Originally Posted by
Heathpack
And the second piece of equipment news is that my birthday is next week and I’m getting a dropper post for the mtb, it arrives Tuesday. I had one on the old mtb but it was a KLev that always seemed to need fixing. When I got the Spark, the light weight of the bike was such a revelation that I resisted adding a dropper to it. I’m also considering doing Rebecca’s Private Idaho (a hundred mile gravel ride next year) on the Spark. Since I won’t have the aero benefit of riding in the drops, I was wanting to keep the bike light. I was pulled in two directions, then saw my fitter last week who assured me that pro mtb-ers are huge weight weenies and pretty much all have droppers nowadays.
So tl/dr I’m getting a Rockshox Reverb AXS, which is an electronic wireless dropper. No cabling means I can take it off to put the Spark in a pure cross country or gravel config or leave it on for actual mountain biking. Swapping out seat posts will be a 3 min thing vs pulling the bike apart.
There was some hope it would arrive the shop today, but it didn’t which means I won’t have it until Tuesday. The unfortunate thing about that is I’ve committed to a 100 mile road ride next weekend (heaven help me, I’m in no shape to be doing that right now, thankfully my friend is fairly slow) so I won’t get a real mtb ride in on it before I head up to Mammoth for my Trek Dirt Series clinic Aug 2.
And along those lines, @
TMonk and @
Ttoc6 or anyone else who mountain bikes, I’ve reserved an enduro bike to demo but now I’m wondering do I just ride my own bike with the dropper and get some time in on that in the presence of the instructors? The enduro bike is I think maybe 10-12 pounds heavier than the Spark, and we’ll be riding at altitude which will make the whole thing more fatiguing. But I’ve never tried an enduro bike and this would be a great venue to demo one. I’m torn. The format is two days of instruction- morning skills and afternoon ride with instructors. There’s a lot of stopping and starting and talking though, it wasn’t physically grueling by any means when I went last year. I’m not sure I’ll even get the demo, I signed up for it pretty early but there’s only one 29er version in my size, so maybe it will be a moot point anyway. What say you? Demo the enduro or ride the Spark? The Spark is a very confidence-inspiring bike for me, so there’s that too.
Gravel question: Mountain bikes make great gravel bikes. Especially the spark with the rear lockout at your hands. Throw some wide, fast gravel tires on there and have a ball. I rode my Scalpel for Crusher last year and the only thing I didn't like was lack of hand positions (I used TOGS, but still only having two places to put my hands suckkked after 5 hours) and lack of gearing. 30x10 was not enough for the road sections. A bigger chain ring would be huge. IDK if there are any major descents on the RPI route, but having a dropper would be nice. I did not have one on my mtb until September of this year, but they're awesome even for gravel riding. Lets you get into a "suepr tuck" esque position withough having sit on the toptube. Comfy and fast!
Bike choice: Here's my opinion. If you're going for the fun event style week, ride the enduro. If you're going for the training and learning, ride the spark. There's something to be said for being ultra familiar with your personal bike, and the spark is more than capable unless you're doing big jumps or drops.