Skill, Not suspension

In my big mental tick list of tough trail features I’ve got a 3 point sliding scale of achievment:

1.Ridden it clean of the FS
2.Ridden it clean on the HT
3.Ridden it clean on the fully rigid fixie.

There’s a pretty narrow gap between 1 and 2 and a much bigger but narrowing gap between 2 and 3. The gaps get much bigger when you take speed (downhill) into the equation.

I find this process to be a lot of fun and it has definately improved my riding on all 3 machines.

You can do what you want on whatever you want. It’s like some will point out the big suspension is no good unless you’re doing big air… but hang on, what are BMXs?… rigid bikes!

But who cares. Just ride the **** thing and don’t get all snooty about what others ride. Far better someone rides a big rig as a weekend warrior who drives an Audi than just sit on the sofa, go down the pub or be dragged round the shop with the Mrs 😉

could all you rigid/hardtail evangelists stop stroking your ego’s, if some rider goes flying past you on a full susser its because he’s a better rider than you, the same person would still go flying past you whether they were riding 10,8,6,4,hardtail,rigid or a Raleigh chopper.

Who cares?

As long as it makes you happy. Stop overthinking things.

could all you rigid/hardtail evangelists stop stroking your ego’s, if some rider goes flying past you on a full susser its because he’s a better rider than you, the same person would still go flying past you whether they were riding 10,8,6,4,hardtail,rigid or a Raleigh chopper.

I don’t buy all of that but I do think that the gap between a HT and a FS is smaller the better a rider is.

could all you rigid/hardtail evangelists stop stroking your ego’s, if some rider goes flying past you on a full susser its because he’s a better rider than you, the same person would still go flying past you whether they were riding 10,8,6,4,hardtail,rigid or a Raleigh chopper.

Nice excuse, too bad we’ll never find out since they’d never dare to try it. 😆

So what if someone all the gear?

Forget the hooky science ..apart from good natured ribbing there will be others who resent someone who has a carbon lapierre spicy say.

So what. Get over it saddo.

b45her – Member

could all you rigid/hardtail evangelists stop stroking your ego’s, if some rider goes flying past you on a full susser its because he’s a better rider than you, the same person would still go flying past you whether they were riding 10,8,6,4,hardtail,rigid or a Raleigh chopper.

This thread needs more Jesse Wigman

This man does not have many people fly past him when he’s riding his rigid.

i have tried it, back in 2006 when i bought my first proper full susser i did 2 runs on the full skyline decent on the new commencal meta5 and the wobbly old dawes watoga i’d been riding, the times were very similar the only difference was on the meta i didn’t feel as if i’d just beaten with lead pipes.

thanks Northwind you’ve just kind of proved my point.

If I rode an old Cham I would have more fun.

However Id need a Chiropractor 😀

Ride whatever you want as long as you have fun but I do agree with the article. I ride a do it all hardtail with a gravity bias, often I keep up with full on DH rigs, think they’d sometimes go quicker of a hardtail or short travel.

Ridding a DH rig on some of the DH terrain I ride is like rocking up to a family pitch & putt with a full set of pings….but whatever makes you happy!

Forget skills compensation. I found the most interesting bit was:

That 64° head angle you think you need puts the front wheel too far out in front, with the result being a loss in traction because it isn’t weighted enough to function how its designer intended. The front end of the bike goes from sticking like glue at high speeds to pushing and understeering through corners at the now inadequate pace, forcing the rider to adopt an overly aggressive method on the bike in order to help it around corners.

I can relate to that – so rather than compensating for my lack of skills it was merely magnifying them!!

Riding a big travel bike, I felt the “wheelbarrow” sensation and understeer very clearly in corners. Very unnerving as opposed to helping. Now I know why!!!!

Feels and being faster are different through, sometimes the rigid bike may be faster (sprinting maybe) but IMO the correct ammount of suspension will make a bike faster.

Very true, and unless you race, most people ride for the feeling of going fast.

b45her – Member
could all you rigid/hardtail evangelists stop stroking your ego’s, if some rider goes flying past you on a full susser its because he’s a better rider than you, the same person would still go flying past you whether they were riding 10,8,6,4,hardtail,rigid or a Raleigh chopper.

Depends on the situation doesn’t it? It might because they are a faster rider or might be because of the bike. It stupid to say its always one way or the other, such as you just have.

Take a hypothetical situation, whereby you have one trail, one rider, x number of bikes (of varying amounts of suspension, from none to full DH rig) and identical conditions every time. One of the full suspension bikes will usually clock the fastest times, but not necessarily the one with the most travel, depends on the trail and how gnarly and DH it is. That said, if there is lots of climbing involved, I’d put my money on a hardtail getting round quickest. The article is probably right, in that with the majority of UK riding, if you only had the one bike, a short travel FS would be the best compromise and offer the best all-round combination. I ride a Flux and it is more than sufficient for 90% of the riding that I do. Then again I’ve been very happy to have the extra travel, and slightly slacker head-angle of my 5.Spot on some of the steeper, rockier descents in the Peaks. Kind of agree that a good rider will be fast whatever the bike, but there’s no doubt that big old FS bikes can plough through roughstuff faster, and forgive more mistakes, than shorter travel or hardtail, so people can (and do, myself included) go faster on them.
Kind of lost my point somewhere in all of that 😀
At the end of the day though, its about having fun, so ride whatever takes your fancy and enjoy