This weekend I raced the British National Championships Marathon XC, 80km of hard racing over 4 hours. I was really happy with my performance from a placing stand point, and a big thanks to my TrainerRoad training for that!
Almost immediately I started dreaming about racing on a full sus bike and by the end of the race I’d almost bought myself one mentally and was ready to order something on the drive home, given how battered I started to feel and how much yoyo-ing I did with people on more capable bikes throughout the race.
At the start I was mixing it with a solid group but started to drift out of the back of the group in the most frustrating places - 1) on gnarlier downhill sections and 2) extremely dry and bumpy climbing sections across a grassy field - in these situations I kept yoyo-ing back to the group and could get back on when the course smoothed out and got less technical, but on the pedally bumpy sections everyone around me was sitting smoothly pushing over a smooth cadence in the saddle while I was getting battered around on my hard tail hovering over the saddle and trying to keep the power going through the rear wheel.
So onto the bike ideas. I currently ride a 2018 Specialized Epic HT in a size Large. Playing around with my position over the years I’ve ended up very comfortable on the bike with a 110mm -17 degree stem and a pair of 700mm bars. I’ve always been quite sensitive to being cramped up on a bike and ended up wanting to stretch out a little further than the stock setup and have found this stem and bar setup right for me. I like narrower bars for the sort of close pass local races I do.
Taking the geometry figures from a 2018 HT that arguably I’m running in less modern setup (long stem) and working out what fits and how to tune the fit of a full travel bike is a little daunting, and then brand wise I’m largely thinking about what will be good from a simplicity and maintenance stand point. The Epic having a creaky PF BB for one thing I’m glad that the world has moved back to threaded BBs by and large.
My initial search and thought process and what is appealing to me aesthetically has landed me looking at a Santa Cruz Blur CC in the regular 100mm travel version. I’m definitely someone who likes riding with a lockout and things like the new Epic WC and Supercaliber seem a little too proprietary and daunting to me.
Working out sizing for a Blur seems tricky and there an awful lot of threads on the internet that suggest the Santa Cruz’s tend to be a little shorter than most when picking the labelled size (e.g Large). Playing around with various geometry comparison tools I’ve also found a little daunting because I’m unsure how stack and reach convert from hard tail to full travel bikes, and for me personally I’ve found that I am much more sensitive to effective top tube length and how my back ends up laid out on the bike.
From first glance, at 185cm tall, and based on how I have the 2018 Epic HT in Large setup with a 110m stem it seems like a more modern approach for my would be to get the Blur in an XL and run a much shorter stem. The XL blur having a 25mm longer head tube suggests I might end up being slightly more upright, even if I run something like a -20 stem. Conversely I’m worried that if I get the Blur in L and end up slightly undersized I kill the bike from a handling perspective if i end up running a 2010 era 120-130mm stem on the thing.
Size stats for the geeks:
----------- Reach - Stack - Effective Top tube - Head tube
Epic HT ---- 441 --- 622 ------ 623 --------------- 110
Blur in L -- 470 --- 597 ------ 616 --------------- 110
Blur in XL - 495 --- 612 ------ 647 --------------- 125
Would love thoughts and advice on sizing (it seems very hard to go find test rides) and any other bikes people think are worth looking into that are pretty traditional, have simple stock parts, threaded BBs and probably UDH is a must now too.
