Commissaires course yesterday

[Byrner]

myself, Sean and Jack attended the Commissaires course yesterday. Learnt a hell of a lot about running races, fair play to all that attended and if half of the things learned are put into practice you can look forward to huge improvements in the races..
Did you know that theres no 26" wheel rule anymore..that there is no actual definition of a mountainbike..
so you can in fact turn up for a mtb race on a road bike or a cyclocross machine. Mind you the courses have to suit mountainbikes and be designed in such a way that anything other than a mountainbike would be at a serious disadvantage.
Richie

[psycholist]

Looks like the 29er lobby has finally got their way :)... Given that different width 26" tyres have a wide variety of outside diameters they couldn't really defend the 26" diameter wheel regulation anyway. Is it only a matter of time before people on CX bikes start taking podiums on the smoother XC courses? At least they haven't imposed a minimum weight regulation like for road bikes...

[Byrner]

firstly Gary Fisher lobbied the UCI sucessfully 2 years ago..but as usual in this Backwater we only found out by asking somebody.
Secondly Courses should be designed for mountainbikes, not CX bikes..theres a big distinction.
We as a club would not run a race in a park but The IMBRC did and a lot of people liked it but would you do them all the time.
I think personally you should only run that type of MTB race if thats all thats available. Which is not the case for any of us on here.
Richie

[Basil Fawlty]

We as a club would not run a race in a park

Oh well, there goes my grand plan to run a race in St Anne's... it would have been cool, there was going to be a feed zone as usual, with a Dutch Gold zone beyond that, and a shooting up zone too. And the jumps, which might have been a bit much for a CX bike.