MTN Challenge Round 3 in Woodend

From 26 inch to 29 inch

Am I now a believer? After riding a Specialized 29 inch bike for a while it may just be possible to go as quick as i do on a 26 inch bike. This is a quick review of the Specialized SJ HT Alloy 29er.

It’s been a fairly tumultuous time for me in regards to bikes over the last year with 3 bike industry job changes and resultantly 6 different bikes. So when it came to choosing my new bike I just wanted something to get me through a Woodend winter.

I was looking at a 26 inch Stumpjumper HT Comp Carbon and was pretty happy with that choice as I had been riding 26 inch hardtails for years. However during the day I thought I would just go for a roll on a 29 inch hardtail out the front of the shop to see what the Specialized offerings in that range are like.

Wow, what was going on here, it turned like a 26 inch bike. Completely different to other 29ers that I’d ridden before. So I went back inside to quiz DC as to why. The short of it is that the Big Red S have tuned and dialled in a geometry that has shortened the bike significantly and allowed it to have sharper handling off road.

So I have decided to ride an alloy HT 29er for a few months and with a retail price including a few mods of under $3000 it’s probably the cheapest bike I’ve had since 1992.

I’ve kept the standard specs but I’ve put on a carbon seat post, carbon XO cranks and converted to tubeless and it weighed in at 11.3kg, not too bad for a stock alloy 29er.

So my first ride started at 6.15 am on Saturday morning before work. As I entered the first single track I was pleasantly surprised. It really did go around corners quicker, the smoother the radius of the corner the faster it went. On fire roads it was obviously quicker and even in single track that required a degree of muscling the bike around, it felt almost comparable. I honestly think that if it was the same weight as previous carbon HT 26ers I’ve had (about 9.5ish) that it’d be so close in performance I wouldn’t like to call it.

Second ride was the Duael Pairs race held on my tracks in Woodend with an almost equal time on fire roads and single track it was going to be a good test of overall capability under racing conditions. I took Sugarlips Hurley on a practice lap and dropped him in the single track so it was certainly fast enough there. The fire roads were great on it, really smooth but towards the end of the six hours I did start to slow down in the single track. Again I can’t help but wonder if this is purely a weight issue as this bike is easily 1.5 kgs heavier than my last carbon HT, but as said before this beast was $6000 less.

I will be quite happy to ride this bike for a winter as I think if you look at the time gained on faster paced tracks versus the time lost, if any, on more technical singletrack then I certainly didn’t lose any time overall.

I’m already scheming of getting a S-Works 29er HT for summer.

The Duael Pairs Race

I did a pairs race last Sunday called the Duael. It was run on my tracks near Woodend and I raced with Kim in the 40+ mixed category.

 

Inter winter round from 2010

Last year the Wombat MTB club ran the first round of the inter winter series with over 150 people turning up on the day. Just thought Id put this video from it up to get people excited about it again. Enjoy.

Only a few days to go now. The weather gods look like coming through for us with only a few showers in the lead up so thats good. Finally entries are starting to come in, combine that with entries on the day and we should see 150 ish. After 2 pre rides everyone loves the coarse and the chute seems to be ok.Heres hoping none necks themselves on Sunday.

New Zaskar Ride report

After 17 years and at least 25 bikes I am back on a Zaskar. The first thing about this bike as with the one I had in 94 is it looks stunning. My wife is sick of me looking at it and saying yes sweetie to whatever she is saying. This bike has been a long time coming to OZ but so far its been worth the wait.

Like the early Zaskar’s its long, making it very well suited to XC and faster trail riding. The effective top tube is almost 62cm long and the head tube angle 71 so its pretty stable at speed. I’ve had it up to about 65 kmph and it didn’t miss a beat. While i have ridden bikes that are quicker to turn, the geometry that GT have gone with is a bit more all-round than a pure xc bike. As a result this bike feels very stable and combined with Sids (15mm) and a tapered head tube (1.5″- 1.25″) takes corners with confidence.

This model the Pro retails at about $4500 but with X9 cranks not the XO pictured. I’ve also put Fizik Gobi on it and changed the tyres other than that these first 15 hours have been done on a pretty stock bike. Ive never used Formula brakes before but really like them, they certainly work as well as others Ive used recently.

The XO 2 x 10 gearing was my biggest worry living where I live. There are a couple hills that on bad days 22/32 is needed and Im still not convinced that I will cope, have to wait and see on that one. However the top speed gearing is fine and I didn’t spin out until over 50 kmph.

The weight of my large is 10kg flat with cages. You could put this model on a diet fairly cheaply and easily drop half a kg.

Did I mention it looks awesome?

The Bluff trip

Well I finally managed to get a day on the snow. It seems that work and family life just kept throwing stuff at me. So I went to the Bluff with Jeff and Geoff with the intention of making the first part of my film, No Lift Lines Here. The snow was a little thin but of pretty good quality in the gullys. In short we had a great time. Ran into MR form the ski.com forums as well which great. Enjoy.

Inter Winter Round 3

Castlemaine hosted the 3rd round of this series yesterday. It was good to race on such a technical course again,

I feel that the tracks these days are oftem not as hard as they were in the 90′s. About 120 people turned out which was great. B grade had the lions share with about 50 starters. Laps were 7km’s and took about 30 mins.

It’s a great place to go for a ride as well with tons more than just the 7km loop on offer. Jake at Castlemaine Cycles would have more details.

Cannondale Flash.

Wow, this bike is so good. New favorite bike of all time. I raced it today and it just didnt miss a beat. I cant believe how well it goes down and its pretty obvious that it floats up hill.