Almost racing time

I was going to write about my opinions about flow trails, but every time I worked through my arguments, I managed to convince myself that they were incorrect, so I'm bailing on that. My thoughts, after thinking it over for the better part of a week and a half, are maybe when you build a new flow trail, you should have to let it sit for two to three years and not perform any maintenance on it (unless there's some severe weather event such as flooding or large blow-downs). That way, the trail corridor you created will merge itself into the surrounding landscape so it doesn't look so out of place. After that, the goal of your maintenance should be to maintain that merged status, not to return it to it's just-built form. This addresses my main problem with new-school flow trials: they just look out of place in most areas (see the cover photo of Access Action in Dirt Rag issue #182). My second issue with flow trails is just as easily addressed. Other than a few trails on Narrowback Mountain outside Stokesville, VA, most new-school trails I've seen/ridden completely bypass (or remove) any natural features (i.e. scree slopes, or a rocky ledge). I believe that trails should reflect the geology of they area they are built in. If you're in Michaux, why would you build a trail without big rock features? Michaux has big rocks. The counter-argument (i.e. the pro-flow trail argument) here is that new-school flow trails are easier for beginners and help get them into the sport. This is great, and necessary, but there has to be some progression. If you have an area large enough to have 20 trails in it, how many of them should be easy, flow trails, how many intermediate trails, and how many advanced trails? This is a hard question to answer and means that we can't just have one approach to building trails. Certain areas have to be only beginner trails, or only advanced trails. Basically, my point is make the trails you build match the geology/terrain of the area you're building them in. Most people who want to get into mountain biking want to get into it because they like the idea of riding a bike on the trails nearest them, regardless of how difficult those trails are. In Fair Hill NMRA (in MD), they're like "The idea of riding a bicycle on these tight, tight twisty trails sounds rad!" while at White Ranch OS (in CO) they're like "The idea of riding a bicycle on these rocky, steep, switchback-filled trails sounds rad!" Both of those things are awesome and should be supported by building trails that are appropriate to the area they are being built in.

Anyway... I digress...

Last week I drove to Dallas and back, which kind of sucked. I was pretty impressed with northern New Mexico (many cool volcanoes) and the Texas Panhandle (cool, rolling desert-ey terrain), but the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metro Area reminded me of the worst parts of the Baltimore Metro Area (i.e. the part that we lived in). Don't get me wrong, Havre de Grace is a cool little town and we were lucky that it was more or less the end of Baltimore's suburban sprawl, but areas like Abingdon and White Marsh are just endless shopping malls. It's definitely not my favorite place, and neither was the suburb of Dallas I was in. I did, however, have some good barbecue, so there's that.

Beautiful volcanoes in northern New Mexico.

Texas-shaped waffles in Texas.

Water + below freezing temperatures + centripetal force = SCIENCE.

The big news in the bike world this week is that I went full in and bought a SRAM XX1 group and Shimano XTR pedals for my Pivot Mach 429c. I am very excited about this. While 1x10 gearing might work for a lot of people in a lot of places, here in Colorado, having the wider range offered by the 1x11 set up is almost necessary, especially for doing long races. I'm also stoked to not have to rebuild Crank Brother's pedals every year (or twice a year). It might take me a few rides to get used to the pedals, but the increased reliability will be worth it. Plus, since I was using Crank Brother's Candy pedals before, I'm not taking that much of a weight penalty. I think if I decide to dive back into cyclocross again I'd still use Eggbeaters on that bike; Eggbeaters are far and away the best CX pedal.

Pretty bike, ready for rassin!

Pretty XX1, ready for maintaining reasonable cadences on steep climbs.

So that's cool. Thanks to SRAM for hooking us up at 92Fifty with these sweet parts! I'm most excited because the first race of the year is next weekend. I'll be putting all the training I've done to the test by throwing down in the hundred at the True Grit Epic. Hopefully you'll hear from me again after that!

It's still winter, so stay warm everyone!