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E-MTB Dutch National Championships XCO

This weekend I participated in the first E-MTB Dutch National Championships XCO and I just want to share my experience. Maybe you are already familiar with E-MTB racing but I noted many people are not. I decided last minute to participate as I was not so fit the last weeks but in the week for the race this improved. So I contacted Lapierre for a bike and lucky me that they had one.

 

In E-MTB racing the bike is like a normal E-bike limited to 25 kilometers an hour and 250 Watt. This means as soon as you get above this speed you need to pedal yourself with a quite heavy bike. That’s why I decided to switch the original 27,5 wheels and 3.0 tires from the Lapierre Overvolt for carbon DT Swiss 1200 wheels with for an E-MTB rather small Schwalbe Racing Ralph/Ray 2.25 tires. I saved around 1.9 kilogram and also lowered the rolling resistance. On top of that I am used to these tires and know their limits. As I didn’t want to have a DNF behind my name  I mounted a KMC e11 Turbo chain which has a higher pin power.

The track in Zoetermeer around an indoor snow hall is perfect for an E-MTB race as there is variation in climbing, descending and flat sections where the motor switches off as we rode above 30 kilometers an hour on these flat sections. The fun and trick is to balance your own power and the bike’s power in the right way. I missed for example some uphill corners due to unexpected uphill support which I am not used to.

In advance I was afraid my battery might not last the race over 60 minutes as I was not able to train on the bike before the race so I could not figure out how long it would last at Full Power. I decided to do the recon of the track before the race without support with temperatures above 30 degrees which was hard work. After the race it appeared I could have done the recon with support as my battery was not even halfway empty.…. Important lesson learned after one hour of hard work and fun!

This first E-MTB Dutch National Championships XCO edition had around 20 starters and in the end I finished 5th behind winner Jeroen van Eck.

Watch the video –> https://www.facebook.com/3nationscupmtb/videos/526187108153201/

Photo by Gerard van Warmerdam

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