Simon’s B-Day Ride Down Syncline: 

We have just posted a video of my birthday ride down Syncline from Last year. My 39th birthday started with some runs down the dog river trail near Hood River. From there, we drove into Hood River and shuttled up to the tippy top of Post Canyon for a ride back to town. To cap the day off, we crossed the river into Washington and did a sunset run down Syncline. It was Lars’ first time down the trail, and only my second, having descended it once five years earlier. Mother nature came bearing gifts, in the form of a great Owl sighting, a crazy fast rabbit, and an incredible sunset. Thanks for a great birthday go out to Mountain Man David Murphy, and my brother Tom, and of course to Lars for capturing it all! Check it out at Virtual Descent. I’m going to think of how I can top that one for the impending 40th!

Courtesy of Virtual Descent here is a video of the upper part of the racecourses that will be used in the upcoming Fluidride Cup #1.

Disclaimer: WILL BE MUDDIER!

It’s been a few years since I’ve ventured into Capitol Forest, and I have to say my most recent visit left me wondering why it had taken so long to get myself back to this magical playground of endless singletrack. Since my last visit, the Friends of Capitol Forest have been hard at work creating hundreds of berms and jumps, and have greatly improved drainage of the trail system. The trails, much like the race organization were dialed to day the least.

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Simon Lawton Volunteers to Teach BBTC.org instructors who then in turn teach boot camps throughout the season to help fund the non profit trail advocacy group.

Read the full article here.

Looks like we missed a great race in Chile this year with the running of the fifth

annual Valparaiso Cerro Abajo (VCA) race. Congrats to Chilean ripper Antonio

Leiva on his fourth VCA win in five years:

Well, as I am sitting here on this beautiful Monday morning, my stomach is turning and I am getting nervous. I finished my last weekend of long rides, and now we only have a few short rides left until we start. Our training is complete. It has a weird, anti climatic feel to it. All these long hours in the saddle – in the snow and scorching sun has come to an end.

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We went on the most beautiful xc ride on Sunday with a local crew of friends. We set of to Grabouw in the dark, to have an early start, because it was supposed to be another real scorcher of a day. It was like a kid in a candy store, because I have been wanting to do this ride for year’s, and just have never been able to…

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Fluidride will be offering free espresso at our Issaquah location on weekends until noon starting on March 15th. We’ll also be hosting group rides on select weekends with the first on Saturday March 15 at 10am. Riders are invited to ride the Grand Ridge Loop with us, which is about a two hour ride. The ride will start on the trail across the street from our shop and climb up through Issaquah with a descent down the Grand Ridge trail back to town. This is a great intermediate level ride with some sweet single track. Zeb will be leading the ride, and will depart with the group at 10:30am. We have lots of great power snacks at the shop, so all you need to do is show up with your bike. There are tons of great rides in the Issaquah area which we will be exploring as the season progresses. Hope to see you Saturday!

So, with 23 days to go, I decided to enter a mountain bike race to see how my training has been going. There were 3500 entrants, and it was on a beautiful wine farm Boschendal, where you are not usually allowed to ride. It was 55km long, and because I was not seeded, I had to start with hundreds of people way back in the bunch. I played catch up the whole race, and the last 15km, all the age groups were thrown in on the same trail towards the finish line. It was chaotic, with kiddies and grannies and very large people on bicycles, you had to control yourself not to race past the kids and push over the grannies, but to still try and get to the finish line ASAP! I finished 18th overall out of 50 in the pro women’s category, and only 7 min behind some of the top xc pro.

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We have been entertaining the idea of changing the course venue for the # 2 Fluidride cup at Ski Bowl. Mt Hood has been hit hard this year with snowfall and it is looking like there will still be some coverage come race time in May. This is why there have been some recent changes to the schedule on the FR Cup Page.
After careful deliberation we have come to the decision to stick with the original schedule and Venues. The second Fluidride Cup will be held on Mt Hood as planned regardless of snow level. If the regular courses cannot be used, the race will be held on the Bridal trail. If the snow level prevents a slalom to be held, the slalom series wil be converted into a best 4 of 5 race series. If the Bridal trail is used, bring your 6″ trail bikes as this more Super-D trail than DH. (more…)