2012 Felt F65x Gravel Grinder

Here's my new pride and joy set up as a road/gravel bike.  There's a ton of clearance front and rear for the "27c" Challenge Parigi-Roubaix tires, though mounted onto ENVE 29 XC rims the tire measures just a hair over 30mm.  One of my favorites about running disc brakes vs. cantilever when your bike is set up like this?  You don't have to be "that" guy showing up to a road ride with cantilever brakes!

What can I say about the new SRAM Red that I haven't said in previous posts?  It's really that good...

American Classic hubs have held up great so far, but with only a few hundred miles I would expect nothing else from them.  Engagement is a little slow compared to King or I9, but they sure are light!

ENVE rims have been spot on, but again only have a few hundred miles.  The internal nipples aren't my favorite since they require removal of the tire and rim tape to true, but I'm hoping a careful build with quality spokes will ensure they stay true for quite some time.

Clearance at the fork is huge even with a tire that measures over 30mm.  Of course, it should be since it's still had clearance with a Clement PDX mounted on a wide rim that was measuring 37mm.

Glamour shot from the rear.  The wheelset really sets this bike apart in my opinion, of course they retail for more than the stock complete bike so they should make a statement!

Hayes CX-5 still don't have a ton of miles on them, but have been a solid choice so far.  Performance is there, though the weight it a little high.  The weight can't be that big of a deal though since they weigh about the same as some Avid BB-7'.

Clearance in the rear is also massive.  Again, we'd expect nothing less since this is designed as a cyclocross bike with a fat smooth tire.

There she sits, I'm a fan.  More to come when the carbon version dubbed the F1x D finally arrives, which will hopefully be later this week.

This Just In: Felt's 2013 Nine Line Up!

In 2005 I decided to give mountain biking a try.  I built my own bike for the experience, but within a handful of rides I realized the bike I built was too small.  When I started the search I was intrigued by 29ers, but at the time there just wasn't much available.  Tire selection was slim, wheel selection was slim, there were only a couple of forks out there to buy.  I made the plunge and picked up a Salsa, and from that day I've never gone back.

29ers offer the ability to roll over objects better than a 26er, they seem to fit me better at 6'1" because I feel like I am sitting "in" the bike rather than "on top" of it, they offer increased traction, etc etc.  But in the last 7 years 29ers have come a long way, rather than being a niche they now dominate the XC market in the midwest, and for good reason.  The frames have gotten lighter and stiffer, the geometry has been dialed to make 29ers more agile, component selection was exploded, the list goes on.

2010 brought a number of new models to market, the first one I was really excited about was the Niner Air9 Carbon.  It offered light weight, incredible stiffness, unmatched (even to today) drivetrain flexibility (single speed, BB30, PressFit30, GXP, BB90, etc), and all of the "new" mountain bike standards like a tapered steerer tube.

For 2012 Niner introduced the Air9 Carbon RDO which was a massaged version of the Air9 Carbon but shaved weight in a number of places for increased performance.

Felt saw what was happening in the market and for 2013 is not just meeting the expectations of XC racers everywhere but introducing a few new things as well.  The flagship Nine FRD frame comes in at a staggering $2900 but offers a claimed weight of 900g for the frame and utilizes TeXtreme carbon borrowed from Formula 1.

Felt was missing the boat with their previous Nine compared to the competition, even though it was a very nice frame.  It's a sell that the old frame didn't have a tapered steerer tube or oversized bottom bracket but still had a price tag rivaling the most expensive frames.

This new FRD frame, at 900g, is going to blow people away.  The best carbon money can buy, the best engineering available to our industry, and Felt has turned their F1 into a mountain bike.  This thing should be a rocket!

Niner carbon hard tail frames only gave me two real headaches: rear mud clearance and cable routing.  If Felt can nail the geometry Niner has gotten so good at, their new frame will kill Niner.  Felt's clearance around their tire is MASSIVE and comes without the "mud shelf" Niner carbon frames have.

Regarding cable routing, mechanics, wrap your head around this: fully lined and guided internal routing for front and rear derailleurs!  You riders may not care about this much, but when I spend an hour routing housing through an Air9 Carbon I tell myself I'll never do it again!  Let's hope this routing is as easy as Felt is making it sound!

I wish I could give you a first-hand ride report.  Our Felt rep said he spent some time on one and the new Nine was good enough to get him to forget he was riding a 29er, which is a huge compliment coming from a die-hard 26er rider.  It's only a matter of time before some of these new Nine frames and bikes are kicking around the store!

More info can be found here and here.

Lumberjack 100 Follow-up, Part 2

Part 2 is going to follow through a little photo montage of the weekend.  There are huge chunks missing since I wasn't taking a ton of pictures while racing (duh), but let me share a few things:

First, the pre-ride.  This time I DID have my phone with me to snap a couple of shots of the course.  Much of it looked just like this.  There were a few miles of sandy fire roads, and a TON of singletrack.

My wife was kind enough to grab a couple shots of Kenda course tape.  What we do without pictures of course tape!?

We missed some shots of the mass-start, which I can't help but to assume was fun to watch.  400 or so people buzzing down the road on knobbies at 25+ mph had to be kind of neat.

Luckily there were a few shots snapped coming in after lap 1.  Think it was a but dry and dusty out there?

Here's Rob coming in after lap 2.  Still in good spirits, it's all about getting out for lap 3.

Barry Wicks is a nice dude, but when someone is able to win a 100 mile MTB race in under 6:30 and have a smile on their face at the end I just want to punch them.

And then there's me, rumbling through the finish at 8:27.  Exhausted, but I had a great time up there.  I'll be back again.

First Rides: Schwalbe Rocket Ron 29 x 2.25 EVO Pacestar Tires

This year I've made it a point to try as many new 29er tires as reasonably possible.  When I started with 29ers, I loved the Maxxis CrossMark.  The tread is still really nicely designed, but weights of tires has come down a lot in the last 5 years.  At well over 600g per tire, that weight no longer constitutes a race tire in my opinion.

My search stayed with Maxxis originally, and I fell in love with the Aspen.  It's a fast-rolling tire with more cornering grip than the CrossMark with a weight that's almost 70g lighter than the CrossMark, the Aspen was a big hit.

Of course, since I'm on a roll, there's no need to stop with "good enough".  Being a fan of Schwalbe treads on CX tires, namely my FMB Grippo XL sporting the old Racing Ralph tread, I decided Schwalbe was the company to turn to next.  Their tires aren't cheap, which is why I carefully selected the first Schwalbe tread to try.  The Racing Ralph is ever-popular, but with rain predicted when I was placing the order, I decided on the Rocket Ron.

The Rocket Ron 29 x 2.25 EVO with Pacestar tire is much higher volume than I am used to, measuring 2.22" at the casing and 2.32" at the tread.  Being used to a 2.1" tire, this was a change for me.  The height of the knobs was way out of my normal comfort zone having spent so much time on super-fast-rolling XC race tires, I wasn't sure what to expect.  Claimed weight is 520g per tire, actual weights were 525g and 531g.

When mounting the Rocket Ron on my NoTubes Crest rims, the tires popped immediately into place, formed a great seal, and didn't have any sidewall air leaks.

I don't toss this out there very often, if ever, but this is a "hero" tire.  You may or may not have heard of "hero dirt", the kind of tacky soil that makes anyone corner like a pro.  Well, this tire allows a guy like me to have that connected-to-the-trail feeling I assume XC pros feel every day.  The tire also rolls unnaturally fast, with very little resistance.  I was absolutely stunned at how quickly this tire gets you down a nice trail.

On the flip side, the size and spacing of the knobs made me believe this would make for a good mud tire.  Their first ride was in an XC race that probably shouldn't have even happened because of the trail conditions, but it did.  I assume any tire would have been a disaster, but this tire did disappoint that day.  Since then I've found myself on the trail in a couple of muddy spots and the tire has performed respectably but not incredibly.

The Rocket Ron tread is an aggressive all-conditions XC tire.  In my opinion it's not a mud tire, and it's not the absolute fastest XC race tire.  If you need to choose one tire for all conditions, this one will be tough to beat.

As an aside, I have had a few issues with glass on this tire.  I firmly believe the glass that cut these tires would have cut anything, and I believe I just found myself in some bad conditions, but it should be noted that I did get a few cuts very early on.  The tires did eventually seal  with Stan's NoTubes sealant, but it makes me nervous to be riding a tire with a few big cuts and would really irritate me to have these cuts on a $95 tire (EACH!!) if it were my only set.  Again, I think the glass would have cut any tire, but not every tire is $95.