The Deacon speculated: > "I would imagine no suspension will speed the climb." >
That's a possibility, but the trail is extremely rocky, so I think the suspension fork allows me to plow through things that a rigid fork might get bounced off-line. That's why it's worth experimenting. To dstein's point above, this is an extremely un-fun trail to ride. If 'mountain biking' was exclusively that kind of trail, I also would probably never do it. I think of it purely as a benchmark and a fitness test. Ironically, when I was doing that ride, the thing that occurred to me was Grant's writing about exercise in Eat Bacon, Don't Jog. He say's exercise should be intense and unpleasant. You should be elated that it's over with. I definitely feel that way about this hill climb. It sucks! Regarding rigid-vs-suspended, I also ponied up for a Niner rigid fork, that I haven't set up yet. When set up full rigid, my Niner is expected to weigh just a hair over 21 pounds. So if I can do the climb in 12 minutes on a 24lb suspended mountain bike, how fast will I be on a 21.5lb rigid mountain bike, and how fast on a 27pound Atlantis with 2" knobbies? I have no idea how it will shake out. My guess is that my time will have more to do with how I'm performing on a given day, and will actually have very little to do with the equipment. All my kids think that the only thing slowing them down is the weight of their bike. I think they are mistaken Bill -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
