Your condition will always influence your ride quality. Sometimes just the lack of coffee and a cruddy day at work really sets you wrong. Luckily, a ride usually fixes that.
Grant's designs always whisper in your ear to take the longer way home, then less direct route, the more adventurous vector. Always. There are a number of reasons for that, with the two main being the ability to run high quality, larger volume tires and the position and geometry of the bike. As Steve points out, there's nothing inherently "non-modern" about either of those concepts. And, honestly, you could work in carbon fiber or aluminum or titanium or thermoplastic and retain some of those attributes. Steel's specific attributes have other benefits in addition to the ductility that allows flex. On long rides, vibration is a killer. Damping that vibration is done by the tires, wheels, frame and rider in that order. Thin tires, rigid wheels, stiff frame all mean the rider will take up more of the effort. If you combine that with a race-oriented "aero" position - bars well below the saddle so that you have a horizontal back, you force the arms and hips to act as bulwarks in the bridge that is your backbone. More upright (with significant physiological variability, of course) allows your body's natural "spring" system (spinal curve, knees, elbows) to work the way they evolved. All of that means you ask less of your body with each mile. My last open-wheeled racer wasn't particularly aggressive, but at ~60 miles, I was in need of a break, even during my highest mileage years. It was mostly that my body didn't want to come up out of the position it had been holding. I was fine when I was riding. The bike handled well, so it was never a need of trying to keep on top of it as I got more tired. I've done centuries and 200K brevets on both the Hilsen and the Quickbeam. Some where extremely taxing, but that definitely was an engine issue. It's pretty simple in my book - Start Comfortable, Stay Comfortable. - J cyclofiend.com / about.me/cyclofiend -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en-US. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
