Dalbeattie and New bike

Hello Dudes, the weekend ride didn’t go as well as expected. I had quite a few setup issues on the new bike (bike spec), also the forestry commission kindly cut the Dalbeattie course by 6miles, this was due to tree felling!!

I’ve been riding Shimano rapid rise for two years and that caused a bloody nightmare, couldn’t get my brain to switch, so I was changing up and instead of down, this really got on my nerves, also extremely frustrating.

The fox fork felt horrible; too bouncy, especially on drop off’s. The front would dive\dip horrendously, felt like I was going over the bars. I posted on bikemagic.com and got a couple of things to try (See thread).

I did notice that climbing over the rough stuff is easier (which I wasn’t expecting), also I could take rocky descents faster (Get in). Because this was the first time, I’d ridden a full sus bike, everything felt so unnatural, and I hated it for the first 5 miles!!!

Also because I've never ridden a full sus bike before, I've got no idea whether the rear suspension is working well or not. I did notice pedal bob whilst climbing and managed to get rid of that, by increasing the propedal. So more time in the saddle needed.

I had a strange feeling that the back wheel was dragging (dont think it's the brakes, because they're running fine), only felt this twice over 12 miles and it only lasted about two seconds?

Dalbeattie was good, a bit too much fire track, but the flowing single track and black sections were very good indeed. I’ve included photos of the slab at Dalbeattie; I’m the one in the blue top, blue helmet, half way down the slab. The chap in the red is my mate drew. Dalbeattie photos

By the way, my pictures don’t do it justice and it doesn’t look that steep, checkout this photo from a bikemagic post, it looks a lot steeper from the top.

Toons