I wrote a portion of this blog post:

This super sleek GPS watch from Polar, dubbed the RC3, is the company’s latest in fitness data collection technology. Featuring the ability to communicate with some of Polar’s external devices such as heart rate monitors and foot pods, Polar meshes the statistics that the device gathers with built-in training plans. Download your data to the computer and upload it to Polar’s website, and get even more detailed training analysis!

GPS files from this device download in the widely accepted .gpx format, making uploading your data to websites such as Singletracks and Strava a cinch. Battery life is a whopping 12 hours, and the watch can be easily recharged.

The real story with this watch is its size–it’s crazy thin! Seriously, the guys at the booth were all wearing them, and these things are literally about the size of a normal digital wrist watch (shame on me for not getting a photo). Due to the small size, these watches are primarily for data collection–navigation with them is virtually impossible. The only navigation feature is a “get me home” arrow that points to your starting point, but if you are out in the wilderness on an epic 30-mile loop, straight back over who knows what kind of terrain is usually the worst possible idea.

$300 MSRP for just the watch, $350 with the heart rate monitor.

It’s that time of year: expo season! Seemingly every bike company under the sun is launching their new product lines and Interbike 2012 (the largest bicycle industry tradeshow in North America) is behing held this week in Las Vegas with about 1,200 exhibitors showcasing the latest and greatest. Singletracks is traveling to Vegas this week, and we’ll be bringing you the scoop on what’s hot and what’s not right here on the blog.

Click on over to Singletracks to read this whole blog post.

As I’m sure you’ve already gathered, the XC components and geometry make
the Jamis Dakar SixFifty B Pro a very capable climber for a 5.5″ bike.
If you don’t feel like you need full squish on the climbs, close the
gate on the rear shock and dial the compression all the way up on the
fork to drastically reduce the amount of travel and stiffen the
suspension up. With a weight of 27.72 pounds (without pedals and without
dropper post), the Dakar 650b Pro is very light for an aluminum-framed
5.5″ travel rig.



Click here to read the rest of this blog post.

Test riding mountain bikes at an expo is a lot like sampling teriyaki
chicken at the mall: it all tastes good, but you can’t really tell
which is the best until you’ve eaten a full serving.


After demoing the 2012 Jamis Dakar SixFifty B Pro at the Southeast Bike Expo
in February, I knew that I had to have a full-size helping of this
delicious meal. Jamis was stoked to get one of their rigs into my hands
for review, and shipped me one as soon as the container full of bikes
arrived from the Far East.



Click on over to Singletracks.com to read the full blog post!

In the end I rode 17.8 miles and climbed 4,075 vertical feet over the
course of the ride. As you can imagine, it was pretty intense, but
after the anti-mountain biker prejudice evident in the East Bay,
I was ecstatic to be riding such gorgeous singletrack, and to absorb
the beauty of the mighty redwood trees that I had only ever seen in
books and movies before this trip.



Click on over to Singletracks.com to read the full blog post!

Despite Marin County’s storied history and long ties to the sport of
mountain biking, it is no longer the mecca that it once was. Back in the
late 1970s and early 1980s when the sport was born, mountain biking was
so new that no legislation existed to say one way or the other if bikes
were allowed on the trails. Back in those days, hikers viewed mountain
bikers as a novelty and an amusement, but as the sport continued to gain
traction the local land managers and hikers were quick to ban mountain
bikes from almost all of the singletrack trails in Marin County.




At present, there are only two main singletrack trails in the
entirety of Marin County that are legal to ride a mountain bike on: Camp
Tamarancho and China Camp.



Click on over to Singletracks for the rest of this blog post.