MTBGuru blog

“There’s no doubt: it’s a drought”, says the San Jose Mercury News, but the cold monsoon that poured down Laguna Seca today around noon felt like it wanted to violently contest that point. Luckily for us cross country mountain bike racers, the weather during the early morning hours was near-perfect for racing: a few light sprinkles at the start, partly cloudy later on, with a race course in excellent, fast shape. The light rain during the previous night may have taken out the sting of the sandy sections, as they appeared less severe than in previous years.

When the downpour started, we were already enjoying post-ride goodies and could easily find shelter in the nearest booth (Titus in my case), a good occasion to check out for instance the new Titus El Guapo up close and personal.

Others were not so lucky though: the road race supposedly was halted, and other events had to be postponed or cancelled. And the riders tomorrow will probably witness the return of the mud bogs (non-existent today).

The cross country race today was a whole lot of fun, and below is a caption of the MTBGuru trip page I just created.

18.8 miles and 2900 feet of hills and thrills!

New this year are the BMX races and the Super D race (sort of a cross-over between downhill and cross-country mtb). And tonight there is an ‘adventure race’, mashing up mountain biking, kayaking, trail running and orienteering.

We’ll be there tomorrow morning - early, way too early!

Have fun everyone, and we’re hoping the weather will be better than what is shown here!

The Sea Otter Classic, probably the largest cycling event in the USA and the inofficial start of the (mountain) bike racing season here, is coming up again (April 12-15, Laguna Seca near Monterey) . There are many races and race categories, populated each year by thousands of participants.

The mountain bike cross country amateur race is one of the more popular races and features dozens of categories depending on factors such as expert level (beginner, sport, expert), age, gender, amount of cogs (singlespeed or not), etc.

In order to get some idea of what to expect and to figure out which class to sign up for, we at MTBGuru went out and took a look at last year’s data, in particular at the average speed numbers for the 19 mile long cross country course.

Sandbagging alarm

This race is infamous for its sandbagging, and often times you’ll see people in the beginners class averaging 12 mph over the course (trust me, that’s not a beginner’s level). The above graph lists the number of finishers with given average speed - it is an estimate of their statistical distribution. You’ll see that the best ‘Beginners’ wouldn’t look silly amidst the expert/pro crowd. Note that the Pro Male and Female contenders did *two* laps of 19 miles - i.e. in case they would only need to do one lap, their average speed numbers would probably be quite a bit higher.

Age doesn’t matter

Another observation is that the various age categories (graph above) lie pretty close to each other in average speed. Age doesn’t seem to matter too much - at least not for the beginners class.

Anyway, no matter which class you sign up for, make sure to have fun on the scenic course!

Everything Paul Kedrosky knows about business, he learned from mountain biking.

Excellent post by VC/blogger Paul Kedrosky in which he compares his two favorite pastimes. We couldn’t have said it better! Here’s our write-in candidate: when you’re catching air, don’t forget about the landing.

Here’s a good link to check out on a friday afternoon: Stefan Oberlander can do some amazing things on a bike. Check out this drop he’s doing, now that’s what you’d call getting air:

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Here a GPS probably would turn out to be more accurate than a wheel odometer…