[GregL]

Originally Posted by benb

I was right at the correct age for the Lance effect. He won his first TdF the year I graduated from college and I got into riding over the course of the year after that.

Lance effectively killed MTB racing (X/C at least) and sent everyone over to race on the road for a while. I most certainly got caught up in that.

IMO Lance's mutating from 7 to -7 effectively reversed it all only everyone seemed to go find something other than cycling to do. It's not like MTB or Cross or something picked everyone up.

Realistically the MTB race series I did are still going. But the races that remain are all like 5+ hour round trip drives. Not all the races remain, and the ones that survived are the ones further out in the rural areas than never really had the masses of road riders required to start having local road racing like in the city. 20 years ago I could cherry pick the close ones. Once they were all really far away it got way harder to want to do them. Any race/event I do that requires me to drive the car more hours than I ride my bike is something I have a really hard time being motivated to participate in.

I started racing in 1993, so I was ahead of the "Lance Effect." Otherwise, my experiences mirror yours:

• XC MTB racing died in the mid-late 1990s, but lately has seen a resurgence in my area. I'm hoping to purchase a "racy" hardtail 29er next year to jump on the bandwagon.
• Lots of racers (both road and off-road) stopped racing and moved on to other sports, or no competitive sports at all. Let's face it, staying at a competitive fitness level for even amateur bike racing is hard! Some of my former competitors have moved to fitness-only cycling, some to motorsports (motorcycles and cars, primarily), a few to running (sneakers being cheaper and more easily transportable than bikes), and several to no significant athletic activity at all.
• There are still races out there, but instead of drives of less than an hour, it's 2+ hours and sometimes overnight accommodations required. Hotel and restaurant costs blow up the overall financial impact of a race very quickly.

Greg