JudgeJor

@Motivated: Well in enduro you don't race uphill. What is this, downcountry? :D Now that I think of it, we did have similar (though very unserious) race in my club a decade ago. Uphill race, XC laps and downhill race. At least I could wear full face and knee pads for the downhill. I think the motivation was to have club champs where all disciplines would be bad at :D

Coming from enduro, that's exactly a race I would not like to do :D 1) racing uphill 2) racing downhill with light bike and no protection. I'd scared to death.

@WayneParsons: Yeah enduro and enduro racing is going to be just fine. But it's entirely different matter if it's a sport where money can be made and which can be done professionally. I personally don't think so, the distance and time window to cover with cameras is too great and there aren't enough people willing to pay others to ride bikes, and that's totally okay. Just go out and do it on your own, not everything needs to be commercial.

They are really good! Just the toebox is not as indestructible as on 5-10 impacts.

No, I enjoy it! :D Jokes aside, this seems to be very complex topic. I think everyone will eventually get arm pump if the trail is long and demanding enough (think those ~15-20 min enduro race runs). Similarly there is a limited time one can hang from a pull up bar. Riding technique, fitness and bike setup can help such that you can finish that run. I'm suffering from a similar condition where my palms hurt due to the vibration/shocks/pressure and trying to experiment how reduce it as it is more severe than the arm pump I (eventually) get. I did make my own bar ends which seem to reduce arm pump but not much the palms.

That's why it had to be the R&D department as the Strive (and Spectral) is not in production anymore. Hopefully they'll make a new model, I've had two Strives.

Yeah seems like 99% of the bike was figured out by then and not much changes were needed after that.

@LM-CZ: I was thinking about that, and running different mixes front and rear :D Maybe the new Shimano stuff tries to find this sweet spot as the viscosity seems to be between the two. Anyway I called it quits with research and development and bought stuff that works out the box.

The XT(R) are a good brake, great even, but there was/is something fundamentally wrong with the design. That's something to do with the mechanical delay (fluid viscosity) of the system. You can see this if you pump the brakes and find that the bite point changes significantly (granted almost all brakes have this to a some degree). IIRC the front was more consistent than rear and both would see the bite point move away from the bar (with Shimano oil). Now with Putoline suspension fluid, the rear was more neutral but the front was moving towards the bar! Not by much but it was bit hairy in some cases. This tells me that the system is fairly sensitive to viscosity of the fluid. I experimented with the usual tricks with bleeding and also running 2mm rotors and trickstuff pads which was good but I could never fully trust that the bite point was where I last felt it. Problem solved by changing to Hope V4's.

Yeah if you have a motor, why not make it like 200 to 300 mm front and back? Some gearhead should try and put avinox and pedals on their MotoX just to see how it would ride.