second hand blur? It doesn’t exist any more. the Solo is the not racy shorter travel trail bike now (650b), the Tr is the fun slack one (26″) and the superlight is 29″. They are also very different beasts 🙂

Surely your pedalling style is more important that the frame you ride? If you mash in a big gear your knees will ache; learn to spin like Wiggo and you’ll even out the stresses.

(57 year-old knees and no pain)

What globalti said.

If it’s just your knees causing problems then isn’t that down to bike position?

– saddle height?
– saddle fore/aft position?
– cleat position if using them?
– crank length (try 170mm rather than 175mm) ?

i’m not 40, but will be rather too soon for my liking… my knees are fine – great even.

So, all you old giffers with dodgy knees: did your aches and pains develop slowly through your 30’s, or, did you wake up on the morning of your 40th birthday to discover that the arthritis fairy had filled your knees with rusty screws and gravel?

Not my knees, they’ve always been a bit dodgy, but pretty much the rest of my body seemed to cry out in protest since hitting 40 in July..
🙁

As others I think your barking up the wrong tree, 40 isn’t old! Biking is low impact on knees, so if your knees are hurting solely after biking then some thing is wrong in the setup.

After many years of skiing at competitive level my knees are not great, i stopped biking for about 3 yes, just because I couldn’t be bothered. Knees started hurting. Started biking and knees no hurting any more 🙂

Have you tried a decent bike fit session? There are bike shops like Paul Hewitt who specialise in building to order and there are cycling physios like Nick Dinsdale who are excellent on the orthopedic aspects of pedals and cranks and any decent bike shop should have one of those protractor thingies for measuring your leg angle at the bottom of the stroke.

Try flat pedals.

+1 Epicyclo

Im in 40’s

Get some flats, drop your saddle, focus on body position and core strength. Once you have that sorted then apply that riding style to whatever setup you want. This approach sorted out my lower back (which I was targeting) and also made knees feel better.

Feel better out on the trails too 🙂

cycling stengthens the muscles either side of the knee joints actually helping the knees as others have said.

reading between the lines I think you’re maybe just finding it harder on the body, not specifically the knees, and feeling more ‘beaten up’ after a ride?

first thing is to make sure your body position on the bike is right. once it is and if it still feels like youre getting beaten up you could find doing some supplementary exercise like pilates might help. Light gym weights might help.

but none of this matters if youre just looking for a reason to justify a new to you bike. 😉

Had my first knee op at 19, rapidly approaching 42 and my knee is held together by scar tissue. Arthritis is manageable and knee pads are essential to keep them warm from autumn to spring. Oh, and ride a Bfe with flats and have no problems apart from sometimes a dull ache on long decents or pain when too much weight is through the pedals on a climb. So all in all fine and things are even better after moving to 2×9 from 1×9.

I don’t think the HT is major problem, personally I get more pain in knees on a my dw-link bike if I ride long climbs on granny gear – especially in rough terrain.
Easy solution is to go for single ring front but I’m not really fit enough for that and that too feels bit hard on the knees.

40 middle aged? Not these days.

I think your problem’s down to bad genes, high impact sports or poor technique or poor set up. Or possibly all of these 😉

OP, I have a 2nd hand 1st Gen Blur Frame and shock sat in my shed if you’re interested? Size Medium.

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DSC_2956[/url] by brf[/url], on Flickr

49 here and almost exclusively singlespeed for the last 4 years. Knees are fine but playing footie with my son sometimes makes my hips hurt.