How hard do you ride your cross bike?

Tarckives Bikes
1

I just got back from my second real off-road ride on my “cross” bike (see sig) in its current configuration, and took my first plunge into some really nice singletrack in Wilder Ranch in Santa Cruz. For those who know Wilder, I took the Old Cabin Trail after riding the fire road away from the Eucalyptus Grove that the Chinquapin (I think) Trail leads to. Not super technical, but about right for me because I still kind of suck at riding singletrack. Scared the shit out of myself a few times when I picked my lines wrong and ended up having to hop over/drop down a lot of nasty roots and rocks in the trail. Nothing more than about 10 inches. I did manage to avoid nutting myself this time, though, which is always good.

When you take your cross bike out for a ride (not a race), what kind of trails do you ride? How technical do you get? How fat are your tires? Do you find that you sketch yourself out a lot? How big a drop do you think a steel Trek road sport frame from the 80’s can take?

2

I don’t do this much since I have a mtb. I have 34mm tires but they’re tubular and I can hear the rim hitting roots and rocks. I’ve done a few two foot drops to flat just as a reflex. I’d be more worried about a botched log hop than small drops. I wouldn’t do it on a regular basis either cross bikes aren’t mtbs and there is no way to know how fatigued a 20yo frame is. It could fail just riding or it could take a 4 footer without showing any damage.

3

I don’t really ride anything that hard anymore because I’m getting tired of injuries. I mostly keep to fire/service roads or some smoothed out single track. But, same as dutret, if I’m actually on my MTB I might get into stuff that’s a bit more technical depending on the day.

I’ve somehow reached an age where I’m tired of breaking myself and tired of breaking my bike.

4

I’ll take my CX over single track but no drops. It is really hard to avoid serious amounts of roots here in new england though so any single track is going to be a teeth chattering ride. I feel rather confident on it with the exception of side to side strength in the front wheel. (hard to explain)

5

Not super related, but a few days ago I filmed a buddy doing a 6 foot drop on a Windsor Hour w/ 25s. He smacked the rims, but they are still pretty damn straight.

Bikes are tougher than we sometimes give them credit for.

6

video or it didn’t happen.

7

pending. It was shot digital so it’s just a matter of waiting for him to throw it up on YouTube.

I know that there’s footage floating around the net somewhere of him doing a 7 stair, in Amsterdam, on the same bike. I filmed that as well.

8

[quote=“zombie”]Not super related, but a few days ago I filmed a buddy doing a 6 foot drop on a Windsor Hour w/ 25s. He smacked the rims, but they are still pretty damn straight.

Bikes are tougher than we sometimes give them credit for.[/quote]

Aren’t you the dude who always breaks shit? It’s not one 6 footer landed well that fucks up wheels it’s dozens of 1 footers with a few bad landings.

9

[quote=“dutret”][quote=“zombie”]Not super related, but a few days ago I filmed a buddy doing a 6 foot drop on a Windsor Hour w/ 25s. He smacked the rims, but they are still pretty damn straight.

Bikes are tougher than we sometimes give them credit for.[/quote]

Aren’t you the dude who always breaks shit? [/quote]

Haha. Yes.

10

Touché

11

Yeah, I guess I should be a little easier on this bike. I have a MTB, and I guess I should use that for real hard riding, stick to mellower trails and fire roads on my cross-ish bike in the interest of continuing to have four bikes. I should probably find some cross races to enter.