Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Quick rant: I'm tired of "enduro" everything

I'm going to show my age here, but I'm getting fed up with the constant use of the word "enduro" for new bikes, clothes (hey, Mavic invented baggies!), races, etc. And honestly I'm fed up with the whole concept as well.

A bit of background: enduro motorcycle racing (which I used to do, very badly) consists of a long ride at which checkpoints (which generally you don't know about in advance, though there are rules about where they can and can't be) are randomly scattered. Each segment will have a certain amount of time allotted, and penalties are assessed for coming in either faster or slower than the required time - meaning that you have to try to ride some sections very fast and some sections fairly slowly. The cool thing about moto enduros is that you can do them with your buddies, have a long fun day on the trail, and you can do well even if you're not the absolute fastest rider if you plan well and the sections are timed in a way that suits you. It's just like a normal day of trail riding but with some competition added - a great concept that would work well with some tweaks for mountain bikes, right?

Enduro mountain bike racing, on the other hand, is just basically downhill racing, as far as I can tell. Yes, it's annoying and somewhat tiring to ride a long travel bike to the top of whatever downhill section you'll be timed on, but the time allowed for transfers is so long that you can walk (or in the case of the Winter Park Enduro World Series race, some of the transferring is just done via chairlift - and hilariously they *canceled a stage* when the lift wasn't operating correctly!) If you are wearing full armor and a fullface helmet, the race is just a downhill race. Call it that and let people ride the lift, or alternately make the climbs difficult enough to do/timed such that a reasonable amount of effort is required. Or time some really pedally flat sections as well as DH jump runs so that riding a 7" travel bike won't be ideal.

The whole idea, as I understand it, of enduro racing is that it's like a ride you'd do with your buddies, with a competitive element added (much like moto enduros). It's quickly evolved into something totally different and that sucks - the ideal should be that an XC dude or a DH gal should both be able to have fun and have a chance to win. XC racing favors climbers, DH racing favors descending/bike handling, and the ideal enduro would make both of equal importance. As constituted now, it's just descending that matters and it's mostly the same folks that win DH races that win the enduros.

Enduro bikes are going the same way. An enduro bike should be a bike you'd take on a ride with your buddies on any random day after work, not a super-slack long-travel rig that's really only fun on the descents (though, to be fair, some of us do ride bikes like that on XC rides on occasion). A lot of the "enduro" bikes I see are really just sort of short travel DH bikes (the Trek Slash, for example, runs a 66 degree HTA and 110mm of trail - have fun holding your line on a technical climb...)

Here's my suggestion: set up enduro races so that the amount of timed riding is about equally split between descending and flat/climbing terrain that also requires good bike handling skills (ie technical flat rock garden sections or climbs, flat sections with lots of sprinting out of turns and cornering, etc) Time transfer stages for each category such that an average rider in that category will have to try fairly hard but not kill themselves to make their start time. Slower climbers will have to try a bit harder, or leave their armor and 35 pound bikes at home.

Nobody should be sitting around for 20+ minutes waiting to start a stage, ever. Ideally you should have just a few minutes to catch your breath and be off again - the race should not take all freaking day unless it covers a LOT of ground.

Set it up so that you can ride with your friends (ie let people swap around their start times as needed) as long as they're in the same category.

Assign categories *after* the results are in - ie the fastest guy wins, but then the 20th place guy wins the next category down. Still plenty of reason to go try as hard as you can, but a more random way to assign prizes for lower categories and eliminate sandbagging.

Serve beer afterwards.

To sum up: I want some cheese with my whine, and I am really tired of hearing about "enduro" everything, but it could awesome with some tweaks.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

True. It's also really hard to get fired up about "enduro" when you live in the flatlands. It seems like every magazine article is "Alps Enduro" or "Enduro Whistler!"

Dan O said...

I agree with a lot of what you mentioned. I raced motorcycle motocross and hare scrambles many years ago - and friends of mine rode enduros also.

The mountain bike "enduro" is basically a stage downhill race, though I find nothing too wrong with it - to each his own - and I'm the total XC geek.

I always thought staging a real mountain bike enduro would be cool - patterned just like a motorcycle enduro...

Anonymous said...

Yo, Walt
Can you build one of them newfangled DH bikes, with 10mm less travel? I really think that's a great niche.

dicky said...

ENDURO BEER™ !

Luis G. said...

Obviously you haven't drunk your Monster energy this morning...

Anonymous said...

Second that. I'm totally sick of hearing people say that these races are how people ride; maybe I am just a total grumpy old school XC geek but a good ol' Winter Park XC race is a whole lot closer to "how I ride" than any of these enduro's. Full face helmet, pads, 120 mm travel, gap jumps, yeah sounds like a "typical day at the trail after work to me"...

Anonymous said...

They should race Fat bikes! They're not just fat bikes anymore, they're Enduro fat bikes. A winning combination that Dicky can only dream of.

-Tyler

Anonymous said...

I'm tired of people that misspell trail as trial. And viceversa. grrrrrrr

Francois said...

Like "anonymous" said, I don't know a lot of people who ride with two helmets: a light one for the transitions and a full-face for the stages...
One solution would be to spread some climbing or flat stages, exactly like what you have in moto enduro.

Mike G said...

I would love to see a MTB enduro. XC race that takes bike skills not just fitness. Put some jumps and logs some downhill. In its defense I think it is all over because it is a lot of fun!

Colin M said...

Oh Walt...

Enduro is just a label. USA Cycling killed Super D and Enduro just sounds cooler.

Anyway, don't get too wrapped up in the EWS style of enduro racing. Lots of rules and lifts in those races. This weekend's enduro in Durango is pretty much what you are looking for. A 2,000+ ft climb at altitude that everyone has to do. When you get to the top you start when you feel like it. No waiting around. Then another 1,000+ ft climb before the second timed descent. Beer served at the bottom. Lots of swag, laughs, and hard trail riding with dudes with awesome nick names.

Also, the old style of moto enduro (timekeeping) is almost completely gone and replaced with new style (restart) and at those races there is always waiting around for your row to be called up. It makes it easier for the scorekeepers.

Lastly, I've got a Trek Slash with that whacky geometry you mentioned. Sure it isn't a rocketship on technical climbs but it doesn't wander around at all. The steep seattube angle really puts you in a nice climbing position. The Talas system made is worse so I took that off for a better XFusion product.

Cheers, C

P. Lee Czgymi said...

As constituted now, it's just descending that matters and it's mostly the same folks that win DH races that win the enduros.

You can see it that way if you consciously ignore the races where lycra lads and lassies are cleaning up.

Here's a good one for you, Walt. Last summer my town had a 4 week (1x/week) Super D series that was designed by XC racers and contained so much difficult, punchy, strenuous climbing that descending skills were irrelevant to the ability to place well. A good descender with decent fitness would be harshed by the climbs; a great descender with little fitness would not even finish within 45sec to 1 min off the winner's pace. So why call it Super D? Because it started at a higher elevation than it finished, and ran point-to-point. I guess that means "Super D" to our local lycra wearers.

I agree that riding chairs to descend a timed stage favors descenders, as does having a mandatory climb which has no serious time constraint (i.e., the no-fitness crew can walk their bikes and still qualify for the timed descent).

I don't agree that most Enduro races in the USA favor descenders. Most of them are held on buff trails. Buff trails do not reward great descending or bike handling.

I do agree that Enduro This and Enduro That and Enduro Everything Else is boring, stupid, and renders the word "enduro" as meaningless.

As to the loss of the theoretical ability to have Larry Lycra and Art Armor do an "enduro" race together and be relatively equally matched, well, welcome to bike racing, Walt. Surely you remember when MTB racing's popularity in the mid-90s caused dumbing down of XC race courses so that roadies would be able to clean up on dirt when they weren't gaining podiums on pavement.

Anonymous said...

If the race is over all-terrain, as Walt suggests, the fitness geeks on xc bikes will always win, because they'll gain minutes on the climbs, and only lose a few seconds on the DHs.

The fittest climbers are still decent on the downhills, but the best DH-ers are not great climbers. It'll just turn into xc racing.

Enduro races are designed to be ideal for 5-6" bikes, and technically skilled, but not necessarily fitness-oriented riders.

Anonymous said...

If the race is over all-terrain, as Walt suggests, the fitness geeks on xc bikes will always win, because they'll gain minutes on the climbs, and only lose a few seconds on the DHs.

The fittest climbers are still decent on the downhills, but the best DH-ers are not great climbers. It'll just turn into xc racing.

Enduro races are designed to be ideal for 5-6" bikes, and technically skilled, but not necessarily fitness-oriented riders.