Bike Check: Jason Moeschler’s Cannondale Habit

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Jason looking pretty relaxed after winning the prologue stage

We caught up with Jason Moeschler after he’d just won the prologue of the inaugural Epic Cymru race last week. He’d just come from winning the epic Downieville race, packed his bike and some tyres and headed over to Wales to do an all together different event. Instead of a well-known track on his doorstep, he’d be racing on-sight for five days over 200km – with timed uphills and timed downhill sections (with uphill bits in it). The 120mm travel bike (that we previewed here) was all he needed to take on stages as disparate as Margam’s rolling deer park and downhill stages at Bike Park Wales and Mountain Ash.

Front mechs might be out of fashion at the moment, but Moeschler couldn’t be more happy with how this 2×11 setup works
Matching XTR Di2 rear mech running Syncro shifting up front through a single shifter
Oh, these old things. EWS-tested WTB carbon rims running 20/19PSI

Jason said on his Facebook page: “I did my best to bring the most balanced bike possible – something that would compete with the XC guys in the climbing stages, and the DH guys in the Enduro stages. The Cannondale Bicycles ‪Habit‬ was the bike. I used WTB Riddler 2.4 Light/Fast rolling tires, which many thought to be a roll of the dice. But the tires worked perfectly. In fact, the Riddlers even delivered a stage win, in the rain and mud on the final day. Other unique items in the build were the new WTB Ci24 carbon rims, and Shimano Cycling XTR Di2, which was using the Syncro function. Overall, the bike did exactly what I needed, and I couldn’t have made a better choice.”

Singletrack World Issue 143 - June ...
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Fox Racing Shox’ DOSS seatpost for the steep stuff.
Reasonably simple bar setup with a Di2 indicator and a Garmin
Obviously saving weight by not having a zip-tie on the lower holes.

We’ll be having a full feature on the cracking event in a future issue of Singletrack, based on Chipps’ experiences at the event (he barely bothered the Top 100 by the way) but in the meantime, you can catch up on the chat at Epic Cymru’s Facebook page.

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 22 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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