Tim Coleman Racing

Ever since riding a prototype of the new 2013 Norco Range I’ve been trying my best to get one. It seems as though the market demand for 650b / 27.5″ bikes for 2013 has exploded. When I went to John Henry Bikes to put in an order for a Large Range 2 I literally got laughed at, “They’re all oversold”, they said. I pulled some strings and managed to get a frame set ordered. Got an X-Fusion Vengeance fork from the folks at Renegade Cycle Solutions, some pretty bits from the folks at Race Face and built up the rest.

My new 2013 Norco Range

I haven’t weighted the bike yet, but the imprecise scale with and without bike indicates somewhere around 32 pounds. The fork is coil sprung, set to 170 mm travel, and based on the one ride so far is a wonderful match to the rear suspension. This bike eats bumps like no other all-mountain bike I’ve ridden. The speed through rough terrain is biblical, and the way it accelerates out of corners can only otherwise be experienced by a jet fighter launching off an aircraft carrier.

I’m having so much fun riding this new Range that all my other bikes have been a bit neglected since bringing the green machine in to the fold. Every ride I do on the green machine results in a solid string of Personal Bests on trails that are both uphill and down. Ultimately I’m faster everywhere and having more fun, what more could you ask?

I’ve been having the time of my life shredding the bike park in Whistler the past couple months. I’ve been ripping laps with tons of friends, and as a result high fiving and howls of euphoria have been at an all time high. I’ve got a couple pictures from these good times in the bike park for you to enjoy below:

Who says you can’t have fun in the rain?

This is definitely one of my favourite jumps in the bike park, with an endless hipped landing zone.

Mid summer good times on Ninja Cougar

I had the privilege to test out the new Scott Gambler by doing laps in the bike park with Brendan Fairclough. This here was a clicked out whip from Brendan that resulted in an epic nose wheelie save.

The BC Cup returned to Silver Star resort this year for the first time since I’ve been racing. I’d ridden the Silver Star bike park before and always had a good time on their trails.

Practice on Saturday went really well. The track was a little awkward in spots, with loads of corners that were tough to hold momentum through. I felt strong, and comfortable on the bike. Holding good speed everywhere and hitting my lines consistently.

Glenn and I were using Strava to track our runs, and I was happy with my own progression on the track through the day.

Practice on Sunday morning was excellent again. I had two fantastic runs that were smooth and fast, and I hit all my lines. Strava segment of one of those runs is here: http://app.strava.com/activities/14157581#264285367

Racing unfolded throughout the day on Sunday with beautiful sunny blue skies. Reports from the Masters was the track was holding up well. I was stoked for my run. Quietly confident that I could well on this track.

Unfortunately as we waited at the top for our runs we could see a storm moving towards the mountain. Streaks of rain pouring from the black clouds. I was hoping all the elites could get down the hill before the rains started. It started to drizzle. I lined up in the start gate. The rain gathering momentum. *BANG* Big lightning strike on the next hill over. *Beep* *Beep* *Beeeeep* “Best get down as fast as possible” I thought. “The track is still in good shape, I can still get a good result”. “Stay clean, hit your lines, relax”. My run was going well. The dirt was tacky from the moisture. The rocks and roots increasingly slippery. “Stay light on the rocks … easy over the roots”. I rode the first three quarters of the track fast and smooth. The clouds were so dark it was like someone turned the lights off. But it’s ok, “Last woods, enter high, apex early, stay tight” I told myself. Alas the roots were more slippery than I judged. The front end washed into a hole and I went over the bars in slow motion. BALLS! I remounted as quickly as possible, neck brace rotated so I can’t look down, adjust neck brace. Back in action and hit the bottom of the track. The final turns were greasy, easy, don’t need to go down again. It was really raining hard now. Frustrated I crossed the line and hustled to shelter.

Final jump to the finish line in the pouring rain! Photo by: CBC Photography.

All said and done I finished 15th of 30 Elite men, 13 seconds off the win. My practice laps on Strava were within a few seconds of the final winning time. You never know how much time you lose in a crash, but I’m sure without the rain and the crash I would have placed within the top few. I left frustrated that I didn’t get the result I knew I was capable of, but at the same time confident that I was fast, riding well, and had a ton of fun shredding all week-end.

Cheers to the organizers and volunteers for yet another wonderful BC Cup event!

2012 Silver Star BC Cup Results

I’ve always enjoyed the Sun Peaks race course. It’s probably the highest average speed race course on the BC Cup circuit, which I love, and it’s always loose … double exciting!

Glenn and I trained together for this race as per usual. The one difference was that we used Strava to log each practice lap. We broke the track down in to segments; the top steep loose section, the middle flowy fast section, and the end tighter tree section. After a couple runs we’d upload our runs and compare our segment times. The most interesting part was our perception of our strengths and weaknesses. I thought I was riding the top section really well, average through the middle section, and struggling a bit through the bottom section. Glenn was the opposite. When we compared times it turned out we were identical in time through the first two segments, but I was faster by 6 seconds in the last segment. My final practice run HERE.

Small creek gap in the middle of the race course

My race run went well, with only a couple minor mistakes. I wasn’t overly happy with my run, but as the remaining Elite riders came down I realized that the course was loose and difficult to judge. After the last riders were down I wound up 6th of 26 Elite men, and 4.5 seconds back from the win, which I was happy with. BC-Cup-DH3-Silver-Star-Results. Also I was one place better than the overall BC Cup Champion for 2012, who is always really quick, being quicker than Fonzi is always a result.

Just this past week I got to head down to Sun Valley Idaho to check out some new Scott bikes. I was there as a representative for NSMB.com and the purpose of the trip was to cover the big unveil of the upcoming Scott Genius 650b (27.5) and 29″ trail bikes.

I wrote a quick summary of the trip before we got in to the meat of the riding on the second day I was in Sun Valley, and that got published here:

Photo by: Ian Hylands

A full write up of the bikes and the trip can be seen here at NSMB.com:

If you couldn’t tell from the pictures the riding was awesome, the bikes were a ton of fun, and I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face all week.

Photo by: Ian Hylands

As per usual I haven’t updated nearly frequently enough. I recently got my wisdom teeth removed, and had a couple days off, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to do a mega update of sorts. I’ve added some posts I thought were needed, so you can scroll down below to check em out. I started 2012 with a bang by doing a trip with Andrea to Mexico. In short it was awesome. We rang in the new year in style with an epic street party, drank lots, beached lots, snorkelled lots, and ate lots. I thought I’d add a couple choice photos.

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Other than that the weather hasn’t been the best so riding has been down to a minimum. Once my mouth is healed from this surgery I’ll back on the bike with some new content to upload. Ciao until then.

This time last year I took a new job that was further from home. I had got used to commuting by bicycle to my old job a few times a week. It was a nice ride, it took me about 30 minutes each way, was good exercise, and allowed Andrea and I to get away with only one car. Once the weather got nicer this summer I started commuting to my new work by bicycle. The distance is 24 km each way, and takes about 50 minutes in each direction. It’s longer time wise than driving but not having to deal with the frustrations of other drivers made my ride much more enjoyable. It helped me keep in shape, and saved us a bunch of cash.

I was riding a bike that was kindly donated to me, which I think was a 2003 Kona Jake cyclocross bike. I had added slick tires and fenders, and the bike proved to be reliable and efficient. Over the course of the year I owned the Kona I covered over 4000 km. What I didn’t like however was the ageing drive train and the fact that the brakes didn’t work. Slowly I started thinking I should purchase a new commuter bike. I was thinking I’d make the effort to ride as much through the winter as possible and for that to happened I’d need some half decent brakes. As far as I’m concerned rim brakes don’t work, so I was convinced I needed disc brakes. A large portion of my commute is through the flats of Richmond, which is notoriously windy. As such I wanted drop bars so when it was windy I’d be able to hunker down and get out of the wind as much as possible. After some research online I was tossed between the following two bikes:

1. 2012 Specialized Crux Comp Disc
2. 2012 Norco CCX 2

The irrational side of me really wanted the Crux. It was a carbon frame, and had nicer bits. It was also near double the price of the CCX. Since I was just using this bike as a tool to get to work and back I thought I’d get the sensible choice and purchase the CCX. So far I’ve put in 500 happy kilometres on the CCX and thoroughly enjoying it. The brakes are a vast improvement over rim brakes, the drive is new and crisp, and the frame is much more comfortable than the old Kona.

Funnily enough this now means that I started 2011 with a Trek Session 88, Santa Cruz Nomad and Kona Jake, and end 2011 with a straight flush of Norcos; an Aurum, a Range and a CCX 2. To that I couldn’t be happier.

I’ve been bombing around on a little Norco Range for a couple months now. I’ve slowly made some changes to it to push it closer to my tastes. I altered the geometry by making up a set of eccentric shock pins that drop the bike lower into it’s travel, resulting in a 65.5 degree head angle and a bottom bracket drop of 3/8″. I added a chain guide, a Reverb dropper post and the 55 fork up front. The result is essentially a short travel DH bike that can be easily pedalled to the top of the hill … I think I may be in love.

My slightly customized Norco Range 1

I’ve been a busy guy lately. I helped out at the NSMB Trail Day on Dales Trail this past week-end and managed to get a photo of me being silly included in the write-up. I actually did some real work … promise. You can read all about it here.

Going back a few weeks I had an opportunity to review the new Turner DHR. You can check out the review here.

Other than that I got up to Whistler Bike Park this past week-end for the first time this year. The whole gong show was in attendance with some epic trains including the Hoff, Emo, Angry Dad, Dodsy and Bryson. The trails were mostly in great shape and everyone was ripping. Cheers for an awesome day boys.