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My racing specialty is XC. I am reasonably fast. I currently race an XC HT (I even removed the dropper it came with) and can out descend MOST people on full suspension bikes on my XC bike. And the looks I get doing the large jumps at the bike park in full XC gear is entertaining.

I don't ride my 170mm coil sprung enduro bike to be fast. I ride it because it is the most fun bike I have ever ridden. If I could only have one bike, that is the bike I would have. I don't care how fast or slow it is, it is the most fun. I also like doing stupid stuff on my bike, and the XC bike has zero tolerance for being stupid.


Me: "I have been meaning to try this 7' huck to flat"
GF: "Why don't you do it now?"
Me: "Good point, here I go..."
 
I was surprised by how much faster the XC bike was, but not that it was faster.
I wasn't. Take a hypothetical scenario where you can complete an up and down loop on a given bike in 20 minutes with the riding time split 15 minutes up and 5 minutes down. If you then have the option of a bike that will be A. 10% faster up but 10% slower down, B. 10% faster down but 10% slower up then on bike A your time drops to 19 minutes, but on bike B it increases to 21 minutes.

You'd have to find a bike that could get you down the trail 50% quicker in order to claw back the time lost climbing 10% slower.
 
Not only that, but the XC bike retains it's advantage on mild to moderate DHs, it's still faster.
Unless there's a significant amount of pedaling or there's some sort weird scenario like the course being too tight for the enduro, I mostly disagree. The enduro bike will have more traction and allow the rider to focus on the bigger picture. There's a local flow trail that is mellow enough to ride on my DJ but I'm faster on my enduro bike than my 120mm bike. There's just no advantage to using the smaller bike. The lighter weight isn't enough to make up for the better traction. It's not because I suck either, I have the KOM on that trail. I do recognize that weight can start to become a disadvantage downhill but an enduro bike with the appropriate tires for the terrain will beat an XC bike downhill most of the time.
 
Unless there's a significant amount of pedaling or there's some sort weird scenario like the course being too tight for the enduro, I mostly disagree. The enduro bike will have more traction and allow the rider to focus on the bigger picture. There's a local flow trail that is mellow enough to ride on my DJ but I'm faster on my enduro bike than my 120mm bike. There's just no advantage to using the smaller bike. The lighter weight isn't enough to make up for the better traction. It's not because I suck either, I have the KOM on that trail. I do recognize that weight can start to become a disadvantage downhill but an enduro bike with the appropriate tires for the terrain will beat an XC bike downhill most of the time.
I've done way too much racing in both formats to know you can pedal an XC bike faster on a slight to moderate downhill. Yeah, there's a few times where you can go faster on an enduro bike over a rock or something, but it doesn't add up to saving enough time to beat-out the short travel faster/lighter bike. And the other idea, since I've been racing both formats competitively for a long time, elite and expert XC racers take their XC bikes down the same downhills faster than intermediate guys on trail/enduro bikes, even when the intermediate guys are flat out. Those same elites will chose some ridiculously short-travel bikes for a lot of enduro races, again because it takes a much nastier course/trail than most people think. Most everyone thinks they are fast. Most everyone thinks they ride tough trails. The reality is different much of the time (it's relative, more than anything else). There's a lot more to it than "an enduro bike is faster DH". In a lot of cases, they are not IME.
 
Not only that, but the XC bike retains it's advantage on mild to moderate DHs, it's still faster.
Out of curiosity, where did it say that in the vid? Thanks!

I thought they just something like the DH bike was faster on the downs, but that was only a 15 second difference. The XC bike was faster on the ups, but that was a ~3min difference. Which is due to the amount of time climbing VS the amount of time descending.
 
The total course distance was 4.9 miles, with over 1000' of climbing and he did it twice, so nearly 10 miles and 2100' in a total time of 75 minutes. I don't know you or have any idea what level of rider you are, you state "intermediate" in your post, but I'd suggest there's some wishful thinking going on if you think you're anywhere near as fast as this guy, definitely up and especially down.
So at an XC race, the numbers on the xc bike aren't fast.
On the XC bike his avg mph was 7.98
On the Enduro bike his avg mph was 7.42

I'm a mid pack Cat 2 xc racer riding trail bikes, I'm definitely not fast. My most recent race was 18mi/2600' with a time of 1:33:44 (11.5mph). The winner in my 40-49 men category did 14.03mph avg. The fastest Cat 2 rider did 15.17mph on this 18mi course.
 
Overall I agree that faster tires (really it's 80% in the tires) are faster overall, but just often less fun.

But this particular review was heavily skewed towards the XC HT because it was a dirt road climb (as opposed to a chunky single track climb) and a rather mellow descent.

And STILL, after a 40 minute ride the bike that was miserable on the descents was only 2 minutes faster.

Would have liked to have seen the wheels/ tires swapped between the 2 bikes and retimed.

For that particular trail any good DC bike with a shock lockout would hit a great balance between efficiency and confident descending. That said, I'm a proponent of e-bikes on 1 way trails so that would be the ultimate solution.
 
I've done way too much racing in both formats to know you can pedal an XC bike faster on a slight to moderate downhill. Yeah, there's a few times where you can go faster on an enduro bike over a rock or something, but it doesn't add up to saving enough time to beat-out the short travel faster/lighter bike. And the other idea, since I've been racing both formats competitively for a long time, elite and expert XC racers take their XC bikes down the same downhills faster than intermediate guys on trail/enduro bikes, even when the intermediate guys are flat out. Those same elites will chose some ridiculously short-travel bikes for a lot of enduro races, again because it takes a much nastier course/trail than most people think. Most everyone thinks they are fast. Most everyone thinks they ride tough trails. The reality is different much of the time (it's relative, more than anything else). There's a lot more to it than "an enduro bike is faster DH". In a lot of cases, they are not IME.
I addressed the pedaling aspect. I'm not talking about descents with significant pedaling.
 
So at an XC race, the numbers on the xc bike aren't fast.
On the XC bike his avg mph was 7.98
On the Enduro bike his avg mph was 7.42

I'm a mid pack Cat 2 xc racer riding trail bikes, I'm definitely not fast. My most recent race was 18mi/2600' with a time of 1:33:44 (11.5mph). The winner in my 40-49 men category did 14.03mph avg. The fastest Cat 2 rider did 15.17mph on this 18mi course.
I'm curious now about how grade impacts speed? In this video his average grade over the ride was ~8.3% based on his climbs being ~350' over 0.8 miles. For the race you reference, assuming the distance is split evenly between climbing and descending, the average grade would be 5.5%...

As an additional data point there's another video featuring the same rider where he completes a continuous 0.9 mile, 1000' climb in 16:05, so that's 3.3mph on a 21% grade.
 
I'm curious now about how grade impacts speed? In this video his average grade over the ride was ~8.3% based on his climbs being ~350' over 0.8 miles. For the race you reference, assuming the distance is split evenly between climbing and descending, the average grade would be 5.5%...

As an additional data point there's another video featuring the same rider where he completes a continuous 0.9 mile, 1000' climb in 16:05, so that's 3.3mph on a 21% grade.
Yeah, course difficulty/grade definitely affects speed. I've done some brutal race courses this year. My race averages are usually 9-11mph, the most recent race was arguably the easiest course this year. All I was getting at is his avg mph isn't exactly hero status or anything. The hardest race I did this year was 24mi, 4820ft in 3:11:45 for an avg of 7.5mph (I wasn't 100% going into it, bonked, cramped and had to back off my pace). Very tough constant up/down course, some of these climbs are barely rideable/hike-a-bike territory with an absolute demoralizing hill climb towards the end. The overall winner did it in 2:05.13 at 11.55mph avg.

Water resources Ecoregion Map World Slope
 
I've done way too much racing in both formats to know you can pedal an XC bike faster on a slight to moderate downhill. Yeah, there's a few times where you can go faster on an enduro bike over a rock or something, but it doesn't add up to saving enough time to beat-out the short travel faster/lighter bike. And the other idea, since I've been racing both formats competitively for a long time, elite and expert XC racers take their XC bikes down the same downhills faster than intermediate guys on trail/enduro bikes, even when the intermediate guys are flat out. Those same elites will chose some ridiculously short-travel bikes for a lot of enduro races, again because it takes a much nastier course/trail than most people think. Most everyone thinks they are fast. Most everyone thinks they ride tough trails. The reality is different much of the time (it's relative, more than anything else). There's a lot more to it than "an enduro bike is faster DH". In a lot of cases, they are not IME.
This gets brought up from time to time. And I both agree, and disagree.

For the intermediate riders who are riding "flat out" on a trail/enduro bike, and still going slower than the experts on their XC bike, I'd say thats mostly just a sign that the expert is a significantly faster/better rider than the intermediate riders in question.

I've noticed that as I progress in skill (I've only been riding for 3 years, and I'm in the intermediate-ish area in skill), things that I needed more aggressive bikes/tires/gear for initially, have become doable with less travel/traction/etc. Which is another way of saying that its not all that surprising that expert riders could/would be faster on shorter travel bikes on certain trails.

I don't know where the crossover is for "shorter travel bikes are faster", but just saying that the type of trail where that is true, might differ from rider to rider.
 
All I was getting at is his avg mph isn't exactly hero status or anything.
You can actually look at his runs on Komoot:


On the XC bike he was averaging 6.5mph up, and 12.5mph down, vs 5.5mph up and 16mph down on the enduro bike. It also looks like he did the enduro run first.

I'm curious because he's a pretty fit athlete and it looks like he completed an XC race earlier in the year, 26.7 miles an 3750' in 2:25, averaging 11mph...

 
You can actually look at his runs on Komoot:


On the XC bike he was averaging 6.5mph up, and 12.5mph down, vs 5.5mph up and 16mph down on the enduro bike. It also looks like he did the enduro run first.

I'm curious because he's a pretty fit athlete and it looks like he completed an XC race earlier in the year, 26.7 miles an 3750' in 2:25, averaging 11mph...

That sounds better... maybe he took a break? Even a month off and I'd fall so far... :oops:
 
Anyone else think this thread is fated to go the direction of Bushwhacka’s thread?
We need a DANCE-OFF!

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