I went for what was meant to be a nice ride with a mate yesterday. He promised long downhills, steep climbs and plenty of mud so I took the 456 Summer Season with Z150SL, fat tyres on lightish but wide wheels. Flats too.
What we actually rode was a flat family-friendly path easily doable on your £100 Apollo although he reckoned it was really hard-core.
My ride felt dull and not enjoyable one bit as the fork and tyres removed any imperfections from the surface, the lack of challenge was boring, there was no mud either. I was left wondering if on a bike with less or no suspension, slimmer tyres (2″ instead of 2.35″), no so slack geometry the same route could feel better. The views were drop dead gorgeous, tea and cake grand, company superb if totally unskilled/unfit (but so am I to a degree).
What do you reckon? Can too much of a bike ruin a ride?

I don’t underbike myself to make a crap ride feel better tbh. My bikes are tailored to the terrain I want to ride, rather than the other way round.

There’s some truth in what you say. I ride the peaks either on a 130 hard tail or a six inch full bounced. The big bike does take some of the fun out of some tracks. I wouldn’t say it made it boring but I did notice it was less engaging.

if you’re of the opinion that ‘more difficult = better’, then yes.

why not try it next time on a unicycle, with a flat tyre. oh and chain yourself to an anvil before you set off.

that would make it more betterer, yes?

personally, i believe ‘more fun = better’ – so i look for swoopy singletrack, with techy bits, and things to jump off.

The views were drop dead gorgeous, tea and cake grand

Sounds like you missed the point of this ride 🙂

Better to be overbiked than underoptioned 😛
But I agree with bazzer

You can – although in this case I’d say you were just being a bit of a grump and should’ve enjoyed the time with your mate.

I find being over-tyred is the biggest problem for me as I’m a bit lazy with changing them between XC and push-up days out. The difference big supertacky tyres make is absolutely amazing, feels like pedalling through treacle and unless there is a decent descent I’ll have to pedal like mad just to keep up with people. I think being relatively light makes the effect even worse than it is for larger guys.

I have learnt this the hard way too many times recently. 🙄

I’ve also just split my trail 140 mm susser as it makes most stuff feel quite uninspiring compared to the HT. I’m riding the HT for everything now, except uplifts or big DH days. Can never be over-forked on a HT though!

It sounds like you know the answer to your question.

If you did the ride again would you take the same bike to do it? Or would you take a different bike (or change the components on your 456)?

Sounds like you missed the point of this ride

+1

I’m not sure… some people have different bikes for different types of trail that much is certain.. others have one bike to do everything.. I fall into this category..

my bike isn’t hugely different to the one you described.. but I’m just as happy having a pootle along the canal with my in-laws on it as I am shredding gnar.. it just takes a slight adjustment of the old perspective surely..?

I know that you can really ruin other peoples enjoyment of their ride by being overbiked/overbagged/over protected.. there have been numerous distressed threads on here about it..

yes but its probably a fine line between getting the most out of a tame trail with a short travel or rigid bike, and wishing you were on something a bit comfier.

Someone will be along in a moment to tell you its way more fun when they ride inners/GT/W2/dalby on rigid/singlespeed/bmx/mum’s shopper (delete as appropriate).

For me, I reckon I would rather be very slightly overbiked than underbiked/underskilled for the bike and trail I am riding, nothing worse than being all knackered, mistakey and wobbly on trails you don’t know at the end of a large ride on a twitchy nervous racey bike with less good brakes and fork.

yunki: 😆 and 😀

I am never overbiked or underbiked – I only have one bike and only change tyres twice a year – winter tyres on and winter tyres off. Makes it much easier and you just focus on the ride rather than worrying about whether you’ve make the right bike choice

Yup, most rides are as cerebral as physical, and irrespective of your bike, if you’re not “tuned” into the ride then you won’t enjoy it.

I’m no tree hugging hippy, but I remain open minded whenever I ride. Hence, even on my commute (on a cyclescheme Orange Crush, no less), I get enjoyment. In fact, its often the only opportunity I get to ride these days (with two pre-schoolers demanding my attention), so I just savour every tedious mile to and from work.

So in answer to your question, then yes being overbikes can ruin the ride, but its possibley because you expected more from it.

The views were drop dead gorgeous, tea and cake grand

Sounds like you missed the point of this ride

Absolutely, sounds just my kind of ride, there is a place and time for Gnaaar, and also for just getting out there. I’d have taken my on one to the trail you described…

You can get more out of life it you can “enjoy what you ride” rather than “Ride what you enjoy”

🙂

clearly you weren’t riding fast enough, perhaps if you’d have worn DH shorts and a full face lid you’d have gone quicker?

Categorise your ride, that was a jaunt instead of a challenge.

A theory in rock climbing (my other fetish) is that we never distinguish between training and performing so always have the pressure on and beat ourselves (or our bikes) up about not always pushing the boundary. It is more beneficial to assign the performance label to your own more challenging rides instead of being left with that unsatisfied feeling.

I climb/ride with beginners (well, more beginnery than me) and can have that empty feeling afterwards sometimes if I haven’t had my fix (not got past warming up), but the impact of that session on the beginner is potentially a big deal. He’ll want to make his route choice sound good to you and maybe feels the trail fitted the description relative to his ability.

It’s the mindset, not the bike. The cerebral aspect of our sport is not marketed to us but is as important, if not more so than your set up.

I always overbiked

gives me a false sense of security

never overbiked , just underterrained

Short answer ? ….
YES.

Though not sure I’d agree that you were overbiked really…

Example – you wouldn’t want to take a 8″ freeride/downhill bike around the XC trails of Glen Tress – I know people do… but I’ve dragged my SC Bullit around there and it was hard work to keep up the flow through the pedally sections. I just kept longing after my short travel bike.

However, riding bikes is generally always great IMHO, I’d rather be on one than not and rather be over biked than under.

I fall into the multiple bikes category … and wouldn’t take my Short travel XC bike for a 50mile road ride – I have a skinny road bike for that. But if you’ve only got the one bike, which is usually a do it all trail bike like yours rather than a DH rig or something, then you can make simple easy terrain more interesting by just looking for wee lips on roots and curbs to pop off etc…

generally though – just enjoy riding your bike for what it is… dam good fun.

You took the bike for the route as described, so you were not over biked. Worse to be underbiked on most rides IMHO.

I’ve only got one MTB which makes bike choice easy, it’s that or nothing! One size fits all for me!

MrNutt, I did consider it but the colour of the bike would not match the outfit 🙁
On a more serious note I’ll fit lighter wheels and tyres, maybe even a shorter fork if I can be bothered (not sure of that though) and go for a spin along a local river, why not!?

I’ve got the one bike 150mm/130mm.

I just turn the propedal on for the flat stuff. Had a go on a hardtail the other day but have decided against, made my butt hurt. I think if you’re overbiked you’re not going fast enough.

Not really true. I think faster riders tend to have less burly bikes. No matter how fit/fast you are, a 6″ travel bike wouldn’t be a good choice for Thetford/Sherwood/anywhere south east of the peaks

No, you can ruin your ride whatever you’re riding. It’s all about what’s going on between your ears rather than what’s between your legs and it’s your choice how you look at it.

Unfortunately we’ve developed a mountain biking culture which – in my cynical and personal opinion – puts too much emphasis on hardware; viz, ‘find your perfect bike’, ‘change your forks and change your life’, ‘we test 500, £6,000 hardtails and tell you which is best’ etc.

Ultimately you end up with the small tragedy of people who buy and sell bikes endlessly in the hope of finding an elusive perfection that doesn’t really exist. I’d rather just have an approximation and enjoy riding instead 🙂

Yep – It happened to me when I took my Kona Stinky to the peak district. I didnt enjoy the climbs (obviously and expected), but the biggest surprise was that I didnt enjoy the decents either as the bike took the challenge out of it.

Oh OK then, I’ll get it sold. What about if you like to do jumps and drops, what about if your a bigger guy like me, what if you ride hard and like to pop off everything you can and hit rubble at speed?

Of course a 6 inch travel bike is not being used all the time especially on Bridalways for instance but it doesn’t cause a problem you can still ride them.

Better to have the travel and not need it than need it and not have it. I always thought the primary purpose of suspension was to keep the wheels in contact with the ground at speed hence my comment?

If you ride somewhere without much elevation you have to work to get your bike up to speed and make the ride interesting. This is much harder on a big bike and the ride will just feel like a lot of hard work for little payoff.

If you live somewhere with proper hills it will be worth riding a big bike uphill to get the payoff on the decsent.

Fair enough. But surely only Norfolk is like that?

Agree with you jools.

Well controlled big travel is more useful than poorly controlled small travel.

A Range Rover can have huge axle articulation off road, yet people can still hammer them round corners at 80mph.

ac282 – Member

If you live somewhere with proper hills it will be worth riding a big bike uphill to get the payoff on the descent.

nah, if you live somewhere with proper hills, you’ll be riding a big bike uphill for an hour, all for a 2 minute uneventful roll down the other side.

or you could ride a hardtail; the climbs are easier, and you’ll find the descents last longer and are more interesting…

And when you live where there are no hills you ride a 456SS with Z150SL’s, fat tyres etc f’ing and blinding all the time ‘cos you’re unfit.

I think overbiking is a problem as well, although you will get many people saying you’re an idiot.

Its an attitude maintained by the industry. The industry tries to make everyone believe that their riding is super gnarly, and they need a huge bike because they are radcore. As bikes get bigger, they cost more. They cost even more to make them lighter. And they cost EVEN more to maintain (shocks, pivots, etc. etc.).

You can learn a lot from underbiking. Overbiking can just make a ride boring.

Riding down a tame trail centre descent like at Afan. Imagine riding it on a SS cross bike. That would be an experience. Riding down it on an 8inch dh bike? Where’s the fun? Also, which would you enjoy the climb more on..

I’d rather have too little bike then too much.

Overbiked? Underbiked? You lot talk a load of tripe sometimes.