Attention, hand bike racers! The Mountain Bike Association of Arizona wants you for a new racing division. From the MBAA Web site:
MBAA will add a hand bike category for the Short Track race at McDowell. Start time will be after the pro race category at 11:30am. The race will be 20 minutes plus one lap in duration. Course will be on dirt, but may be modified for this class if it is needed. We would love to see 5 racers on the line. More would be awesome. I myself broke my back racing downhill at the MBAA race series in 1999 the day after Bradley Smith broke his and was close to being paralyzed myself, but I was extremely lucky. So anything I can do to promote this I will. Bradley Smith, Steve Garro, to just name a few I would love to see at the start line.
Chris Capages AKA “Scooby”
MBAA President
Keep up-to-date at mbaa.net! I think that’s very cool. The course should be awesome since it’s the short track at McDowell Mountain Park.
In other news, don’t forget to become a fan of International Blog My Trail Day so we can get a read on how many people will blog about their home MTB trail on Jan. 8.
mcdowell mountain park
MBAA Seeking Off-Road Hand-Cycle Racers
Why I Should be on the Specialized Trail Crew!
I’ve made a decision: I want to be part of the Specialized Trail Crew.
If you’re reading this and you don’t work for Specialized, the Trail Crew is essentially a bunch of brand ambassadors that gets out there, riding, doing trail maintenance and generally being cool to other riders so they forward that coolness to others.
Well, that sounds a lot like what I do now (though I could use some motivation to do more maintenance).
This has me all written over it. Right now, I’m the guy who loans you his pump when you forget yours. I’m the guy who gets along with horses and their riders. I give directions to the nearest water fountain. If they ask -and only if they ask- I’ll help newbies pick the best line to clean a section of trail or select a good gear for climbing the local nasty hill.
Ex-shop mechanic, published bike mag writer (Mountain Flyer), bearer of crash scars, once-and-future epic racer … sounds like the right match, eh?
So why do it? Well, it’s another reason to get out and ride. It’s belonging to part of something, which appeals to the hockey goalie in me. And because we need mountain bikers out there getting people excited about mountain biking and mountain bikers.
One confession: I’ve never owned a Specialized bike (shoes, helmets and gloves are another story). My shop never carried ‘em. So why would I now? Three reasons:
-When I visited Whistler during the Crankworx festival, I got to demo a Stumpjumper 29. The [...]
