Fattie

Well most of you have seen the borrowed fattie, that CycleWorks kindly lent whilst my dropper post was being fixed, which is very good of them. Though black marks to me for trying to return it still filthy from Thursday night.

You can check out the bike on Specialized’s site here.

The Specialized Stumpjumper FSR Comp Carbon 6Fattie can be bought for £2700 and for a frame that’s not bad. The bits that hang off it are pretty good and will do you just fine, Fox front and back, Shimano to stop , SRAM to drive you along, then Specialized cock pit, seating and tyres – what’s not to like? All this for no real weight gain.

Hopping on the frame, my first impression was it was perhaps on the small side, but just rolling down the lane and few initial corners the advantage of the 3.0 inc wide tyres was noticeable immediately.

THEY HAVE GRIP!

I would have loved to explored this further, but eldest lad nicked and off we we went to “S4P Extra”. Lovely doable jumps and he was off, jumping is something this bike can do with lots of tracts and damping – it was quite at home.

When I did get to ride it, I was waiting for the downhill to see what it could do. Well a perfect test was “Marbles” down to Thursley. Normally a bit of a helter-skelter ride with rocks (Ed – Marbles…) pinging out from under your tyres, hitting your frame and wobbling the bike all over the place. The Fattie however calmed this ride with no problem and I floated down in comfort. I think there was a lot more to try out on the bike, it’s pop for one, this could be good fun.

But I had to get to the down hills! Any zippiness gained on the down was lost on the ups or flats.

It’s primarily when there is a down that you can enjoy the bike, the rest of the time, effort was needed to gain speed to do the fun stuff.

SO there’s the pay off, grip vs rolling resistance and for me, for TFIT nights i would not go to 3.0 tyres, something a tad more than 2.35 methinks…

Mark

Surrey Hills MTB Trail News

Thanks  to James G for flagging this post he found on www.surreyhills.org about Surrey Hills AONB action group teaming up with Specialized to work on a support some of our favourite trails out near Peaslake.

It’s great to hear about some corporate support for our often ridden trails – I have a definite “warm fizzy feeling” about Specialized as well as all the other LBS and groups involved – very cool. I was also very interested to read about B1ke’s Training and Accreditation courses – something perhaps I could devote my ‘charidy’ days to – perhaps? It would be very cool to be able to give some time back to the trails I’ve had so much fun riding.

As Richard Kelly from B1ke says:

Volunteer contribution plays a big part in any managed trail network and it is great that a global brand can support the local effort – Richard Kelly, B1ke

Look what you get with a Spesh

So clearly Mark T is flush with the joys of owning a new Specialized. So much so he just sent me the above photo – which is apparently what you get with a new Specialized. However, the image does come from a very excellent blog written by Aoife Glass, contributor to Bike Radar titled “5 of the bike industry’s worst sexist marketing fails” which is frankly… just… well… erm… astounding?