The DO NOT KILL list

Killing it.

Naaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!!

Cyclocross

My favorite thing about cyclocross in the NW is that as a rider and thus a representative of the cycling world, I am never, ever allowed to make fun of cyclocross. Or cyclocross riders.




Ever.

This is awesome

Someone in a position of power at DVO looked at this video and thought, "This is a great video. Send it out to all the MTB sites. Now people are gonna know our shit is good to go."



These are the only things I can conclude after watching that video:


1. The Emerald fork will probably bend before it snaps. Probably.

Based on the video evidence, we can conclude that, at least when deflected in one direction, the fork bends a really long way before it snaps.

We don't know when it will snap, crackle, or pop when bent in that direction, or how much force was required to do so. We don't know if they ever got it to snap, crackle, or pop in that direction. We don't know if the stress test shown in the video permanently deformed the materials, and we don't know how much deflection or force is required to permanently deform the fork. We don't know how much deflection the fork will sustain in other directions before failing. We don't know what effect impulse vs. constant forces will have on the fork.

Most of all we have no baseline and no way to compare the tests shown in the video to literally anything else whatsoever. Which leads us to our next key learning from this video:



2. As a company, DVO is probably ethical. Probably.

After watching the video, we can conclude that DVO does test their forks. We don't know if they test them a lot or a little. All we know is that tests occur.

What were the results of those tests?
Do they test products more or less than their competition?
Did DVO test products from their competitors?
Do we have any means to interpret the results of those tests or compare against the competition?

We have no idea.

It goes up AND down.

Here's another fun game: I'm going to list all the suspension fork manufacturers I can think of, and you're going to guess which of them doesn't test their products:

RST
DVO
Fox
Rockshox
Manitou
Magura
SR Suntour
Marzocchi
White Brothers
X-Fusion
Maverick
DT-Swiss

If you guessed "all of those companies test their products," you would be correct. Every single one of those companies test their products. Some test them more, some test them less, but no one just doesn't test stuff. That one of the steps required to be legit. Or here's a better word: Ethical. It would be unethical to not test products, because someone could get hurt using your product if it failed in a predictable, measurable, avoidable way. Testing your product is one of those absolute bare minimums for being considered a real company.

Of course, Bryson Martin shared this on Vital: "Unlike many other companies, we just wanted to show everyone that this fork went through very stringent laboratory testing and passed with flying colors." 

"…very stringent lab testing… passed with flying colors."

That's the MTB equivalent of claiming "World's Greatest Cheeseburger:"

I haven't tried every cheeseburger in the world, so I'll have to take them at their word.

And besides, why would a restaurant exaggerate about something like that?

DVO, we don't even know if your product is better off because of your testing. Maybe the results were horrifying and your product is dangerous, but you have too much invested and there is no cost effective way to fix your product, so you're just going to produce it anyway and let the consumers deal with it. We call this "The Avid Elixir Approach."

To be fair, this guy has white handlebars, so he probably had it coming.

Maybe you discovered that your product is massively overbuilt and over-engineered, and you could make it 99% as reliable and only Andre the Giant would notice the difference (not really, he's dead. And seriously, it's 2013, that's a pretty weak pop-culture reference). Maybe by cutting back a little bit, you could save all the consumers 30% in the process. But maybe you just didn't change anything because you have too much invested and there is no cost effective way to fix your product, so you just going produce it anyway and let the consumers deal with it. We call this "The Magura Gustav Approach."

Sure that thing hasn't had a fresh bleed since we found out Backstreet's Back [editor's note: ALRIGHT!!] but I'm sure it will still stop a semi truck dead in its tracks.

Whatever, I have no reason to assume the guys at DVO are evil or deceptive. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt: we'll assume that DVO did the bare minimum to be considered ethical, and they tested their products to the benefit of their products and consumers. Of course this doesn't make DVO special or differentiate their product in any way, but we can still give them kudos for doing the bare minimum.

Congratulations DVO, what do you want? A gold star? Great, here's a gold star for testing your fancy new fork:

You earned it.

3. The results of their testing probably weren't great.

Here's a simple rule: If you're selling something, you cite every imaginable benefit in your sales pitch. 

Exclusive this.

Proprietary that.

Best ever.

New and improved.

You know what companies LOVE TO ADVERTISE WITH? Statistics. Specifically, comparative statistics that resulted from testing their products against their competitors' products:

40% more compliance than the last model.

30% more torsional stiffness than Overdrive 1.

40% stronger than the aluminum version.

40% more brightening power than detergent alone.

It's not exactly like BMC, Giant, Santa Cruz, or Oxiclean had to hide these numbers from their competitors. It's not like this is all top secret black magic voodoo stuff that occurs behind close doors. If there is a measurable advantage, than you will advertise the hell out of it. That's what marketing is.

Marketing for Dummies: 

Step One.

Make sure your shit is better than the other guys. If this is impossible/difficult/inconvenient/you're lazy/SRAM, skip ahead to step two.

Step Two.

Tell everyone how much better your shit is.

If you do a bunch of testing and DON'T tell us what the results are, then the only reasonable conclusion is that there's nothing to tell. That doesn't mean it's bad news. Not necessarily, anyways. But it's way more powerful to say "top secret" than to say "it's sort of the same as the other guys. It's a little better in some ways, maybe a little worse in other ways."

I could keep ranting. But that will do for now.

-Team Robot

You're all pussies

Thank you spending money and supporting our industry and my racing, but if you can't turn an 11-36 cassette you are a gigantic pussy.

Just so we're all on the same page: You don't have to run a 40 tooth up front and be a tough guy. A 32 is fine. If you can't turn a 34 with an 11-36 out back, you're probably not going that fast down the hill anyway, so that 32 isn't going to hold you back too much.

But if you honestly can't pedal a 32 front-36 rear combo up everything short of a wall, you should just kill yourself. And just to clarify, it's okay if you can't clean every single climb on every single ride. That's called mountain biking.

This is how I feel after Thanksgiving

That's also what I wish would happen mid-sentence to the next blowhard touting the benefits of "flow trails," "sustainable trail building," and "collaborative and(or) inclusive" trail building."

1. Terminal bullshit level occurs.
2. Backpressure builds up.
3. Small sarcastic comment from a third party.
4. Explosion.



Flow trails are not a thing.

Upcoming mountain bike atrocity alert: Sea Otter Classic x Enduro Collab

Sea Otter will have an Enduro race next year.

http://www.seaotterclassic.com/index.cfm/competitive_events_mb_enduro.htm

Great header, Team Big Bear. It's like every marketing department in the mountain bike industry got together for burritos and beer. And then the morning after someone collected the contents of all of their toilets. And then that was made into an event.

Sea Otter BroCal industry/MTB recumbent consumer event + trendy industry/MTB recumbent new race format + no geographic/topographic opportunity for actual mountain biking =

Sea Otter Enduro.

Most Enduro races I've been to have between 3000 and 5000 feet of climbing and descending. Some races have a lot more, but 3-5k seems pretty standard for the U.S. So with the 400 foot hills around Laguna Seca, we should be able to get that sort of vertical in somewhere between 9 and 16 stages. Knowing that everyone in the downhill world will also be racing slalom and downhill already, an extra 16 stage day on Friday shouldn't be too bad.

Oh, the event promoters already said it's only three stages? But, all the hills are 400 feet tall, at best. The downhill track is the longest continuous downhill anywhere around, where are you going to put the other tracks? The downhill track's only two minutes, so even if you ran that three times you'd only have six minutes of racing. Wait…

If:

1. You don't have much vertical, and 
2. You're only going to run three stages, and
3. You want to have a race that's at least ten minutes, then…

THERE WILL BE PEDALING.

Carl Decker winning the 2010 Sea Otter Super-D.

Realistically, Decker would be a pretty good bet for your 2014 Sea Otter Enduro Champ. It's possible that the event promoters, Team Big Bear, will build two sweet, new, mostly-downhill trails around the raceway, and we'll race on badass trails with a few uphills and maybe some tight corners thrown in.

But probably, that won't happen. Probably, it will be a dead ringer for the atrocity that was the Sea Otter Super D, and that would make Decker the odds on favorite. Probably, it will have a combined five minutes of descending, but even that will be chopped up and confused, and the descending won't really factor into the results. Probably, the 10-15 minutes of flat fire road and climbing will have a little bit more influence on the results.

Probably, stage one will be on a fire road, with an awkward taped off section midway down that goes into the grass and does a bunch of traversing switchbacks on a pancake-flat section of Laguna Seca's best treeless south facing hillside. It will probably be five minutes, with two minutes of dead flat traversing, but no big climbs. Okay, maybe a 100 foot climb at the start. Six minutes.

Probably, stage two will be a novelty stage, with an equal mix of slalom course, actual Laguna Seca racetrack, probably some of the CX course around the venue at the bottom, including hopping barriers and running up a set of stairs, and, probably, it will start with a climb up the corkscrew to start. Four minutes. Oh, and maybe they'll throw in seven laps around the speed and style course. Five minutes.

Probably, stage three will be the downhill course, but we'll start the stage at the shuttle drop off spot, and then pedal up to the DH start. And then after the log double, they'll tape off eighteen traversing 5 mph chicane switchbacks through the grass to get you down to a snail's pace before the uphill. And then, instead of ending in the grass field next to the road, we'll just pedal down the B Road all the way to the grand finish on HWY 68. Four minutes.

Total race time: 15 minutes.

Total descending: 700 vertical feet

Total climbing: 2300 vertical feet

I'll be there.

TEAM ROBOT two-weeks ago update

This is still pretty awesome, and in the laundry list of reasons why I'm a gigantic pussy, chicks taking their brakes off and going faster than me would be near the top of that very long list:

Fabien Barel

He got 3rd place in the Enduro World Series on Michelin tires. One more time:

He got third place on Michelins.