Leaderboard

Welp, there goes my afternoon. I'll be there in about 45 minutes.

Still rollin steel HT 26" wit 100.

Nothing new. There will be MTB trails.

Here are the two maps from last years race.

Rode Peddlers and Picnic last night. No dirtbike... I was ready though...

Did you guys get to see this Crankworx entry? Hilarious satire piece on a guide to trail building. So funny!

I have two possible logo designs for Austin Mountain Biking. They are similar, and I'm not sure which one I like best. These are not colorized yet, but wanted to get some feedback before we go further. Logo #1: Logo #2: Please vote for your favorite! You can leave comments about why you like/dislike the logos below. Thanks! ..Al

DesertNomad and I are going to head out to Lake Georgetown this Thursday, August 30th, to try and clear the remaining trees that are down between Cedar Breaks and Crockett Springs. We'll leave the Cedar Breaks trailhead at 8am on bikes, and keep riding west until we start hitting downed trees. We'll be using hand saws to clear any obstructions. Please join us if you can! Bring work gloves and saws if you have them, but we should have some extra saws that will fit in a pack. Make sure you bring plenty of water, as there will be no place to get water between Cedar Breaks and Crockett Springs. We'll be returning after we reach Crockett Springs (which is a bit over two miles in, so not that far, especially on bikes). Here's a map showing the location of the Cedar Breaks trailhead: https://www.google.com/maps/place/30°40'11.8"N+97°44'19.4"W/@30.669936,-97.740912,685m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x0:0x0!7e2!8m2!3d30.6699357!4d-97.7387176 If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask! ..Al

Not a problem in my opinion, and I would consider doing the event if i were you, if you can ride that far. There will be a neutral roll out from Downtown I think near the peddlers pub. This will sort out Racers from "accomplishment riders" pretty easily. This organization encourages both. Marathon races have a totally different vibe. I am sure but you have looked into the event, but epic rides usually has 3 loops that people can do based upon fitness. I recommend looking at that loop and seeing where to ride during that event. If you are riding the back 40, I would just time it so you are riding after they have started their loop. Afternoon should be perfectly fin and weather should be fantastic. Go in the direction they go. One side of blowing springs looks to be unused, Medusa, tamaguche, schroene train, downhill trail and the park stuff around Slaughter pen looks unused, so basically, there is all kinds of good riding for you to do the day of the race. Unfortunately, Ozone gets used and could have traffic, but its deep in the race, so you could ride ozone early in the morning. You can hotlap tiger trail, panther prowl, and Ozone for some big time fun. Their events are awesome, and the atmosphere of that many riders is pretty awesome. Call ahead and make reservations for all of your restaurants ahead of time. Oven and Tap, Preachers Son, etc

I really dig the first one. I don't know why it just stuck out to me. I think it's because of the black rider with the white background.

Been there man. I had so much overlap in bikes i ended up buying a cross bike. I'm currently thinning the herd down to two not counting my wife's rig. You should talk to chief about trying out his B+ hardtail. running 29 x 2.6 on my HT

You're right, that does seem like a pretty stupid design decision. I think that's always how it's worked with Invision's forum software. It does seem ridiculous that they used the same icons at a different size that visually represent the same thing (shows you if there are new messages in those forums/threads), but the action is completely different. Let me think about that. I'm also going to see if I can hunt down any discussions about this very subject on their official support forum. ..Al

Nature is telling us that we need more trail features out there. I'm thinking some Northshore style skinnies over the worst rocks.

Nature is trying to tell us not to ride this trail.

There are typically 3 groups: the ~4:30 “early” group the ~5:30 “social pace” group the ~5:30 “fast” group Showing up and hanging out to be ready around half past should allow you to find people to ride with. Showing up at :25 after means you will probably ride alone. Post up on this thread and people will tell you when they are riding.

I see that now, and the cockpit is massive, both seated and standing. Would be interesting to get a leg over one. Maybe Medium is the new Large. Both of my local bikes are out of commission right now, and I've been salivating over all the new models being introduced. With 2 mid-travel FS 29ers and a traditional XC 29er HT already in the stable, I think anything new for me would come in the form of an aggressive 650B HT, something like the Transition Throttle that would be fun on the trail or as a dirt jumper.

Done!

Guess I'm late to the party, but I finally got here. I was wondering why no one had posted in the Brushy Creek Mojo thread for 10 days (it's the only one I looked at on Mojo). I must have missed the discussion on Bots.

If I didn't already have too many bikes, I'd certainly consider it. I have to sell/give away two bikes before I buy another!

Those Mondrakers look ridiculously good. Cycle progression carries them, I think the only dealer in the state.

Perfectenshlag. Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

Maybe it was an ebike......

You forgot bald

Forum name change suggestion Austin Mountainbike Forum Reunited ... aka; those Austin MFRs just thinking out loud, move along, nothing to see here

don't worry folks... I made it over here 🙂

No substitute for saddle time. Gotta make sure that you can be comfortable for the long haul.

A 29er with 100-120 seems sweet spot for here but 130mm would be completely fine with an active rear suspension, plus you can get it on if you get to ride out of state on bigger / faster stuff . The only thing that would concern me about the mondraker would be the near 49" wheelbase on the large. My old process 111 was 48" and was an absolute tank on tight trails like deception. That blue one is sexy as f@ck though.....

Doing endurance race pace rides you'll burn 600-800 calories/hour. Anyone that can eat and process more than 300 calories/hour, wow! That's awesome. I've seen this before in person (Rocky Gingg was eating Freebird burritos on the bike and fistfuls of M&M Trail mix), but wondered even if you can handle it, if you're not pulling too much blood flow away from your muscles to digest all those calories? The reality is that we have a few hundred calories worth of glycogen stored in our muscles, after that's gone, we (most of us) can process about 250-300 calories per hour of fast absorbing sugars (4% glucose, 4% Maltodextrin usually in sports drinks), the rest is going to come from fat if we're going slowly enough, or muscle breakdown if we're pushing things. You can go fast or you can skimp on nutrition. I don't think you can do both. I highly recommend the book "What Comes First, Cardio or Weights?" by Alex Hutchinson if you're interested in any of this stuff. And yeah, I second everyone saying "do what works for you and don't experiment on the ride with what you haven't tried in your normal rides". For me, I have done 24 bottles of Inifinit for a 24 hour race without any real food and feeling pretty good. Sometimes on long rides though, one of those gas station cheese peanut butter cracker packs and a coke (+water) will sub for one of my bottles and helps a bit mentally. For 90 minute rides or less I can do water, but in the summer I can get behind very quickly on electrolytes, so at the very least I throw in some Lite Salt (50% KCl 50% NaCl) into the bottle, but I usually drink Infinit in the summer even for short rides. I have too many side-effects of going without electrolytes otherwise.

Lots of good info in this thread. I've got so much to say that I don't even know where to begin. I will say this...if you are not acutely working towards becoming fat-adapted via a Ketogenic way of eating, then you should primarily be focused on eating/consuming/fueling yourself the traditional way via glucose/carbs/sugars. Its simply how its done: your body needs it, requires it and wants to burn it. Figuring out the exact combo for yourself can take time but the basic formulas can be followed and tweaked with good results. I liked to go on super long rides and listen to my body's needs. I found that after consuming gels & gu bloks for a long portion of the ride, I liked to actually have something solid. It could be a PB&H(honey), or ideally a 7-11 personal size pecan pie. Love those things! Hydration-wise, I would run 1 bottle of water, and 1 bottle of overly saturated self-mixed gatoraid powder that I'd keep adding water to through the ride. If I was going deep into pain cave then at some point I'd top the gatoraid off with mtn dew. During races, I set my watch to do a 50 min countdown timer. I then skip the 1st alarm (at 50 min) and beginning with the 2nd alarm, I use it as a reminder to eat a gel about every 50 min. It took a good bit of experimentation to end up at this number. Don't let yourself get to "feeling hungry". If you end up there, you just went too long! The information below is from the point of view of someone who has actively and aggressively been working towards being a fat-adapted athlete: All that being said, I've been eating a Ketogenic style ever since January (with a 2 week break in July). On a daily basis, I regularly consume about only 25-35 net carbs a day (of which about 12-15 grams of those are sugars). On days before a big(ger) event, I do eat a small sweet potato the night before as a low-glycemic carb-up. This was my method for these 2 laps out at LGT and I did a door-to-door time of 6hr flat. https://www.strava.com/activities/1449950329 All of this ride was done consuming no more than 400 calories, of which only 150 of them came from the Stinger Waffle. The other 250 calories came from MCT oil. Likewise, I used this same methodology 2 weeks later at the Ouachita Challenge with good results. https://www.strava.com/activities/1471935804 At the OC I only consumed about 600 calories total, but 3/4 of them came from Hammergel. I've been doing this the first 1/2 of this year as a physiological experiment of sorts. Just to see how it all works. I REALLY like the day to day result of eating like this. Now on to the downsides: During my time as a Keto athlete (cyclist), I find that I regularly have a 'dead legs' sensation. My legs feel a little bit flat. But I can perform and get results even with this sensation. I find myself having PB/PRs and occasional KOM's. But I regularly don't feel fresh. So the most recent time of my Keto experiment has been trying to add in some targeted carbs just prior to my rides to see if this could help. Yes, yes it does. I've found that 1 Hammergel about 30-45 min prior to a ride can pretty much completely remove by dead-leg syndrome. Last week I did what amounted to a 2.4 mile 6 lap circuit race with a bunch of roadies. https://www.strava.com/activities/1788820876 I'm still experimenting with how to best harness this in combination with my endurance riding and events. But as the experiment goes forward, I'm still trying to find out what can work best for me. In closing, I will say that its not all be great either. This weekend I attempted a to ride my concept of an EB LGT-Parmer-Deception Prologue and crashed & burned badly. It was possibly one of the single worst days I've ever had on a bike. https://www.strava.com/activities/1797161605 I'm still trying to analyze what happened. But I can't deny that nutrition could have played a part in it of some sorts. And the heat...and my fitness...and my pride... In summary, I think you have to find what works best for you. And in order to do that you have to put in the time (on the bike) to have successes and failures. Most of my pre-Keto methodology had been pretty finely honed through much training/practice/racing. And to be honest, I'm not sold-out to Keto. I'm very willing to go back to that way of eating. I somewhat foresee a possible combo where I race on a glucose source and then live day-to-day on a low-carb lifestyle. But if I end up there, in retrospect it could have taken nearly a year to figure that out. Later -CJB

Yeah, do we go with dad who has a new sports car and a condo or do we stick with mom who got to keep the house that kind of smells like old Korean food.

That's exactly what happens, and is what should have happened a few years ago when a bunch of outtatowners came through town to show us how it's done. No one gets accused of cheating, but you need have 83.5 miles on your GPS (or whatever it happens to be), AND no one protesting that they passed you multiple times, yadda yadda, to be in the clear.

I have no idea who the admin or admins are over on MoJo, but I think it's been running on "cruise control" for some time. The forum software hasn't been updated in five years, and there are known exploits for that version of vBulletin. Spicewookie was doing a good job of cleaning up the spam from the bots, but they've become increasingly aggressive, and at one point there was a new spam post once a minute in Austin VooDoo. I know the admins cleaned up Austin VooDoo, but the rest of the forum is still plagued with spam and it doesn't look like they made any effort to delete all the spam accounts or clean up anything outside of that. I've been watching new registrations on MoJo, and the bots are still registering at the rate of around 15 a day. And I'm sure 95% of new registrations (if not more) are spambots. Just take a look at the links for each of the home icons you can see at the above link and they all go to some sketchy website. And there was another big wave of spam early this morning. I have had people ask if I can transplant threads from MoJo to this forum. While technically it would be possible (and I could certainly do it with a copy of the forum database), legally it's a sketchy area. I'd need permission from whoever owns Bike MoJo first. And many forums are setup where individual members own their comments, so in cases like that you'd really need permission from all those people to copy their comments over. Which obviously would be a huge pain in the ass. Creating an archive of Austin VooDoo would be a great idea and is something I could do, but again, I'd need a copy of the database and the blessing of Bike MoJo's owner at a minimum. I could import the entirety of Austin VooDoo into a forum here so people could continue to reference threads, and if something were to happen to Bike MoJo, at least that would be saved for posterity. If the current admins are asleep at the wheel, one of the following things is going to eventually happen: 1) The site goes away when the owner stops paying for the hosting costs, 2) The hard drive on the site crashes, taking the site with it, 3) The forum database crashes, making the site inaccessible, or 4) The site gets hacked and erased. I have no idea if active backups are being made of the site, but if not and any of the above happens, that would probably be the end of all those posts forever. I just want to have a place to talk about mountain biking on a site that is actively maintained. And if the person running the site is a local who is actively involved in mountain biking, that is certainly a plus. I want to have some fun with this site, and it's a modern platform that will give me the flexibility to add some cool features over time. I completely understand people not wanting to move to another forum, or not happy about change. Hell, anytime I make significant changes to my other forum, there are people who grouse about it for a while. Yeah, this site has a bit more "structure" than posting everything in "Austin VooDoo", but I'm ultimately hoping this site will garner more traffic, and the organization of forums will be needed. And I'm open to suggestions on how to improve the forum, so please don't hesitate to say anything if you have an idea to make something better, or there's something you don't like. I won't be offended. ..Al

My thoughts are since the admins there never check in or do anything, they aren't going to take it down. I assume the forum will be there in perpetuity. So if we ever need to reference something we will always be able to go look it up there. There might be 231 pages of Korean to get past, but it will be there. I personally like the, "You might be a trail builder..." thread for example. I might go and find it at some point. But this is much better. Administered by a fellow MBer, and specifically for Austin folks. I laughed thinking about (not at) the one poster there that was all nostalgic for Mojo. He has been a member for all of 13 months now. If some of you long time Mojo-ers can see the benefits of this move, then why can't everyone. It's not like we are going to hurt the feelings of our good friends that run it, right?

+1 I was going to mention this as well. Throw in some road rides because even hard rides on the trail do not have the same benefits that a road ride has when it comes to improving your aerobic capacity. I can feel a difference with even one hard 50 or 60 mile road ride on the weekend. The other thing I recommend doing is doing some hill repeats on some of the climbs of the EB. You're going to be doing these hard hills after quite a few miles. Start by doing something like Yaupon or Coutyard 2-3x, take your time between them, play with your gears and/or pace. Even if you plan on walking these during the EB, they will improve your fitness and prepare you mentally as well. Ride them on your MTB so you know what to expect.

Also, if people cut the track, and many do either on accident or on purpose, they are only cheating themselves. In my opinion we only need to care about the “winners” - if you want to claim the top spot then you need to be able to prove you rode it all. For everyone else, it’s really all about you.

Oh and to add a comment about your question regarding the best way to train for long distance. I know this is a 4 letter word around here...but riding the road bike can be a G-R-E-A-T way to build depth into your fitness. If I do any structured training, then its almost always done on a road bike. Additionally, getting out in a group of 30-40 riders who are on the gas, and you don't really know your way back (or have enough pride to not want to get dropped), then you'll dig amazingly deep into the pain-bank during those times. Much MUCH harder than I'd ever go on a MTB, and that does wonders for your overall level of fitness. -Cody "I like all bikes" Baron

Your weekly rides look fine. I would start doing longer and longer distance to get used to the time / miles in the saddle. That Saturday ride needs to become 5 hours. Then 6 hours. etc. Nutrition is a personal thing. Go with what works for you. Your training is where you figure out what works for you. For me, I need real food. Gu / Cliff Bars / whatever are fine for a shorter ride. But I can't eat more than about one Cliff Bar a day or I will get sick. Probably could do two or three Gu's before I got sick. Similar with electrolyte / carb drinks. I carry Skratch / Portable Rice Cakes (see the Skratch Portable Cookbook) and stop for a Subway sandwich and chocolate milk about lunch time. I have to rest for 15 - 20 minutes after eating the Subway. I don't want to eat anything that is real spicy or loaded with grease, but otherwise most any real food works for me.

I'm digging the new site and looking forward to seeing it develop. Nice work and thanks Atari

Has anyone investigated the feasibility of constructing some tasty singletrack along the Brushy Creek Regional Trail? I've started looking into it officially since there is a severe shortage of singletrack up there. The main trail is nice, but it does not offer much in the way of challenge and/or riding experience. I was wondering if anyone had officially looked into having legal singletrack built and what his/her experience has been? (Was the proposal met with complete opposition, open-mindedness, reservation)?? I personally, along with some riders I have talked to along the trail, would LOVE to see some nice singletrack up that way....the land is PERFECT for building sustainable, flowy singletrack from what I can see.