I have to admit, posts here have been few and far between. Honestly, I haven’t had much to talk about. Up until now, training has been mostly the same of doing a few intervals, doing some long ride, blah blah, yada, yada, nothing too interesting to read about. I haven’t had the camera out either, so nothing too exciting.
Last night, however, things have changed. Last night was the first time this year, actually in about 6 months, that I as able to ride dirt. And it was on the new team bike. And it was at night. Talk about a killer ride.
Trails are drying out quite nicely. The biggest issue we are having here is blow downs that have not yet been cleaned up. I hike the dog every night to clean trails, but there is only so much I can do. Luckily, there are a bunch of dedicated people here in the area who do a great job of maintaining trails.
Now, onto the bike. Gotta say I enjoyed it quite thoroughly. Ok, the frame. It certainly was stiff, where it needed to be. But it also soaked up all the bumps quite nicely. Sure, it is a hard tail, but GT did some nice things the way they laid out the carbon and use their triple triangle. Plus, the geometry was certainly racing, so the bike was quick and snappy. Mikey Likey.
The components. I liked the entire bike set up but the Shimano Shadow rear dérailleur. Because of the design of it, no B-limiter screw, it does not have a lot of slack in it. This means a lot of chain slap on the chain stays. This could also be because it is a long cage dérailleur and I have never liked those. Either way, there is a lot of noise back there and I don’t like it. God bless being a single speeder. Once I get the tensioner that I ordered, and build up my wheels, I will be saying bye bye to those gears.
Those are my thoughts so far from the 1.5 hour ride I did. I am sure in the next week of riding, I will have a few more opinions on it. As of now, I am super stoked to have been picked for the GT Dirt Coalition.
Here is the latest Garmin 705 Edge data from the ride:
