Situated between the Highball hardtail and the Tallboy short-travel trail bike, the Blur Carbon CC Mountain Bike Frame is Santa Cruz's ride fast, ride far, ride hard cross country race bike. Boasting an efficient VPP suspension platform, a super stiff carbon frame, and race-ready geometry, the Blur is equally at home charging hot laps on your favorite trails as it is grabbing a podium spot at a 24-hour endurance event. It's Santa Cruz's lightest full-suspension frame to date, yet it's built with the rugged durability that Santa Cruz carbon frames are known for far and wide. Build it up with a 100mm travel fork and you've got the ultimate XC race weapon, or throw on a 120mm travel fork and you've got a little more cushion for epic trail rides on rugged mountain terrain. We may have a tendency to hesitate when we hear the words "rugged" and "cross-country race rocket" used in the same sentence, but with a one-piece carbon VPP rear triangle we can't help but spot the similarities between the Blur and Santa Cruz's burly DH rigs. Its twin upright architecture gives cues to inspiration from the Nomad and V10, promising a ride that's uncompromising and stiff, but without the bulk to follow. Keeping a good thing going, Santa Cruz carefully constructs a one-piece carbon front triangle to pack in lateral stiffness that provides tracking confidence through blown out, washboard switchbacks and root-latticed climbs. The VPP suspension in the new Blur is much like the VPP you'll find in other modern Santa Cruz bikes, which undoubtedly an upgrade from the previous generation, with smoother ramping mid-stroke to prevent a bottomed out feel as you soak into the suspension, and with the buttery-smooth Kashima coated FOX Float Factory shock you'll find that the short 100-millimeters of travel feel so much deeper. Santa Cruz may have taken a bit of a divergence from the XC scene in the past few years, with the Tallboy being the closest thing to a cross-country offering in recent...