Date: Friday & Saturday April 4-5, 2008
Route: We will go to Huangyaguan Great Wall area this Friday and Sat.
Upon arrival, we will check in a courtyard hotel beside Huangyaguan
Great Wall and then go riding. RMB180/stardard room (2 beds)
Day 1- Uphill 24 km on the paved road and turn into the National
Reserve. We may need to “donate” RMB10 for the entry.
Day 2 - Exploring David’s pee trail we found last year & more scouting
fun rides.
The North China International Bike Show was held this past weekend in Tianjin. The theme of the show was environmental awareness and the promotion of electric vehicles. The show was held in 2 small exhibition centers and concentrated primarily on mainland products and companies , although Trek had a small stand and we found a Mongoose hidden away in a stand promoting saddles.
This years Shimano Mountain Bike Festival will be held in Jiangsu, Nanjing at the Jiangsu Cycling Training Facility.
This new choice of venue is due to the Mountain Bike Festival being held separately from the Road Festival. The new location also allows for new and improved courses through the beautiful surrounding mountains and countryside.
There will be two main events at the festival an individual cross country race and a cooperative endurance event, both competitions will be open to professionals and amateurs alike.
If you would like to know more about the Shimano Mountain Bike Festival visit the official site here: www.shimano-club.cn
You can find the registration form here.
If your Chinese isn’t to good and you want to take part send us an email and we’ll help you out.
The first stage of the China National MTB cup was held in Yunnan, Dali on the 22nd March. All the big teams throughout China took part in this most prestigious of races.
After a major struggle during the competition Jiangsu’s, Ren Cheng Yuan took the win in the womans group, and Yunnan’s, Jiang Xue won his race in the mens category.
Ren Cheng Yuan took 1:49:32 to complete the 36km race, her team mates Wang Jingjing and Liu Ying took second and third place in the women’s group.
The race for the men’s category was 42km and it took Jiang Xue Li 1:56:30 arrive ahead of the pack with Wang Zhen and Ji Jian Hua earning second and third places.
For full details and race report (Chinese) visit the Shimano Club website.
With a desire to encourage a healthy life style in China, Nordic Ways is starting up a weekly MTB training camp in a ski resort close to Beijing, the first date for the camp will be Saturday April 5th.
Bikers from all walks of life are invited to ride every Saturday in Yuyang ski resort, which is about 1,5 hours drive from Beijing. Nordicways have a simple arena set out with start and finish, time-keeping service (if you want to ride against the clock), and a registration desk . The start times will be between 10.00-12.00 am, basically you start when you arrive. Nordicways have also prepared buses for you and trucks for your bike to Yuyang in the morning for a reasonable price.
There will also be an option to race at the training camp with a choice of 3 distance races available. A 10k, 30k and for those fit enough 50k race will be arranged (all using the 10k track, but lapping for the longer races).
One bottle of water will be provided to all participants, but take your own also, since you due to the nice spring weather probably will require more than one bottle. The price to participate is 50RMB (student price RMB 30).
For full details on the Nordicways MTB camp visit the Nordicways website.
Here’s a better look at Xpedo’s new platform pedal.
The Mx-11 or ‘Face Off Transform’ have removable cages so you can match them to your bike better and also adapt them to suit the style of riding your doing.
Mere hours after our first post about the ‘Revolutionary’ Truvativ HammerSchmidt transmission we came across more intriguing information and tidbit’s.
Laird Gogins, founder of Infinity Transmissions has designed an ‘improved transmission’ at his office in Salt Lake City.
The (again) ‘Revolutionary’ design took him decades to fine tune, but he has finally made two working prototype models. One is a larger unit designed for cars, the other is a much smaller, compact model designed for bicycles. There are currently 23 foreign patents pending on the transmissions design which is said to improve fuel efficiency in automobiles by up to 20%.
Now here’s the clincher Sram have signed an agreement with Infinity Transmissions stating they will get ‘first dibs’ on the product when it finally hits the market.
You can read the full article here at the Desert Morning Post.
Now you would think mystery over this is the Truvativ HammerSchmidt, however we’re not convinced that Sram will put the Infinity Transmission in to full production by Fall this year. Unless of course they’ve been in cahoots together for a while, the transmission will still need to go under alot of testing and development before it can be released to the general public.
Another rumor going about is the HammerSchmidt will be a planetary gear system built in to the crank, much like cranks currently being made by Schlumpf Innovations in Switzerland.
This one has to have my vote, its proven and in production now (albeit by another company) its a crank, and it has a silly sounding name (like most of Truvativ’s cranks) Plus its probably the closest thing to an actual universal fitting ‘gearbox’ system.
Still we have to wait until the end of the year to see the real thing, I wonder if our suspicions are correct?
I awoke this morning to a rather cryptic but down right intriguing email in my inbox. All it said was:
Join the revolution. See attached from Sram
I opened the attached file to find the handle bar mustached ‘Magic Mechanic’ left, and a short comment stating Truvativ/Sram will be releasing a ‘Revolution’ in transmission technology called Truvativ HammerSchmidt, this Fall.
I’ve read a lot of rumours regarding the HammerSchmidt, one of the most popular being a universal internal gearbox, which will tun your current derailered bike in to a GBoxx. I’m not quite sure about the universal gearbox idea, it would have to be pretty damn small and have a huge number of different mountings to fit the various styles of frame about. Although it would seem logical that Truvativ/Sram would want to get in to the gearbox game, and companies like Nicolai have been making Gboxxes for years using Truvativ cranks. Maybe there was more to their choice of crank? Like an OEM deal perhaps?
Another idea is a gearbox bottom bracket. Again it would need to be amazingly small, but it would be a true universal gearbox.
Or maybe the HammerSchmidt is a hub gear or hub gear derived gearbox. Sram are going to release their I-Motion 9 carbon internal hub gear later this year (in the Fall!) which has 9 internal speeds and a light weight design due to its carbon shell. The I-Motion is designed for the recreation bike market, but this doesn’t stop it’s technology trickling over in to the mountain bike market, take the GT DH-I with Shimano Nexus hub gear acting as its ‘gearbox’ for example.
These are all just rumors however and I guess we will have to wait until later this year to find out what the Truvativ HammerSchmidt’s revolution is.
Keep posted!
China will host the first annual AST Mountain Dew Tour next month. Top BMXers and skaters will head to Beijing on April 18-20 to compete for the crown in front of thousands of spectators.
The point leaders in the skateboard vert and park and BMX vert disciplines were invited to the AST China Invitational based on their rankings at the end of the 2007 AST Dew Tour season. The complete list of confirmed athletes is as follows:
Rodolfo Ramos
Pierre Luc Gagnon
Austen Seaholm
Andy Macdonald
Carlos de Andrade
Rune Glifberg
Fabrizio Santos
Jean Postec
Kurtis Colamonico
Alex Perelson
Tulio de Oliveira
Danny Mayer
Danny Fuenzalida
Anthony Furlong
Mike Peterson
Buster Halterman
Danilo do Rosario
Sandro Dias
The event will be televised within China and around the world and will showcase Beijing as the city prepares for this summer’s Beijing Olympic Games.
Visit the AST website for more news, pictures and videos.