I got a mountain bike this year, and you are right. It's bringing me back to what's fun about bikes. I'm doing a 6-hr endurance mountain bike race this November and plan on jumping into the Xterra world next year. It's got me giddy again.

Keep pushing out the Xterra advice brah.

That's awesome. Just started doing a bunch of mountain biking again as well and hardly anytime on the tri bike. Where do you have your camera mounted. I have a the Fly12 on the front bars but when I go to watch the video its bunching around so much from the front shock.

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Twitter@Forsey37

Pipe down. Triathletes might find out about this and make it insufferable again.

the key to good "bike mounted" video is a rigid platform.

I am gathering this is mostly tongue in cheek, but I'm not worried about this. Cross tri/off-road is awesome to do, but not as cool to talk about on Monday morning at the water cooler, so the types to make it insufferable are less likely to come over to the fun side.
I hope more people are aware of it, though! Until the Brownlees went and one-upped it, Josiah and Currie's finish was in the running for craziest finish in a race at least in the past few months, especially because our rules don't address chip vs. torso for crossing the line.
But it's way too common, both AGers and pros alike "well if it's not short course, must be time to do half/full!" But there's another option!!

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IG: idking90

I'm feeling a little burnt out on triathlon lately and my old training buddy has already made the jump to Xterra. I have an Orbea Oiz M20 on order to get into Xterra as well and I'm really excited to give it a try for all the reasons you mentioned. I'm a little nervous about trail running on a knee with some parts that aren't OEM but hopefully they aren't all as brutal as that river crossing at Xterra Richmond last year!

Cheers,

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thechromedome
http://www.favoritefinishlines.blogspot.com
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My 20% off code for 2018 FS Series races: tricred18
"there are no drafters in heaven" - C Bonner

Yup, I've been doing the XTERRA runs for years now, long before triathlon stuff called to me. In fact, I did one the Sunday before last outside of Austin, TX. That and off-road duathlons are still the most fun events for me, as I love to be outdoors.

Completely agree. It's a great way to keep things fresh and interesting. Improves bike skills and depending on the course it can lead to some serious redline intervals mid-race. All good and highly recommend it.

The course was really fun and I was glad it was non technical as I hadn't been on my mt bike for over two years. Just wish I had a better race and I had worn gloves for the bike.

I didn't wear gloves for my previous XTERRA this year (Oak Mountain) and was debating it for Utah, but I ended up going with the gloves. Mostly unnecessary but the 15 minutes where the gloves are nice to have....it's REALLY nice to have those gloves ;)

Cool video man.

My question to the xterra guys is this: how do I get faster riding downhill? I did the short course last year, and the full course this year and I evidently am a bad downhill rider because I was causing traffic jams and letting multiple people by at once. Help me shred guys...

Well the short (and insufficient) answer is: practice.

Going fast on descents is a combination of knowing the trail (tough to do in XTERRA if you don't live there or haven't done the race many times over), understanding the lines, and not using the brakes. The only way to really acquire the comfort to do that with confidence is by doing it a lot, preferably with people who are faster than you so you can "see" their lines. Although in the video here I was behind the one guy so closely that I was just having to follow his line blindly, which you don't really want to do unless you're pretty confident.

It's a skill that - like swimming - I think becomes more difficult to acquire with age, because sometimes it just takes ignorant confidence. I assume you've seen the "recap video" that XTERRA posted where that female athlete absolutely ate it coming down the first descent? That's what most people think about when descending: the possibility of crashing.

Getting better at mountain biking kind of goes something like this:

New and unsure --> nails a few lines --> gains some confidence --> sets strava PRs on technical sections --> gains more confidence --> crashes --> new and unsure --> nails a few lines.... etc

Cool, thanks man

The above describes me pretty well, so maybe I'm on the right track.

The bike was a little bittersweet because I did hit strava PRs over the whole bike course but yet I still suck relative to the field.

Something Wicked Cat Pines?

LOL, yea I love to MTB in the fall to keep my legs in shape but MTB'ing also allows you to be able to focus more on your lines which has helped my road riding, since at times lets face it, riding on the road can get boring :)

Yuuuup

That looks like huge fun! Thx for sharing.

Would be kinda a bummer on raceday, hard to pass anybody on much of that.

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float , hammer , and jog

Also, a lot of times slightly faster is way better than a lot slower. Especially on drop offs etc.

I love mountain biking and was hoping to qualify for GBR for the Cross Tri in Penticton. Unfortunately living in NZ means the only qualifying race I can do is Xterra NZ, but that's after the cut off for entry/qualifying. Damn.

do some people use CX bikes on this course? If that's the descent, CX bike with disk brakes looks like it would do it, maybe with 36mm tires.

Are there XTerra races where a CX bike would work?

Make that shit tubeless, son!

20-21 psi feels like riding on clouds :p

I also just bought a new mountain bike after riding at East Burke VT (Kingdom trails). It was totally inspiring and so much fun. Also my wife and daughters really like mountain biking.

I got into cycling via mountain biking but for the last 10 years I had drifted to road and tris.

I am looking forward to my first mountain bike race in a long time on October 22.

The new bike is awesome, going from 26 to 29 wheels and more front suspension is fantastic. I bought a Scott Scale 940, which is basically an aluminum hardtail in the middle of the range.

I still have fond memories of my first Xterra race in Richmond. Even though I think I carried the bike more than I rode it that day.

Every year about this time I am ready to prepare the tri bike for the winter and get back onto my mountain bike. Then around mid March, I am ready for the tri bike again for another season.

CX bikes are explicitly disallowed per XTERRA rules. The closest you could go would be a fully rigid MTB. Sure you might "be able to ride it" but I highly doubt it would be the best tool for the job.
As a rough measure, of the 33 guys in the pro men's field (yes I'm sure there are amateurs with kick ass handling skills, but most XTERRA guys other than me know how to mountain bike), I'd be surprised if 8 had hardtails.

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IG: idking90