Vital MTB

This week, Jason Schroeder, Lars Sternberg, and Shawn Spomer are joined by another Vital contributor, Mike Page, to discuss the handlebar compliance shootout that Mike took on this year. They go over what even is compliance, how different amounts did (or didn’t) affect comfort and steering, and what the results were across the 9 bars tested. Enjoy.
Mike's handlebar compliance article - Does Handlebar Compliance Actually Improve Comfort? | MTB Handlebar Shootout 
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This week, Jason Schroeder, Lars Sternberg, and Shawn Spomer discuss two super serious topics:
The hardest hard events of the year: Hardline, and Hard MTB League
How would you rank these by importance when riding a mountain bike: skill, bike design, and suspension setup by importance.
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A few things were consistently inconsistent this year: Dak’s results and how many podcasts we recorded. But recognizing the problem is the first step to progress. With the dust from the 2026 World Cup DH season settled, we hopped on the mics to chat about Dak’s first year riding for Scott and his ambitions for the off-season and next year. We also reflected on who had a good year, who had a bad year, who needs to turn it around next season, and who we think will come out swinging in 2027. 
As always, thanks for tuning in, and a huge shoutout to Maxxis, Burgtec, and Jenson USA for supporting the podcast this year! Stay tuned for more off-season pods soon.

Spomer and Schroeder were on the ground at the inaugural Whistler World Cup, and the post-race stoke was too high not to talk about it. So we got Lars Sternberg on the line, and had a good ol bench race banter session. 
The Whistler crowd was legendary, the track was quintessential Whistler, the weather was typical for a race weekend, and Americans topped two podiums. The only thing that could have made it better was if Lachie Stevens-Mcnab wasn’t DQ’d for dodging a pole. Enjoy the chat!

The crew has been slacking on podcasting. No one likes excuses, so we won't give you any. Good news is the World Cup circus has arrived in North America, and we are on site in Whistler to document potentially the most anticipated DH race of the century. With Jason and Dak both in the same time zone and town, they caught up for a quick catch up before the weekend chaos begins.