Harrisonburg representing in Colorado.

This weekend, several of our friends participated in the Colorado Freeride Festival at Winter Park's Tressle Bike Park.  The hosted a five-stage Enduro race featuring "technical all-mountain riding".  Stages included a legit chainless dh, a standard dh, a stage that was all table top jumps, a stage that was filled with manmade features and huge burms as well as a "cross-country" stage which Sue called a "Giant SuperD".

The final stage, was a pursuit where each rider started according to their time behind the leader making for exciting opportunities for many riders to be on course at the same time.

Congrats to Sue Haywood for finishing 6th in the Pro Women's category.  Representing the JVSquad, Freshman Dan finished 41st in the Pro Men's Category.  Also, a big props to il Giro Director, Marty Quinn who got 2nd in the +30 category.

Check out this video to see what kind of riding these wild ones were roostin'.



Colorado Freeride Festival Enduro Highlights - More Mountain Bike Videos

Wolfson: ready the kit for the Colorado Trail Race!

On July 30, 2012, Jennifer Wolfson starts riding the Colorado Trail Race on her little Trek Paragon 29'er hardtail.  Her 470 Mile journey from Denver to Durango will detour around 6 wilderness areas, climb 13,000' passes, and cover 65,000' of ascents.  The fastest times for the massive race are just a hair more than 4 days, where racers ride straight through with very little sleep.  Hopefully, Wolfson will take care of herself on this epic adventure and come home in one piece after a fun filled finish in Durango.

The race is a unique format; a self timed individual time trial, no entry fee, no pre-arranged support, no prize money, no registration.  "all that is provided is a route description, a suggested start time, and a list of results."

Wolfson hopes to finish the race in roughly two weeks.

Her bike is fully loaded with Revelade bags on her frame, seatpost, handlebars, and just about everywhere you can hang some gear.

Keep track of Wolfson's progress here!

Charge up your lights, ride Wednesday Nights!

"Come to the dark side."

Get out on your mountain bike with the Wednesday Night ride!  Meet at the Western Slope parking lot at 8pm.  If you need a light, we have demos available at the shop.

Flooding on Saturday at SBC

After 2 hours of hard rain on Saturday afternoon, the Blacks Run watershed encountered a flash flood.  Downtown Harrisonburg was submerged in feet of surface runoff.  Water rose above the bottom of the door jams in the storefront, most of the water just piled up in the parking lot and flooded Clementine's basement.  In the bottom photo, you can see Jason Williams' Ford Ranger, chilling in several feet of water behind the shop.  After the water subsided, the pickup started right up.

Domane: doh-mah-nee.

Come by the shop to check out the new Domane.  This thing is a road biking game changer with the ISO speed dampening system.  With the rough road endurance cyclist in mind, Trek designed the Domane to provide a killer combination of performance and comfort.

 

The Ring

Several weeks ago, two Harrisonburg riders became the first to successfully complete the Massanutten Mountain Trail in a single ride on bicycles.  A successful full pull on "The Ring" or the "Ring of Fire" links together 78 miles of some of the most challenging technical rocky, yet somehow rideable terrain in the area.

Check out the Signal Knob & Short Mountain Videos below to get an idea of how difficult this trail is.




The full pull was attempted for the past several years, always ending in blown up bodies and beat down souls.

Congratulations to Kyle Lawrence and Mike Carpenter for their successful ride!

 

Last call for lost souls.

These two beauties showed up at the shop a few weeks ago.  They seem lost.  We'll find a new home for them soon if their home doesn't find them first.  

Blueberries, Bears, Burritos, Beer, BIcycles, Bluegrass in Beautiful Canaan Valley!

OK, so everyone knows, we don't have air conditioning in the shop.  Big deal, neither did the rest of civilization until about 60 years ago.  People act differently in the heat, they find ways to cool off.  A few members of the SBC staff have discovered a perfect AC substitute, WV.

After we closed up shop on Saturday evening in the 90 degree heat, Paul and Wootten rolled straight to the Purple Fiddle in Thomas, WV to find Collin and Caitlin.  The only thing they found was some dinner and bluegrass.  They rolled back to Davis to setup extreme loungin' spot v.3.0.

The four harrisonbugs reunited on Sunday morning for some open fire espresso, blueberry picking and cruising on some of Canaan's finest mountain bike trails.  Here's a little photo gallery of their adventure.

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Friday Fatty Meltdown: Signal Knob, Meneka Peak, Bear Wallow.

Signal Knob Fatty from Shenandoah Bicycle on Vimeo.

With temperatures in the 90's and and high humidity, a small group departed the shop on Friday for a big Fatty ride "up North."  The group climbed up complex rock gardens of Signal Knob cruised technical ridgeline to Meneka peak and ripped the hard single track downhill on Bear Wallow.  Wootten dipped deep into the reservoirs of slum yet somehow made this cool video.  Check out the artform of crawling up rocks with Tim, Preston, Collin and Chris.

2012 Tour de Burg

With temperatures in the 90's all week, the only race that matters ended with a major shakeup.  After each stage of the Tour, Nick Waite of protestedgear.com wore the yellow leader's jersey, yet somehow he did not go home with it.  On July 4th, il Tour director made the call that the two towers ride would not be the final stage and racers rallied to a double loop on Big Schloss.  As the first timed loop began, Nick gained his lead until he made a wrong turn and charged deep into West Virginia backcountry, disqualifying him from the GC.

Enjoy the video!

 

Tour Galore and Harrisonburg riders at Windham for UCI World Cup and Gravity East Series.

For many cycling enthusiasts, this week marks the most important week of the year.  This weekend the UCI World Cup XC & DH, and Gravity East DH races were held in Windham, NY.  Harrisonburg riders Jeremiah Bishop (XC Men's Elite) finished only 4 minutes behind the winner and Conner Bell (XC Junior Men's) finished just 16 minutes behind the Junior champ.  Sam Skidmore (Junior Men's DH) from Dayton, VA raced real fast down that mountain for the Gravity East Series Race.  (Right Sam Skidmore drops rocks on his practice run: Photo Courtesy Lucas Bayus)

As the humid weather here in Harrisonburg continues to make us overheat, le Tour de Burg continues a 17 year tradition of suffering for the sake of freedom.  Rumor has it the GC is dwindling as riders are dropping like flies due to heat, overexertion and really hard stages.  Today's big stage is on the Southern Traverse, an IMBA Epic. Tune in to SBCTV for the final stage video update of the Two Towers, premiering later this week.

Across the pond in Europe, the 109th annual Tour de France briskly traverses the scenic and historic countryside.  The ride supported by hoards of fans, caravans of team vehicles and media helicopters.  Watch the live coverage of the Tour on NBC each morning beginning at 8am EST or visit. http://sports-livez.com/channel/ch-9.php





(Left: Riders in le Tour de Burg traditionally get weird haircuts.  Photo courtesy of Kari Carpenter)

(Right: Paul Forrester already has a weird haircut on the moon rocks lifestyle ride in WV this past weekend.)