TMonk

Rolled down to Fiesta Island this morning for a 2x15' before heading to work. Really don't know what to aim for on these right now as I'm just getting back into the groove and I've been hiking a bit in preparation for my backpack trip this weekend.

Long story short I bailed on the second one. Probably residual soreness from a big hike on Sat and a 3 hr MTB ride on Su chasing fitter teammates up and down techy climbs.

If I can muster the motivation I'm gonna get up early tomorrow to squeeze 3 hrs in before work. I expect to feel better than I did today.

caloso

Got my act together for a 2x20' set this morning.

tommyrod74

What discipline/category is this referring to?

therhodeo

2.5h of Z2 on sat. and sun, yesterday off, this morning hour tempo with some 30s/30s high cadence drills throughout.

miyata man

It applies to all categories in some regards. His interest is XC using a fs bike so all points eventually lead there. If you felt I was referring to mechanically limiting suspension travel by inserting a piece of plastic, as in 125mm to 100mm, I was not.

globecanvas

3x15 at some number. That number might be 88% of in-season FTP, or it might be 100% of current FTP, depends on your belief system I suppose.

TMonk

Nicely put

Ttoc6

FTP test this afternoon after work. Ouch. Doing 20 minute tests is probably my least favorite thing in all of cycling. My power faded hard after the first 5 minutes an I was struggling from there out. Threshold is down ~8% since end of August when I did my last test. I guess that isn't terrible considering I haven't trained and have barely ridden.

After the long weekend of mountain biking (which I'm sure I've understated the TSS from) and the last two days, my atl is just about = to my ctl again. Season is starting out at 72 CTL. I'm going to have to bump my ftp for intervals (just sweetspot for now) as I get my legs back under me and remember how to hurt myself again.

Fun fact, even at my lowest point in CTL drift off during this past month or so off, my ctl still didn't go lower than where I started on jan 1 last year. Gotta love 42 day averages.

mattm

did about two hours of recovery/high cadence after work. 100 rpm avg cadence for the duration.

also, got suckered in to a cat 6 race - smoked ‘em!

tetonrider

What's the weight of your bike now?

There is a correlation between travel and weight; longer travel forks are necessarily bigger/heavier, but all stock parts generally are heavier as the intended use changes.

I just had a conversation earlier today with an older friend of mine who doesn't care about racing -- he was trying to understand how his bike is so much heavier than mine, but also why his is much heavier than what was claimed in magazines: he's got 2.3s on his bike but they are a beefier casing, and they weigh almost 1# more *each* than the tires I run, whether I'm racing or JRA in local terrain.

Also, a paint job alone can be 200g (seriously).

The Spark (2/3 years ago) and the Scalpel (a year ago) changed up the geo a bit in favor of a more slack front end. Not sure how old your Lapierre is, or how frequently the suspension has been serviced (and how well you have it set up), but the new race bikes are pretty capable up and down and at notably lighter weight.

FWIW, my Enduro (160 front/165 rear travel) comes in at 27#, with a dropper. That's a full 5# heavier than my XC race bike (and 11# heavier than my HT SS!!!), but when the terrain warrants it, damn is it a fun bike. It still pedals reasonably well.

Ttoc6

Not 100% sure on the weight, but it is definitely >30 lbs. With 150/150 suspension and a Frame that is very am oriented and chunky. Sure, I could replace the wheels and such but I'd rather move towards something with a more aggressive (racy) geo anyways.

The Scott spark I rode in moab felt great under me. I've never ridden a mtb that felt as fast as this one. It was the world cup geo that Nino shurter won everything on this year.

I was disappointed by both of the sworks bikes I rode out there. The Enduro, I didn't like how it pedalled and took drops. The stump jumper was a bit of an amalgamation of too many bikes. Wish I had tried the epic but didn't have the time.

miyata man

Just make sure it's reliable before you buy anything. What I'm getting at is there are very finicky dream bikes and rock solid 2nd tier ones.

In recent history the, pre Switch Infinity, Yeti pivot bearing fiasco comes to mind. Amazing bikes if your mechanic had a spare 3 hours after every ride.

tommyrod74

It's more that I don't really see what you are trying to say at all. Do you mean running higher air pressure to limit travel, using spacers to limit air volume and increase progressiveness, increasing compression damping, or some combination?

I also have to say that, for XC, proper suspension tune is important but absolutely not the deciding factor. There are a few different ways (especially with such limited travel) to set up a bike based on riding style, all of which work well. It matters far more with longer travel bikes but the deciding factor in XC (assuming minimal handling threshold is met, and for most XC it's a fairly low bar, of course depending on where one lives and races) is aerobic ability.

globecanvas

My buddy was just telling me today about some new gizmo you plug into your suspension and run an app while you ride and it analyzes something and tells you what you need to tune or change.

miyata man

@tommyrod74 et al, I think this would best be taken to a more relevant section of the forum. Since GC is chiming in I'll take it the off season truly is here and we can be allowed some diversity in here.

The truism of mtb suspension nowadays is they have gotten so complicated you can never be sure if they are working for you (your weight,terrain, etc.) or even working anywhere near as good as they could if you understood how to set them up. This is not the same as manufacturers providing a removable/insertable spacer that allows travel to be set to match the geometry designs of multiple bikes (thus cutting down on unique SKU's). Say you want an XL bike for you and the same make/model in XS for your SO. Both can come with the same fork/shock.

The complicated part is having an insurmountable option list that allows locking in very specific settings. Say your bike climbs better with the front ride height locked out a bit higher than sag is on flat ground. The best performance also needs the rear open with very specific settings to deal with the sudden shock of standing without bouncing your ass off the seat. Effectively this means everything gets set up stiff and you use your body as the fine tuned suspension. After spending hours poring over manuals to get the bike set up to hard tail like performance with some suspension.

The above has a lot of glossed over and generalized information to keep it brief. The second truism is modern bikes are so fully capable the learning curve is very steep. As is the decline when the rider learns their true skill level. Accurately tuned suspension goes some ways towards avoiding surprising responses under skilled riders attuned to their bike.

caloso

Air quality was pretty heinous this morning. I planned to do a 2x20' set on the bike trail and I checked the local AQI website before I left. Said moderate to high. Hmm. Got 10 minutes from my house and said screw it. Rode to the office and went to the gym: 20 minutes on the stationary then freeweight set.

[on edit]

Did you know that MTV actually shows videos early in the morning? Just like old times.

hubcyclist

finally decided to work on something besides sweet spot, esp since I've been doing cx. Did 9x2min @ 120% twas not pleasant, but i got through it (thanks erg mode)

TMonk

I got up early enough. 55 mi w some climbing in about 3 hrs. Now I'm going to devour this burrito and try not to pass out at my desk. Fortunately work is busy enough today that I should stay stimulated... tons of fresh grads/new RA's are gonna start swinging by my desk in 3...2...

TheKillerPenguin

4x15 at like 100% on the schedule, did 3x15 at 100% with 9ish minute rests to be conservative. Blood work on Tuesday!

Ttoc6

90minutes with 3x(broken) 20 at sweet spot on the kickr. 10 minutes on, 1 minute easy rest in the middle of each block. Little bit of variation in the Sweet spot power to do drills that I mostly ignored since I'm rewatching Breaking Bad.

Already starting to think I under performed in my ftp test. The sweetspot effort didn't feel any bit difficult until maybe the last 4 minutes of the last 20 minute set. Tomorrow is another 3x(broken)20 SS day but over 120 minutes. I'll try bumping my ftp by 5 watts and seeing how it goes.

tetonrider

yeah, not saying you *should* swap out parts on your frame, just pointing out that these days a bike that is even more capable than yours can come in 3-5# lighter.


the spark is a good bike. i think the Twinloc is a VERY nice feature, esp for racing. i prefer manual lockout to the Brain.

Nino has been winning everything for a while and could on a 2x4, so it is sometimes hard to look at a guy like that and think riding his bike will translate.

still, the Spark is light, climbs like a HT due to the lockout, and has slightly more slack geo (for an XC race bike) that is noticeably different on the descent.

the HTA was a real advantage over the scalpel (until they switched 1-2 seasons ago) and the epic (new one just released). i rode the new epic the other day and am waiting for my 18 frame to replace my MY17.

there are some reasons people don't like the scotts, but for a strong rider they are great. i personally think that the spark-scalpel-epic choice comes down to suspension.

twinloc or brain?
lefty or light XC fork?


this raises an interesting question. i've never been to outerbike.

there are at least 2 huge factors that dramatically affect the performance of these bikes: tires and suspension.

how did you control for differences in tires? tire pressure, tread, and whether they were set up with tubes or tubeless is a big deal.

as for suspension--most people don't swap out shocks or forks, so it is cool to go with stock parts, but in my personal experience it can take a full day (or days) to dial in the suspension settings. with a bike like the enduro, you have adjustments for air pressure, as well as rebound, HSC and LSC. small changes can have a big impact on how the bike pedals.

did they take a guess for you based on your weight?

what settings did you use?

some shocks (like the X2) have even more settings.

took me like a week's worth of rides to get my enduro dialed. i jump on lots of peoples' bikes during rides, but what i most often notice is that i can't make a good judgment because the suspension settings are all 'off.'

Ttoc6

Oh definitely. I could say the same thing about a tarmac. If it's won the WC 3 times, how come i haven't. Just brought it up to mention that I rode the new geometry they are working with. The downward facing rear suspension etc.

I really liked the left as well. Never got to ride anything with the brain unfortunately, but based on the Ei I have on my current bike, not sold on the adaptive suspenion thing.

Impossible to control these things at en event like this. Most demos were st up on some sort of durable tire appropriate for the desert. Saw a lot of maxxis high roller II. (what I have on my current MTB). They did do a pretty good job setting up the suspension for most people. Ask your weight, have you get on and judge from there. I would jump on my brothers bike (weighs about 25 - 30 lbs less than me) and would immediatly notice the difference. The spec enduro (which my brother took out), when I jumped on felt stiff everywhere. Whether this is the suspension settings or not, I'm not sure considering what my brother was riding usually felt too "loose" for me. I'm no pro at suspension settings. Something to practice.

If you get a chance to go to any of the outer bike events, I'd highly recommend it. Very well run event with the manufacturers pretty much all stoked to be there. Get to try out a lot of bikes and experience some pretty legit areas to mountain bike in. Next year they will have 3 venues in 3 different states. This year they repeated the Moab destination.

Also if anyone sees a product recommendation for a polygon 29er from 5'7 white guy floating around the internet, that's probably me. I didn't really understand what they were looking for and I guess I gave an advertisement pitch for them in front of a camera. Their bikes weren't that great lol.

TexMac

Yesterday after work 2.5 hrs with two sets descending vo2 max intervals 3,2,1. 64ctl, -17TSB

furiousferret

Planned to commute to work today, but with a slightly sore throat I opted to drive in. Kicking myself over it but its the right move. More than likely I just didn't eat enough yesterday and need to recover.

dz_nuzz

Been doing threshold stuff recently and I noticed that I basically did none of that this year. Of course what happens but my threshold starts to creep upwards post-season. Now I just did a good set of 2X20s this morning and I am about to take two weeks off to travel in India.

More than anything else it will be interesting to see what two weeks of no riding does to me, I haven't taken that much time off the bike for nearly 5 years.

Lets see how this goes.