Moots Mooto X YBB 29er 2013 review and initial impressions

At long last the new Moots Mooto X YBB 29er has arrived... I'm very excited after the initial inspection and ride.  I say "at long last" because I've anticipated it for a long time, but in reality, they executed on the timeline they promised on and everything went quite smooth, so there wasn't any delay.  Mongolia is coming up soon!

 

First, the intent was for a simple, elegant, yet robust workhorse travel bike.  An older MootsMooto X YBB 29er and a Lynskey were sacrificed and passed on to new owners for this!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parts of that will take time to evaluate, but we're on the right track. It's simple - one shifter on 1x11 setup, basic suspension without bar mounted controls, simple cable routing with full housing.  ~23lbs vs. 20lbs for the Cannondale Flash (I'm gonna say a proportion of that is tires, 2.25" Racing Ralphs with Snakeskin front and back) gets a little suspension (1 1/8" in the rear) and the ability to carry in a small box, plus some improved impact resistance (ti is tough) and a little more travel/more silky travel in the Fox fork vs. the 90mm Lefty.  Elegance is subjective but I like Moots' finish and the uncomplicated design.  Their welds are incomparable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Craig, Shawn and I test rode out through COP, over to Valley Ridge and back in on Sideshow Bob.  The reality is, this bike isn't good at keeping up with them... oh wait, that's not the bike's fault.  1x11 with a 34t up front covered the paved downhills fine - we were doing roadie speeds and eventually spun out, but entirely functional for mountain biking.  It also let me grunt up all the steep Valley Ridge trails too, so I'm happy on that.  Drivetrain feels solid and is silent, Chris King PF30 hopefully will keep that true over time.  If the prior Moots was any indication, this should hold up well over time.  Frame improvements are a PF30 BB, tapered head tube, geometry for 100mm fork, oversize seat tube to increase BB welding areas/diameters, and clearance from the curved down tube.  The front end feels stiff (15mm thru axle, Fox 32 Float 100mm, tapered head tube, Ritchey Super Logic carbon 260 stem and Ritchey bar, and wheels that just don't get stiffer in the Enve XC 29ers) and responsive, the bike has a nice geometry.  It was fun swooping along the Sideshow Bob trails, stopping is top notch with XTR trail brakes - I haven't felt anything better to displace these as my brake of choice.  The rear grabs traction well, feels alive, without feeling wasteful.  I'll probably need to switch away from a setback post, but that's about it for changes.

 

 

 

 

I spent a bunch of time up front thinking about how many bolts I had to undo to pack my prior S&S bikes, and made effort to minimize on this one.  Rear brake will be unbolted, couple zip ties cut, derailleur unbolted and couple zip ties cut, and SRAM quick link undone basically seperates the back end.  Seatpost, pedals, and stem cap/side cinch bolts.  Wheels.  That's really it, should be a snap!

I debated going with a Lefty, and there's a few bits left one could weight weenie, but in reality, I wanted simple, standard, utilitarian and tough... but elegant.  These are parts that should stand up in Mongolia and Nepal, and other as of yet unplanned adventures, and if they don't, should be reasonably commercially available.  Seeking adventures.  Have bike.  Here we come!
 

Ride to Conquer Cancer day 2

We got up mostly on time, but missed the start by about 5 minutes, which was fine as we were on a quiet road aiming south of Okotoks to start, with a gentle climb. Clear and just the right temperature for armwarmers off the start. I climbed that at a moderate pace, then could see down from the hill the first groups. Spent the next half hour TT'ing on to the front 3. Turns out they weren't ridng fast, they just left early. We rode to Turner Valley together, where they stopped for a washroom break and pretty full breakfast. I stood at the entrance to the aid stop waiting for a group to come by as solo is a bit pointless on a ride like this, I'm not that determined to go fast to go alone and be antisocial, I just want to balance between Mongolia training and socializing with others that are out for this good cause. Hitched on to a group of 5 that stayed together until "lunch" stop at like 9:15 at the bottom of the Leighton arts center climb. The volunteers pointed us only that way, not giving an option up the climb. I went down, got a bottle, made some chit chat, and was confused, as I thought up the climb was the route. It was, and later people were going straight, but they wanted us to go to lunch when we came through there (even though it wasn't ready yet - funny). I went back up to the intersection and got to the guys at the new front on the climb. 3 of us grouped up and rode in the rest of the way together. We all had stories from people we each knew who knew each other, so nice to string it together. Made it through Glenmore park paths, man there's going to be a lot of congestion and unhappy people from 1,700 riders being jammed through there. Three of us finished together - then Cindy was only about 10 minutes back (she didn't stop at all).  Very impressive.  She has fun as she knows she can draft, or work up to a group alone instead of having to stay in a group, as she knows she has the energy to not fade in that distance.

Great event, great weather!  Not so sure what happened with last year's venue (Spruce Meadows), but running people through the city on the way out, Glenmore park on the way back seemed suboptimal.

Ride to Conquer Cancer day 1

Dry, sunny, warm and beautiful. Great speeches from Enbridge, a very eloquent Tsuu T'ina elder, the RTCC organizers, a survivor, and Mayor Nenshi to remind us why we're all here - life, community and society interacting and helping each other. $7.5mm raised in total, and we're the 4th team at a little under $200k, much credit to our friends and clients at Parex. Did pictures in the morning with the FirstEnergy Road Rockets, the Foo Fighters, and of course Lynne and Wayne Foo. She's so happy to see everyone rallying around.



Cindy and I started next to each other, but with her jets and random talking with clients and friends and random other riders and stoplights I didn't see her again until between the traffic circle and Redwood Meadows. We rode together for a while, and about that point the 1,700 people fervor and initial gusto was starting to die down, and I decided I wanted to just pedal a solo not a group pace. It's not a race, but it's open roads, they have my money already, and with Mongolia a few weeks out I just set myself at a good tempo (the SRM tells me its zone 3). That's enough to go group of 3-5 up to next group of 3-5 basically intermittently for the next 90k to the finish, as I'd say hi to groups, chat, then go up to next one. Felt really nice pedaling, really nice thinking time, really nice just feeling healthy and with vigor to pedal a bike - some aren't so lucky. There were a lot of little inspirational signs on the side of the road, like "earn the downhill" kind of thing on the climbs. My favourite was "chuck norris didn't even ride 200k in a weekend".



There were a few bikes in when I finished, but not many. A couple groups hit the gas right from the start. But more importantly as we chatted, showered, ate, socialized people kept streaming in. Like for 5+ hours after I rolled in. People with friends and families and posters; people for whom this was a real stretch, a real stick the neck out, and a real accomplishment. All sizes, all ages, and a lot of yellow survivor flags whipping in the wind. That's great.

Priddis training

Cindy and I did about 100 miles spread over two days to help her get out of TransRockies work mode and into riding mode again. Beautiful terrain, showers threatening both days, but lots of hills and steady pedaling. Parking in Priddis and being able to ride bits of gravel sure open up miles and miles of great terrain.

4 cups of coffee equivalent

Watching this elevates my nervous system the same way drinking about 4 cups of coffee would!  That's a lot of jam to have at the 5h 40m mark!

Tour de Bowness Road Race

After keeping it calm at the TransRockies after party last night in Canmore, and the girls coming back to the hotel room at 2:30 in the morning after doing a lot more after party than me, Cory Wallace and I drove to Cochrane at 7:30am for the Tour de Bowness road race, aka starting training for continuous pedalling for Mongolia.  Observers from breakfast and the race said "you guys are crazy", to which I clarified: Cory was 2nd in the TransRockies 7 day, stayed up way later than I did, and is racing this thing.  I did 3 days last weekend, placed like a middle aged desk jockey, did a couple spins this week, and am here.  So despite the carpool, there's two varying levels of hardcore.  It was great to catch up on life and riding, and we'll see each other in a month again in Mongolia.

My warmup this morning was riding 152m from parking to sign in.  First, people at road races look at you funny when you ride from parking lot to road across gravel and grass on a road bike with carbon rims, or blaze into a gravel parking lot without slowing down.  I'd bet those road rims are nearly as strong as the mountain bike ones I use, which is waaay stronger than they need to be.  I used to road race and mountain race about 50/50, but now I was greeted frequently with "haven't seen you on a road bike in forever" and "you road race?".  Indeed.  Maybe that's an omen.

We queued up, and got in more warmup - the first 15 seconds were below 37kph.  I felt sluggish, just wanted to make it through an hour to see how I'd really feel.  I noticed Cory wasn't around, he went to pee and missed the start, so he chased on.  He was with the group within the first half hour.  I probably would have sat in the sun and found a coffee shop.  First 20k were tailwind, net uphill, but easy enough to chat to guys in the peloton.  Fun.  Did the first U turn and came back into a stiff headwind and "the" steep climb.  I'm dinking around with my power data to figure it out, but am even out of practice with it.  I'll say it was like a 3 minute long punch that's steep and still shed me out the back (not the back back, but out of the front) with approximately 400W.  Crest into full headwind is enough to break the group and keep it broken on each lap.  We had a group of 6 that we rode with for the rest, I think most who didn't have groups behind us pulled at the end of that lap back at the start/finish.

Now here's where my legs were confused.  Call it 40 minutes in, crested a climb, punched it over the top in a futile attempt to not be dropped by the real riders there, and... no singletrack descent to latch back on with and rest.  Nope, this is road racing.  You don't exactly get a fun reward for your climbing efforts, just paceline headwind hammering.  Something like 3h 40m of non stop pedalling, now the next several hours of through and off with a 6-8 person group as we caught a few more.  My lungs weren't too bad, my legs kind of went apoplectic.  Good training.

The rest is a story of rises and falls in energy, headwinds, group camaraderie, thinking it'd be really good to pull off and just lie in the grass at the start finish as we lap, then realizing by the last out and back that I can/should complete this.  Couple guys were talking as we were nearing the far point turnaround, and I asked if they were planning the big attack.  They said they were talking the opposite, let's all save ourselves from the last 20k of headwind misery in solo groups, ride in, and if anyone needed to, sprint the last 3k of crosswind hill up to the finish.  I was totally game.  We climbed "the" hill a last time, and someone called attention to "operation finish this race".  We did another half hour or whatever it was of through and off in differing echelons into the wind.  I took most pulls, skipped a couple during moments of weakness.

We got to the bottom of the last few km's of climb, and saw a group up ahead.  I didn't super care as we were all in lower places, but some guys did.  Group sped up so I stayed in, unfortunately that was the last I'd see of one Speed Theory friend who we just rode 95% of the race with.  I actually felt like I had jam to help chase the group ahead, but saw more pride in rolling in than "racing" for back spots.  One out of towner kept punching it - Bayou jersey - so we stayed on him out of principle and a few more shed off.  He kept mad sprinting in as we neared the line, and I just sat on his followers wheel and didn't let him drop us... just because.  I actually wish in retrospect I tried to sprint him instead of sitting on, but that also isn't cool with the other guys who just did all the work and were planning on riding in as a group.  Irrelevant anyway.

Shawn, Cory, everyone else was lounging at the line.  We lounged, drank Coke.  My legs felt like... well like they'd pedalled 135km nonstop for 3h 45m or whatever hours without a single break.  My back felt like it pedalled all but 15 minutes in the drops.  My battery for my speed sensor was dead, but I think our distance + time back calc will hit on pretty much exactly 36kph for that time.  Now all I have to do is think forward a month when I'll have to do more distance than that, but instead of deep carbon road rims and drafting I get to do it pushing mountain bike tires with likely less pace line.  Hmm...

Results here.  The front group has a lot of talent, plus the Trek Red Truck guys actually use a team strategy, which is legit for sure, but also is kind of big fish small pond for AB racing.  I guess in theory everyone should, but with 5 strong guys and two who don't finish, it's a bit of a leg up.  I'm at about the halfway point of starters - nobody wanted to do the headwind if they were dropped on a lap so that's all the DNF's.

Bunnin and I went for a great lunch in Cochrane, listened to his car put out some sweet engine purr on the way home, then master plan for rest of day is to absolutely nothing.

Skateboarding

A good portion of my youth was dedicated to skateboarding.  I built ramps.  I toyed with my relationship with gravity.  Yet... I stopped way, way, way short of this, which just completely boggles my mind.  There are few on earth who can tease themselves from the clutches of gravity like Bob Burnquist: