Fresh Goods Friday 446 | The Products They Came In Two By Two, Hurrah! Hurrah!

Heellllooooo May! Are we pleased to see you! The traditional month for warm sunshine, terrible hayfever, and exam revision. We love you, May. So much promise. So often delivers. We’re clicking our heels and springing our steps. And not before time. Only now have we sighted our first ducklings on the canal, and the geese are still at the hissing and showing off stage, not yet paired up and on their nests. Everything is late. Except Fresh Goods Friday, which is pretty much on time. Hey, it’s still Friday. And Friday is still quite fresh. So let’s dive on in.

*triple somersault from a backwards handstand into a beautiful, elegant splish*

Jamis Dakar A2

• Price: £1100, or £880 if you’re fast
• From: Evans

The Jamis Dakar A2 is a budget alloy full-suspension frame boasting 120mm of travel front and rear. The Dakar A2 we have on test has a pretty decent build despite the low price and ships with an SR Suntour fork, RockShox Monarch rear shock and even Shimano MT200 hydraulic disc brakes. RRP on the Darkar A2 is £1100, but Evans currently have them on offer for only £880!

Julbo Arise Glasses

• Price: £120.00
• From: Lyon Outdoor, Julbo

A new style for this year aimed at performance orientated riders, but the main thing with these is they feature a new Reactiv Performance lens which goes from Clear (CAT 0) to dark (CAT 3), which we think involves some dangerous black magic. This has a bigger range of operation than any Julbo lens to date. The lens also has the anti fog and water repellent treatments you have seen on other Julbo lenses.

Julbo Elevate Glasses

• Price: £115.00
• From: Lyon Outdoor, Julbo

A new female specific frame in a casual cross over style but with all the hidden performance features you would expect from Julbo. The eyeholes are filled with the Reactiv CAT 1 -3 lens that we have tried and loved before in the Julbo Renegades, Hannah’s Editors’ Choice from last year.

Hydrapak Shape shift 2l

• Price: £35.00
• From: Lyon Outdoor, Hydrapak

This is an update to their flagship reservoir product and is the only baffled (to keep a flat profile when full) and reversible (for cleaning and drying) reservoir on the market. Updates for 2019 are an improved slide top for easier use and reduced snagging on the pack, and improved opening which allows better one hand filling, and a claimed 20% improvement in flow rate when drinking.

Hutchinson Griffus Racing Lab Tyres

• Price: £45.95
• From: Windwave

These are the tyres which George Thompson checked out for us just a couple of weeks ago. They’re designed for dry weather use, so we’re looking forward to months and months of testing these. Or perhaps a relocation of the office to somewhere a tad dustier than Todmorden. They’re a front and rear pair, with a whole bunch of science behind every detail of the tyres. The wider 2.5in tyre is for the front, and the rear is 2.4in. Even if you don’t give a hoot about DH tyres, you should read George’s write up, because as ever it’s an entertaining yarn – plus you’ll learn all about that tyre science that’s in these gravity gums.

Shotgun Kids MTB Seat

• Price: £120 seat, £27 handlebars
• From: KidsRideShotGun

This has arrived just in term for some bank holiday family fun. Suitable for ages 2-5, or maximum weight of 22kg, this allows your young ‘un to ride between your arms and will fit on a range of mountain bikes. In fact, they say it will fit on all mountain bikes and the makers have yet to find one it won’t fit on. There’s a challenge for you. Any angle top tube, any shape of tube, any frame material…. so they say. We’ll be finding out whether it leads to smiles all round.

Singletrack Merch

We’ve got some recent additions to show you. Check out our new hoodies for supreme ethical, fair trade and sheer loveliness. Buying our merch and subscriptions directly supports us and funds our ability to create more content like this. Check out more in our shop here.

Kali Maya Revolt 2.0

• Price: £89.99
• From: Oxford Products

This is a L/XL (fits 60-63cm heads) trail helmet with a low density layer, ‘composite fusion plus’ and claimed weight of 12.7oz. Composite fusion is Kali’s proprietary in-molding technology that merges the shell and EPS foam liner together, which Kali says makes their helmets, stronger, smaller, lighter and more comfortable. Helmets with Composite Fusion technology contain crumple zones by incorporating multi-density EPS foam with geometric cone shapes into the liner. Harder foam cones on the outside quickly dissipate high g-force impacts while softer cones are next to the user’s head to cushion any blows. The results are claimed better impact energy management with less energy being transferred to your head. This combines with the Low Density Layer (LDL) padding system which addresses both low-g and rotational impact forces by placing soft gel pads throughout the interior of the helmet to address a very wide range of different impacts. Softer than EPS, these specially designed viscoelastic gel pads can compress and shear in all directions. As a result, Kali claims they reduce rotational impact forces by 25% and low-g linear impact forces by 30%. Curiously, this helmet fits Hannah, while the Interceptor is too big.

Kali Interceptor Flex

• Price: £139.99
• From: Oxford Products

This is a L/XL (fits 60-64cm heads) trail helmet with a low density layer, ‘nano fusion’, ‘supervents’ and a claimed weight of 13.7oz. The ‘nano fusion’ is a variant of the composite fusion that contains in-moulding density EPS with self-healing foam and carbon nanotubes. Kali claims this dissipates impact energy more efficiently in a smaller volume.

Pace RC529

• Price: £575 frame only
• From: Pace

Pace Cycles has sent over one of their hot new steel hardtails for us to give a spin over the next week or so. The Pace RC529 is a long, low and slack steel hardtail designed for hooligan work in the woods, but also happy to go for a day of camping thanks to the rack mounts on the rear.  Our RC529 has come built up with a smattering of Hope, Pace, and SRAM componentry and we’ve been sent both a 29er and 27.5+ rear wheel to play around with.

…and we’re done. Take a deep breath and prepare to go back to the real world. Or don’t. Stick around. Read some stuff. How about watching Andi’s Newsdesk for this week? Or learning about fork offset? Or maybe you’d like to spread some love and (Click here to email Hannah Blythyn via the Cycling UK website) in charge of trail access in Wales for opening up a heap more fun for us all?

Spread some love people, we all need it.

Friday Tunes & #themtbchain

Here’s our regular playlist of the week to go along with our Fresh Goods. Each track is picked by a staff member here in the office and added to their individual playlist over on our Spotify page. Head over there to identify exactly who is responsible for each choice.

About this week’s choices: Another week another collection of eclectic sounds that we’ve being putting in our ears in the Singletrack office. This week encompasses some pent up rage tempered with some chilled vibes. It’s been a mixed bag of a week.

The Singletrack MTB Chain

If you’ve been using the hashtag #themtbchain to suggest you addition to our MTB themed playlist then now is the time to find out if you’ve won a Singletrack t-shirt. If we like your suggested tune and your reason for adding it then it will be included in the playlist.

This week’s addition is a chilled out vibe with an obvious link in the title – Enjoy

Check out our MTB Chain page here to keep up on the additions and to try out more of our Singletrack playlists.

All of the Singletrack staff have their own playlists that list all their choices for each FGF. So if you want to see who is responsible for which song you can find out by checking out their personal choices. Hey, maybe follow their playlist and boost their egos in the office. Not that any of us need reader validation of our musical tastes or anything.

Here’s our trail running tech guru Andy’s personal selection. One for the classic punk fans we think.

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