern CA. Our group has considered hosting a race to showcase the area and hopefully raise some money to build new trails. This has been interesting to read. The trails are pretty well suited to the "mini-enduro" format with lots of ~500-700 foot descents. Unfortunately, some of the climbing is on public (low-traffic, rural residential) roads, although we are working on building more climbing routes. Do folks here think grassroots racing as a...

Did enduro die? I think the reality is it just got hyped up way more than anyone epxected when over a couple of years lots of injured / tired / semi competiitve / older DH riders jumped on board. That naturally dragged lots of sponsors into the sport, more manufacturers saw the sport was buzzing etc etc. Granted yes the Moir, Hill, Rude, Barel days were sick and blew the sport up but those guys would eventually leave as the sport was their exit strategy. Young kids love DH, i always did even when i did not have a DH...

The "Grassroots Enduro Series" in Ireland does (did? I moved away a few years back) that. The venues are usually relatively compact (as are the Irish mountains) and all stages are open from say 0900 to 1500 and you can race the stages as many times as you like in whatever order you wish. Always a good day out with (for me) the focus on riding fun new (to me) trails with a bunch of mates. Cheap entries too. EDIT: Link to series website: https://grassrootsenduro.com/

race promoters: don’t call it Mini Duro, call it Sprint Enduro. If you only have a few short stages, have your more advanced fields race them multiple times to reach ideal stage and journey times to please your customers. When i’ve run Sprint Enduro format in the past, I’ve made sure at least one of the stages is in a grassy field with ruts and flat corners, like a proper NORBA DS. It’s badass seeing the scholastic kids on hardtails ripping up flat corners in front of their gathered homies.