So you’ve always had at least 6” of travel but now that you’ve decided that you want less, then suddenly 95% of riders are “just pretending”?

Maybe you shouldn’t be judging competent riders if you’re a rider who says (to quote yourself) “I tend to ride mostly seated both up and down”? I mean WTF?!! Sitting down when going downhill?!!

I’m just saying 6″ bikes have now grown way beyond anything I would ever need and would certainly slow me up compared to the latest crop of shorter travel bikes. But obviously I’m not in your kind of league. Happy to go for a ride though if you are ever around Woburn, so you can give me some riding tips.

Awesome stuff and a great sense of humour from both guys. Those sort of lines are well beyond what I would dare to ride at any speed. Still interesting to see the relative difference between a really strong, confident rider and a top level pro. Same applies to any sport really. Pros are pros for good reason.

My riding is mostly local single track xc with short down hills Llandegla, Eastridge and Hopton

I would look at something light and nimble with a bit less travel. Something like a Scott Spark, Canyon Neuron, Trek Fuel EX etc. I just picked up a carbon Neuron and its proving really quick on singletrack loops, both up and down. Previous bike was a 4 year old carbon Spesh Enduro, which feels like a bit of a barge in comparison.

It’s been a while since I’ve been there, but I used to love riding at Swinley back in the mid 2000s. However unfashionable it may seem, it was always one of my favourite riding spots. One of those places where you can make the riding as easy or challenging as you please.

People moan about the cost of pretty much any service these days. My wife runs an accountancy business and spends probably 50% of her working day arguing with clients about their fees. I ran my own business for a while too (B2B) and experienced much the same thing. People just don’t want to pay for experience and decent service these days. The prevailing culture seems to be getting as much as you can for as little cost as possible. I just can’t imagine what it must be like to be a bike shop owner these days!

I think it’s a very personal thing. I had more foot issues with clips than flats and I switched to flats permanently about 5 years ago.

There are so many combinations of shoes and pedals and even more variety of feet! FiveTen Freerider pros and CB stamp 7s work well for me today. The Pros are way more comfortable than any clipped shoes I had previously. For a while I ran the halfway house combination of clipped FiveTen Falcons with Mallet DH pedals. Then I took the cleats off and found they still worked pretty well as flats and hence later moved to a dedicated flat setup. I’m not going back from here.

You can choose to trail ride on anything bar a DH bike, from a rigid singlespeed to a 170mm full-sus enduro monster. In fact I’ve seen that wide a variety of bikes on our group rides on twisty woodland singletrack.

Nothing new there. It’s been like that for as long as I can remember. A very talented teenager in our group often rode his full on DH bike around the likes of Thetford and Swinley just so he could launch it off everything in sight. You might argue he was over-biked unless you saw the kind of improvised gap jumps he was doing.

I’ve always preferred longer travel trail bikes myself, having not ridden anything with less than 6″ travel for the last 15 years. But now I feel that modern 5″ bikes are more than enough for anything short of proper EWS terrain. Maybe the top 5% of riders might feel under gunned for pushing the limits, but the rest are just pretending unless their local trail is Fort William.

Just as 160 mm bikes are getting easier to pedal, shorter travel bikes are getting even easier and more capable of taking on the rough stuff. But the trails are not changing very much at all outside of race courses.

The assumption that a 150mm Spectral is no good for pedalling is quite ridiculous, particularly if you haven’t ridden it.

I never made any such assumption. Do you just like an argument? I’m sure the Soectral pedals very well for a 160/150 mm hardcore trail bike. But I can safely assume the latest Neuron will pedal even better on most trails and certainly the ones I ride regularly. Again it’s all relative and no bike is brilliant at everything.

Well I got my first ride in on my new 2019 Canyon Neuron CF. A quick loop of Woburn’s Longslade trail confirmed my thinking. It was way quicker than my old Enduro uphill (night and day) and felt just as capable on the downs, if a little less plush. Really a very nicely balanced, lightweight fun ride with it’s conservative modern geometry. Would I want it to be any longer or slacker? – nope. Would I want it to be any lower? – nope. Would I want a steeper seat angle? – nope. Would I want any more travel? – nope. It’s no EWS shredder for sure, but for any UK trails I would ride involving significant pedalling, this is my ideal sort of versatile bike. For once I think I’ve finally managed not to over-bike myself like I usually do!

So for me a trail bike is something that with 130-150mm travel, decent at pedalling, light enough to ride all day and capable enough of handling 90% of trails.

Agreed completely. I just tend to think that the shorter travel, more conservative geo end of that “trail bike” spectrum is what would actually work best for about 90% of the trail riding population. Especially since those bikes are already considerably longer, lower and slacker than they were only a couple of years ago. Are the trails we ride every day really getting that much harder? Or is there really no compromise at all in choosing an ever bigger bike?

A Canyon Spectral is a trail bike with 150/160mm travel, and so is a Canyon neuron with 130mm travel. They’re just different trail bikes.

Again I totally agree. I chose the 130 mm Neuron on the basis that it has geo very similar to my 4 year old 160 mm Enduro. It’s actually a fraction longer! The Neuron may be billed as a mellow, conservative XC/Trail bike today, but yesterday it would have been considered pretty hardcore. The Spectral would be too much bike for my needs and I’m not exactly aversed to the steep and rough. I’m just realistic in my aspirations and skill/balls ratio. I’m also conscious of how much pedalling I have to do on my local trails.

“Jeffsy has gone all Enduro“ when in reality most of the range and geo hasn’t changed

I could have sworn the 2019 models grew about 2 inches longer reach and wheelbase. Maybe I imagined it? Along with all the reviews discussing the pros and cons of the changes e.g.

First Ride Review: YT JEFFSY 2019 – Trail DNA or an Enduro Mutation?

Classic resistance to change.

No you’ve got me all wrong. I’m all for change when I can see the point in it. I was an early adopter of 29″ wheels, dropper posts, 1x chainrings and wide bars. I also welcomed slacker, lower, longer geometry to a point. I’m just not buying into the current fashion of “enduro” inspired trail bikes. Maybe I misjudged the Jeffsy, but I was focused on the top end builds, which are definitely leaning toward mini enduro bikes. People are also posting weights well north of 30 lbs for the pro carbon build, which put me off it as a trail bike.

Maybe you are? Maybe you’re in denial that MTBing is allowed to progress and the bikes likewise?

I’m all for progression, but the latest trends are making me think twice about getting caught up in all the marketing bs. Bikes are getting ever lower, longer and slacker and the trend seems to have accelerated in the last few years – as per my geometry discussion thread.

I’ve always found tubeless tyres tend to slowly lose pressure when sitting in the garage. But not a significant amount over a day or two.

Yes, but there’s no chance I can afford one of those.

Then it just comes down to making a compromise. As you well know, XC/road and steep rugged DH are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of ideal bike. Despite all the marketing bs, there is no bike that will excel across such a wide spectrum of terrain. If it was me I would be looking at short or mid travel full suss 29ers depending on how tough those DH runs really are and how much you want to attack them. If you have the skill set, then something like a Scott Spark could be ideal. This lad looks like he’s having fun on the descents:-

But for me, I would need something a bit more forgiving for that sort of riding. Something with perhaps 130-140 mm travel. Anything bigger and you will be losing significant time on the uphill slogs, although your old Patriot is probably dog slow compared to even a modern full-on 170 mm enduro bike. The new 2020 Orbea Occam looks like a great all-round compromise to me and you can custom order with Fox 34 or 36 forks and a couple of tyre options for speed vs grip. I’ve just bought a new Canyon Neuron CF with 130 mm travel at both ends, which although I’ve yet to ride in anger, it climbs way faster than my 160 mm Enduro, which I considered to be a reasonable plodding climber in its own right. I have a feeling the Neuron is going to be almost as capable on the downhills too as the overall geometry is almost identical, but will find out later today!

It also feels shorter when pedalling due to the steep seat angle.

I agree and that was why I would have to go for an XL as the L is indeed too short on the effective top tube due to the 78 deg seat angle – another current fashion statement. To be honest I just don’t ride enough seriously rough stuff to make the inevitable compromise. When you say it climbs “brilliantly” it’s still a 30+ lb bike with draggy tyres.

Oh well looks like I’m wrong then and the Jeffsy is some dainty, short little XC/trail bike, lol

It’s not big and burly compared to a more Enduro focused bike. It’s actually quite slight and nimble based on a short test ride.

It’s all relative mate. The Jeffsy looks like a great bike, but the numbers certainly put it at the burly end of the trail spectrum. Certainly more bike than I would ever need and most probably the OP too based on his comments. There are plenty of considerably lighter, more nimble trail bikes for those who might prioritise those parameters. No I haven’t ridden one, but I have considered it and looked closely at the dimensions compared to most other mid-travel trail bikes. It’s a pretty big bike, especially if you size up with the relatively short seat tubes. At 6’1″ I was looking at the XL with close on 500 mm reach and 1250 ish wheelbase. Basically miles bigger than my 160 mm Enduro from a few years ago, which itself is borderline as a true all round trail bike. All IMHO of course. Pedal whatever does it for you.

A Jeffsy CF Pro looks like a trail all rounder to me. Absolute bargain at £2,800 at the moment too. OP I would buy one before the offer ends. I don’t work for them nor own one btw.

Yep, IF you believe an all-rounder needs to be that big and burly. It has a huge wheelbase and reach. Even most of the kool-aid magazines are saying it’s more enduro than trail in this latest iteration. Great for uplift days, but not the sort of thing I would want to be pedalling too much.

The thing really is what is the application? lots of people praise slack Head Angles, low BBs and long front ends for the downhill handling benefits, but for a “trail” bike that’s not the only environment it’s going to be used in, for most people a balance needs to be struck…

Exactly my point. But reading reviews and marketing BS, you would think LLS is the only way to go for everything. I guess they play on our aspirations and self-image.

Oh, I thought resurrection meant they’d found the headbutter. But no, just the same stuff over again. Oh well.

What do you mean resurrection? The thread is only a day old and half the threads on this page are within the last hour. Maybe come back next week to see if they caught him.

I’m aware of this and I’m not trying to do ‘fast XC loops’ on it. I just want to cover ground so I can get out to the big hills in a sensible time frame. This is mostly road and fire road.

Really does sound like e-bike territory. Otherwise you are looking at the latest crop of trail/enduro bikes, accepting that you will still be carrying a lot of bike around for 90% of the ride.

cyclist deserves a good kicking…

He will probably get one sooner or later. Running an attitude like that, one day he will inevitably pick on the wrong guy. There was a guy I new back in school who looked like a typical nerdy, skinny teenager who bullies like to pick on. Except he was as hard as nails. The combination led to some interesting “vigilante” beatings when the bullies had a go.

Don’t need an “Enduro” bike, would rather have less travel and weight, but do like the slacker head angle thing going on these days.

Sizewise I’m 5’11” and normally ride a large.

I know the sales are on just now so bargains abound. Anyone seen any nice trail bikes?

Latest Jeffsy has gone all “enduro” so possibly not quite what you are looking for. After my search for a new all-round trail bike I just bought a Canyon Neuron CF in the sales. 130 mm travel at both ends, balanced geometry and great build spec at each price level. The 9.0 SL spec in particular looks awesome value at just over £3k.

I think the dropper post is the reason for a lot of this change – when I restarted MTBing back in 2009 hardly anyone I rode with dropped their saddle for descending but now it’s the norm. And steep trails are FAR less scary with your saddle down, so we ride them more.

Without a doubt! Back in the mid 2000s I was lucky enough to be riding with a forward thinking group who were early adopters of dropper posts (the original “gravity dropper” post). For me riding with a dropper was a game-changer, but it also made bikes with steep, short geometry a lot less scary on the steeps. So I’m not sure how droppers tie in with the more recent move toward ever more LLS bikes? If anything they allow you to run a steeper geometry for any given terrain.

but I’d also contend that if they’re not riding twisty singletrack at speed then slacker longer geometry has no downside and is safer and more enjoyable

Part of my objection is that I do ride a lot of twisty singletrack at speed and I thought my Enduro was already long and slack compared to a proper old-skool bike. I have a mate riding a slightly older SC Blur and although he can’t keep up on the faster, rougher, steeper trails he definitely has a significant advantage in the tight twisty sections. I’ve ridden his bike and it’s far more nimble than mine and although I wouldn’t want to swap, it does put things in perspective. His bike is way shorter and steeper than mine.

And when I look at what I’m seeing amongst these enthusiast trail riders, there’s far more taking their trail bikes on uplift days, and those trails are gnarlier than at most trail centres

Once you start talking about uplift days then I’m sure current endless LLS makes a lot of sense. But how many people in the UK are really doing a significant number of uplift days? If I was I would have 2 bikes anyway (talking full sussers rather than HTs etc) and wouldn’t want to be hauling even a modern super LLS 150 mm “trail” bike around local trails and probably even most UK trail centres. Yet only a couple of years ago those sort of bikes (150 mm “trail” bikes with slightly tamer geometry) were ideal as a quiver killer for the average rider. But now with 2019 geometry they just seem like shorter travel enduro race bikes to me. But we’ve convinced ourselves that they are miles better for everything else too.

While a 2015 Enduro is a great bike, a 2020 Enduro is far, far better (yes I’ve ridden both)

Maybe for you, but then you are actually racing EWS. So you are clearly not the average trail rider. I have no doubt a 2020 Enduro race rig is quicker than a 2015 equivalent, but does it make it a better all-round trail bike for the average trail rider? And by “average rider” I mean someone who considers mtb as a serious hobby and rides regularly, but isn’t racing or pushing the boundaries i.e. most people if they are being honest.

I often wonder if I’m already deluding myself riding around everywhere on a 160 mm 2015 Enduro! It’s still a very big bike for 99% of the riding I do. Anyway I have enjoyed the debate and of course there is no right or wrong answer. My next bike will be my first foray for a very long time into shorter travel full sussers, this time with similar geometry to my Enduro i.e. reasonably LLS. I’m expecting good things, but will soon find out!

Trail bike is a wide category, it seems.

Extremely wide! If you are going off aesthetics then just pick the one you like the look of best with 130-160 mm travel.

I reckon you’ve got your logic in reverse. Jared Graves could ride a shopping trolley faster than me. Does that mean we should all be on supermarket specials?

No. The rest of us plebs need more assistance and bigger safety margins from our equipment than the elites of our sport because our skills are no where near.

But he wasn’t riding a shopping trolley. I totally get the safety margin thing, which is why I’ve been riding and Enduro myself for the last 5 years, rather than say a Stumpy or Camber of the same vintage. Not surprisingly, I’m not riding anywhere near as hard as JG. But I was happy to give away a little weight and climbing speed in return. But how much safety margin do you really need? For example I laugh when I see reviews talking about 760 mm bars as being too narrow. Too narrow for what exactly? Seriously I think they have finally gone too far for mainstream trail bikes, but we are drinking the kool-aid as always.

Maybe the uber long low slack bike doesn’t suit your style but it suits the young’uns

Well it certainly suits the ones who are actually riding EWS courses at high speed. But that’s only a fraction of the overall mtb market and yet pretty much every new mid-travel cooking trail bike has EWS geometry these days, whether you need it or not. It’s not really a problem because there is so much choice these days, but I’m just curious how long this LLS “fashion” will last and where the market will go in the future.

I can’t help but feel that the marketing influence of EWS has led to some seriously over-blown trail bikes on the current market. That in turn appears to have led to a resurgence of more trail oriented shorter travel bikes to fill the gap. But even some of those bikes are now getting the extreme LLS treatment. It’s starting to look a bit silly IMHO, but I can understand the manufacturers following like sheep so that reviewers don’t call them “dated” or “conservative”.

I rode a 100m hardtail with a 71 degree head angle until a few years ago on the same tracks that I ride now.

Going from this ^ to a Mega I’m not surprised at the revelation on black runs! But I wonder how you would get on with my 2015 Enduro? It’s not a bike that I’ve experienced any of the understandable misery you describe on your hardtail. In fact it always feels rock solid on tough descents, even if the geometry is from yesterday. But the flip side of that geometry is that it’s still relatively nimble on tight techy singletrack too.

My point is that you seem to think that LLS equals sluggish, raked out machines that can only plough in a straight line and that’s simply not the case.

I don’t actually think quite like that. If you re-read my first post you will see that I quite like LLS bikes up to a point. But there must be a limit right? At some point you are going to be sitting on a bike that is too long, too slack and too low for its own good. Now if I was struggling on the downhills with my 2015 Enduro then I would be fully up for something even more LLS. But f*** me you would have to be charging hard to find the limits of this bike, nevermind something a couple of inches longer again. This was the bike Jared Graves was racing all of 3 years ago, complete with old-skool 750 mm bars, lol!

Is that really not enough bike for some of you guys then? Are you really pushing these even longer “modern” bikes to their limits? Are they really quite as nimble and versatile across a wide range of trails? I suspect not, but that doesn’t mean they are not still really nice bikes to ride. I’m just fed up of hearing reviewers talking as if every new trail bike needs to have EWS geometry to be relevant for tooling around uk trail centres.

That fact that you think you need tighter angles for whatever ‘standard UK trails’ are, (as defined by the international Moshimonster trail categorisation association™), perhaps belies more about your own dogma than the ‘industry’.

You could be right! Maybe I really do need a 1250 mm wheelbase and 800 mm wide bars to ride around Cannock or Woburn trails. I’m not seeing all these super aggressive enduro tracks appearing everywhere. What I am seeing is a stack of enduro inspired monster trail bikes that some people think will make them better riders.

A 2019 EWS course is a world apart from a 2013 one.

I’ll take your word for that. That would also explain why enduro bikes are turning into monster trucks. But are we mere mortals actually riding more aggressive trails than we were 5 years ago (assuming we were already grown ups back then)?

The 2015 canyon spectral was a 130/140mm bike
The 2019 spectral is a 150/160mm bike
Both trail bikes.

I bet the 2019 bike is also longer, lower, slacker. For a similar trail bike feel to the 2015 Spectral you probably now should be looking at modern 130 mm bikes. Bikes seem to be shape-shifting into the next category up, leaving a hole for these newer short travel 29ers below

Edit: Indeed a quick look at the geometry shows that the 2015 Spectral is very close in geometry to a 2019 Neuron, while the latest Spectral is longer (although Canyon seem to have resisted going to extremes).

One advantage i find of being “over biked” is comfort

I agree, but that’s more a function of travel and damping rather than frame geometry. I like the idea of having 160 mm of efficient travel, but I’m not convinced I want the super long slackness that now inevitably goes with it.

I disagree, I think it’s fairly easy to categorise everyday “trail” riding from “XC”, “enduro” or “DH”. I’m not saying the actual terrain is the same everywhere, but the difficulty level and type of bike ideal for “trail” riding doesn’t vary that much in my experience. I would take my “trail” bike on any piece of uk singletrack that wasn’t categorised as an enduro level course or full-on DH track.

As for your 150 mm hardtail, that’s kind of outside the scope of my ramblings. I was thinking more about the recent evolution of 150 mm full suss trail bikes, which today tend to be far more aggressive than they were only a few years ago. Hence my feeling that they are now too much bike for the exact same trails we were all riding on back then. It may also be why we are now starting to see riders like myself migrating to shorter travel bikes. They just seem more suited to any uk trail I can think of. I realise there are some seriously tough trails too, but I would categorise those as “enduro” or “DH” as appropriate.

What put it in perspective for me was watching a few vids of people charging down rock-infested US trails on bikes like the SB130 and Ibis Ripley. I suspect these are more than enough bike for uk trails, with very few exceptions.

4+ hours? Whit? 1 hour tops to wet and apply, then left to set.

Do you do this for a living or did you just slap it on randomly? I ask because it took me a good day to apply a complete kit carefully without any air bubbles or wonky sections. It took about an hour just to prep the frame thoroughly before starting! Even with a new frame it has to be squeaky clean with no grease marks, specs of dust or fingerprints.

Some might find the process therapeutic, but I found it pretty tedious to be honest. I think it’s worth the effort though as it gives a lot more protection than you might think. I’d be tempted to pay £80 to have it fitted, but it would have to be someone I trusted (and I certainly wouldn’t let my LBS anywhere near!)

Thus the definition of being over biked is entirely subjective and not useful.

That’s why I attempted to define what uk “trail” riding actually is. If your local trails were so gnarly that you couldn’t physically ride them on anything less than a 150 mm enduro inspired AM bike, then they would be very unlikely to be classified as regular uk “trails”. Obviously there is still a pretty wide range of trails to consider, but I get out a fair bit and have ridden in most of the well known uk spots over the last couple of decades. I’m not into full-on DH racing or even modern enduro, but I’ve certainly been at the rougher, more technical end of trail riding rather than pure XC. So I’ve always had a preference for 5-6″ travel trail bikes over XC whippets. That’s why I’m a bit alarmed at how trail bikes in this category have morphed almost overnight into enduro capable machines. But at what expense for the average trail rider like me? Why do I find myself compelled to choose a shorter travel bike all of a sudden? Why can’t I have a 150 mm bike with a tighter geometry? I looked and they don’t really exist anymore. I’m not talking about something really old school, but definitely not with angles that Sam Hill would prefer on a flat out EWS course! Last time I looked, most uk trails are nowhere near that level of gnar.

I will say though that my local trails are particularly tight and twisty and pedal strikes are a real threat with all the eroded roots. So they do put the modern long, low, slack geo to a fairly harsh test. I already thought my 2015 Enduro was more than plenty long and slack enough, but apparently not.

Our eldest daughter struggles with confidence. Always afraid of crashing, even though she rarely does. Our youngest is more of a little ripper and hasn’t been put off at all by the odd tumble!

But when I compare them to other girls of the same age at school, they are far better riders than most. I put that down to starting then off on balance bikes and then decent quality lightweight pedal bikes at an early age. If I went back with hindsight I would do exactly the same again. Of course the keenest kids will make good progress on any bike, but you can certainly make it harder work for them! I suspect our eldest would have given up riding by now on poor quality heavy “toysRus” bikes. Our youngest might well have persevered regardless. They are all different.

No it’s a Belter 16”
It’s proud rider is just turned 4 in the pic above 👍

Brilliant! I can imagine the disc brakes were a huge benefit in that terrain.

This thread is interesting how quite a few posters are recommending enduro rigs for this type of ride, while others are suggesting more balanced options. I’m starting to think most people are well over-biked for much of their trail riding and probably don’t even realise it!

Gnarliest bike you can ride XC on?