Tabla de contenidos para Nov-Dec-Jan 19 en Mountain Biking Australia

Whipped. Beat. Buggered. Off the back. Rogered. If you can think of another expression for the way I’m feeling, 22km into this 47km desert stage, insert it here. Then I start hearing voices… When I started mountain biking, racing was the dominant part of the culture. The AMBA series was a pretty big deal, and racers would contest cross-country, downhill, trials and uphill events on the same weekend, often on the same bike. There were series sponsors and even full-season number plates, and the circus would visit almost every state in Australia. Racing is now more specialised and less diverse, with more traditional formats making way for new-school disciplines like enduro. The camaraderie is still there, of course, but it feels as if there are fewer opportunities to mix with…

It's ominous. I am ushered into the park ranger’s office and I feel a wave of déjà vu. I’ve seen the insides of land managers' offices before… and yup, there are the maps with the illegal trails highlighted on the table. “We’ve got concerns,” Martin Krieg, Senior Planner at Parks Wildlife and Heritage starts. “We have all these mountain bike trails to build. We're going to be really busy making sure they are really good trail experiences, rolled out in a relatively short period of time”. Hang on a minute… I'm not in trouble? Over the next hour the rangers lay out the plans to roll out more trails than we could reasonably hope for. Am I dreaming? The Northern Territory government earlier this year announced a 'Turbo Charging Tourism'…

There’s a certain indiscernible and captivating power that a strong still image commands. It’s a grip that has stood the test of time, digitisation and video; it even results in a brief pause on incessant Instagram scrolling. One single well-composed and well-timed photograph can move mountains and change lives. This may sound a little over-dramatic, especially in an era when we’re bombarded by thousands of screen pictures and videos every single woken hour of the day. If in doubt, just think about it; think about that iconic Che Guevara picture, an awesome trail image, or a sexy new bike shot to look hotter than it could ever possibly be. We all stop at times and look at pictures, and are often inspired into action after doing so. Most of us…

If I could, I would spend every day on my bike. Nothing beats just getting out there in the fresh air, hopping onto the bike, and hitting the trails with your friends. Even though the main goal of every ride is just to have fun, I do love trying out new tricks and improving my skills in the process. Sometimes it helps to seek new challenges to keep the progression going. I am constantly dreaming up new tricks and looking for new locations where I hope to head to with my bike at some point. This time, my bike took me on a very special adventure with plenty of laughs, local specialties, and great riding – to Graubünden, Switzerland, the Home of Trails. I have been watching Claudio Caluori’s famous…

Merida One-Twenty Merida’s ‘do-it-all’ bike is getting the long, low and slack treatment for 2019, following similar updates to the One-Forty and One-Sixty. Merida says the updated geometry and frame design gives the bike a very playful character and more capability on descents but retains the handling precision and speed you’d expect from a 120mm travel bike. Key changes include a lowered standover for better dropper post clearance and to create more space for the rider to manoeuvre. Head angle slackens out to a fairly balanced 68 degrees on the 27.5 version and 69 degrees on the 29er, while chainstays come into 440mm (27.5) and 445mm (29) for extra nimbleness while still allowing entry level models to run a front derailleur. Merida are bringing three alloy models into Australia ranging…

We all have to deal with the stress and pressure of time. We’ve all got the same amount in a day, but there’s an ever-increasing demand on it in our fast-paced world. And despite the advent of tools like email and video conferencing, work travel levels continue to climb – more than 8 million Aussies, for example, travelled overseas in 2017 for work, as opposed to just over 4 million in 2005. Of course, work life isn’t the be all and end all of our existence, but it’s often a necessary evil that cuts into other aspects of our lives, like looking after family and looking after ourselves. As a frequent traveller, a life of airport lounges and hotel buffet breakfasts is doing the necessary things for our familial income,…

RATINGS VALUE 9 FUNCTION 9 LOOKS 8 OVERALL 8 Boxing and packing bikes is, let’s face it, a pretty thankless chore. Trying to wedge various prices of aluminium, carbon and rubber into a tippy box without something rubbing another thing into oblivion can be hard on a good day, and cat-kickingly frustrating on others, especially if you’re hungover and late for a plane. Ahem. A lot of riders swear by the cardboard boxes that bikes come packed in from the factory, and bike shops are always keen to get rid of them; they’ll even pack your bike for a nominal cost. It’s not always convenient, though, and schlepping a box with no wheels around an airport isn’t easy. On the hunt recently for a bag to replace aforementioned cardboard…

Why mountain biking? Because a lot of my friends in motorsport do it! And for me, the hardest thing about motorsport is you're not in the car training, so you need some fitness and endurance training. I then try and combine that with something that's mentally stimulating as well, so I try and make decisions when I’m knackered. And that's the real appeal of mountain biking. A lot of the same principles I apply in the rally car apply in mountain biking too. It's similar when it comes to balance, looking forward, weight distribution, reading roads and trying to judge grip levels. All those things you have to do in a rally car, you need to do on the bike. All these reasons make it seem like a really logical…

Flights of fantasy I always enjoy looking at the bikes that are reviewed in the magazine but they tend to represent a fantasy rather than a reality for me. I’d love to see bikes reviewed that represent a range of price points, as not everyone has three or four thousand dollars (and upwards) to spend on a weekend bike for the trails. Case in point, the current issue reviews the Marin Wolf Ridge 8 ($5,999), the Pivot Switchblade Race XT ($6,799), the Santa Cruz Blur ($12,749) and the Whyte G-170 S ($4,650). If I was picking up the magazine as someone new to the sport, those sorts of numbers might have me thinking about a different (cheaper) hobby! Tim Murray Email Old is not obsolete Having recently upgraded to a…

Beakers bubbling on Bunsen burners. Fingers purple with potassium permanganate. Test tubes and teat pipettes. Ancient memories of school chemistry lessons. For the first time since then, I have a glass laboratory beaker in hand; a beaker filled with an intoxicating, bubbling reaction of barley, hops, water and yeast. The 2018 Singlespeed Nationals has come to Alice Springs and these beakers, etched with a childish rendition of boy on bike, are our gift for attending. But Alice gives a lot more than beer in beakers. Locals and well-travelled riders have enjoyed for some time the network of mountain bike trails bang in the centre of Oz. This is about to become more widely appreciated with the NT Government investing in new trails, improvements to existing trails and new signage. Much…

There is something satisfying about riding from one end of a country to another, even more so when you either start or finish (ideally both) at the sea. An end of tour saline dip is always welcome. As formalised, signed and GPXed trails continue to proliferate worldwide, some do indeed attempt such country traverses. Jordan now has the eponymously named Jordan Bike Trail, a new 700km route traversing the country from north to south. It starts close to the Sea of Galilee and finishes at Aqaba on the Red Sea. Okay, so the Sea of Galilee is actually a freshwater lake, but hey, don’t blame me. It was those New Testament authors that gave it status perhaps above its station. Jordan is squeezed between Israel, the state of Palestine, Saudi…

SPECIALIZED Turbo Levo • Drive system: Specialized/Brose • Riding style: trail The big news coming out of Morgan Hill this year is that its flagship e-mountain bike has had a complete refresh. Pretty much every aspect of the Levo has been redesigned for 2019, with Specialized claiming that the new model is the lightest and best-handling e-mountain bike on the market, at more than 2kg lighter than the original Levo. Frame: the 2019 Turbo Levo uses an entirely new frame design, modelled on the revised Stumpjumper frame that debuted earlier this year with its distinctive sidearm design that improves stiffness and performance over bumps. This, combined with additional mid-stroke support and a new custom tune specifically for the Levo from Specialized’s in-house team, means that riders should have more…

RATINGS IN THE STAND 9/10 ON THE TRAIL 9/10 OVERALL 9/10 Merida are best known for their range of super-light, very fast cross-country race machines. However, mountain bikes and the tastes of riders are always changing. It’s with this in mind that Merida have committed themselves to producing some trail bikes that ride well at affordable prices over the last couple of years. The One-Forty sits snugly in their range between the more cross-country focused One-Twenty and the enduro-oriented One-Sixty, claiming versatility as its strong suit. In a five-model range, the One-Forty 600 sits nearer the lower end of their options, priced under under the $3,000 mark. It is aimed squarely at the rider seeking their first taste of a ‘proper’ mountain bike, without ruining budgets and relationships along…

When we were kids, most of us probably did some form of after-school or weekend sport. Whether it was cricket, soccer or netball, our parents would deposit us at a sporting field a couple of times a week, and we’d spend time – sometimes reluctantly – executing drills, running around ovals or simulating games. Mountain biking is a bit different. There’s no Thursday training sessions, and only a few of us regularly race every week. What we usually end up doing is picking a start point, then riding to an end point. We may have done the same trail a lot, or we may have never ridden it before. The difference between our young selves and our riding selves is the way we approach our sport. Running around the oval…

Mountain Biking Australia: We loved the Home of Trails vid, both the execution and concept. Trail bikes are taking a much larger role in your films - is this a deliberate move? Danny MacAskill: Thanks very much. I really enjoyed making Home of Trails with Claudio [Caluori] and Cut Media. It was an awesome time hanging out and riding all the great trails Grabünden in Switzerland has to offer. In the last few years trail bikes have taken a much larger role in the videos I have been doing. It has been a partially deliberate choice. I did a video back on 2014 on my home island called The Ridge, which was my first big film on a mountain bike. That was really a personal project for both me and…

RATINGS VALUE 7 FUNCTION 8 LOOKS 8 OVERALL 7.5 Trolling the wilds of the internet a couple of months ago for a puncture-fixing solution, I happened upon this new product that was, happily, just about to be released locally. Called GÜP (pronounced Goop) and developed in the US, the premise is a simple one; a 125ml can of pressurised CO2 is mixed with an ammonia-free latex sealant, while a bespoke rubber cap is added to aid its progress from the can into your tyre. Size-wise, the can is similar in dimensions and girth to a small energy drink can, if a bit shorter. It’s a bit big to be neatly stashed under a seat, but by buying an optional Velcro strap and block – which is exactly the same…

RATINGS IN THE STAND 8/10 ON THE TRAIL 7/10 OVERALL 7/10 The name Marin needs no introduction to mountain bikers, with the Californian county of the same name viewed as the birthplace of MTB. The brand itself has been around for more than 32 years and has been subject to many ups and downs during that period. Now, the iconic nameplate has released a raft of new rigs onto the market, including the Rift Zone 3, a 29er trail bike. For us Aussies, it has become a hell of a lot easier to access to the brand’s bikes, with Bicycles Online offering the Marin range as a direct-to-consumer purchase. The bike is delivered direct to your doorstep, nearly ready to roll, with only a small amount of assembly required…

If you ride for more than a couple of hours at a time, there really isn’t a better, more practical or more affordable way to bring along the basics than the good old hydration pack. Sure, you can add tools to head tubes and bottom brackets, use pocketed bib knicks or even a newly designed bumbag, but even a basic pack outdoes most of these options for most of us. Let’s dig through a freshly packed bag, and we’ll hopefully share some tips along the way. 1 The pack: We’re using an older model Camelbak Octane in this example, but the bag isn’t really the focus; there’s a mix of packs amongst our group, including bags from Dakine and Deuter. We may go up a bag size if we need…

In this article, we are going to look at five activities that anyone can easily incorporate into their daily routine to help transform their cycling. I do these activities every day, and I have seen benefits in mental toughness, coordination, balance and skills on the bike, so why not give them a go and let me know how they work for you. The first ‘hack’ is probably the hardest to start doing, especially as the weather is still a bit on the chilly side, but do persevere with it, it does get easier over time. 1. Cold shower Seriously, you are probably thinking this is some kind of torture technique. But bear with me while I explain the benefits and how to incorporate this into everyday life. Cold exposure (you…