Bike Weight...all that important ??

Shaggy_Dog

I'm not saying that at exactly 30 lbs the dynamic of the bike changes it's just roughly when a bike starts to get a bit too heavy, I'd have 23 all the time if I could but 27-30 will suffice for me. I'd always have a well designed 30lb bike over a badly designed 23lb bike, be that geometry, stiffness or suspension performance.

Shaggy_Dog

Fine, you like sturdy bikes, I can understand that. But that's basically cross country at the heavy duty-est(?) end of the spectrum. Just because I'm a cross country-er(?) doesn't mean I don't live for the descents.

Anonymous

No, I'm not saying that. But I'm not your typical XC rider, who's after a lighter tighter machine. I want a hooligan bike.
Getting up the hill in the first place is a necessary evil

Shaggy_Dog

Actually, in the UK that is your typical XC rider. 90% of customers I speak to are only riding for the kicks and thrills, like myself. The race crowd are a very small part of the mountain biking community and those that do are very much doing the 24 hour team stuff for a laugh and a challenge rather than taking it seriously.

I think of a lighter bike being a good thing in a number of ways.

1. A lighter bike is easier to ride uphill, so you can do more downhills in one ride.

2. If climbing is a necessary evil, why not make it less evil?

3. Riding a shorter travel, flexier bike downhill ultimately makes you a better rider. I also find it more fun as it scares the sh*t out of me!

Northwind

Mmm. I've driven my Hemlock down from just over 30lbs to just under 28lbs, less with a standard seatpost, tbh it doesn't lose a thing from the lightness. Of course, if I was sacrificing strength or performance for weight that'd be different but I've avoided that, and it's still a daft machine... I'll be pushing it down a wee bit further when money allows but it'll be hard to do that without spending a packet. But it didn't become any more skittish just by shedding that 2lbs of excess ironmongery.

Anonymous

Shaggy_Dog wrote:

Actually, in the UK that is your typical XC rider. 90% of customers I speak to are only riding for the kicks and thrills, like myself. The race crowd are a very small part of the mountain biking community and those that do are very much doing the 24 hour team stuff for a laugh and a challenge rather than taking it seriously.

I do find it amusing that technically what I do is cross country, but it differs so greatly to what is marketed as XC.
But, I'd still say I'm far more gravity oriented than anything else. I only go up in the first place so I can hit the big jumps and drops on the way back down.
If I had facilities like Morzine or Fort William around here, I really wouldn't bother with a trail bike, I'd have gone for a full on DH rig instead. But, living where I do, I HAVE to get up hills first, so that's why I have a granny ring equipped, beefy trail bike.

blister pus

yeehaamcgee wrote:

I do find it amusing that technically what I do is cross country, but it differs so greatly to what is marketed as XC.

isn't that where that "All Mountain" tag comes in?

Anonymous

blister pus wrote:

yeehaamcgee wrote:

I do find it amusing that technically what I do is cross country, but it differs so greatly to what is marketed as XC.

isn't that where that "All Mountain" tag comes in?

If anyone knows of a All mountain bike that'll cope with the big stuff and still comes in at about 10Kg like my hardtail and climbs just as well (and doesn't cost over 2k) please let me know.

Shaggy_Dog

RichardSwt wrote:

blister pus wrote:

yeehaamcgee wrote:

I do find it amusing that technically what I do is cross country, but it differs so greatly to what is marketed as XC.

isn't that where that "All Mountain" tag comes in?

If anyone knows of a All mountain bike that'll cope with the big stuff and still comes in at about 10Kg like my hardtail and climbs just as well (and doesn't cost over 2k) please let me know.

Cannondale RZ one40, a snip at £7000

Anonymous

Shaggy_Dog wrote:

RichardSwt wrote:

blister pus wrote:

yeehaamcgee wrote:

I do find it amusing that technically what I do is cross country, but it differs so greatly to what is marketed as XC.

isn't that where that "All Mountain" tag comes in?

If anyone knows of a All mountain bike that'll cope with the big stuff and still comes in at about 10Kg like my hardtail and climbs just as well (and doesn't cost over 2k) please let me know.

Cannondale RZ one40, a snip at £7000

Maybe I'll get a discount if I buy 10.

BG2000

.blitz wrote:

I think the whole obsession with weight thing is a hangover from the days when MTBs were basically road bikes with knobbly tyres and if it worked in the roadie world then it must be OK off-road.

I think it's the other way round - the lightest XC bikes now are more like road bikes, in terms of mechanics, and component strength.

I wouldn't say that MTBs were ever road bikes with knobbly tyres - that's what cyclocross bikes are. In the early days (late 80's) MTBs were much tougher and heavier than road bikes so people looked at ways of reducing weight.

Advances in materials and design now mean that it's fairly easy to build a 25lb hardtail for not too much money. So it's now harder to reduce weight as everything is already quite minimal. The equivalent costing road bike would now be under 20lbs.

Unfortunately, the bike market is fairly suited to riders of an 'athletic build', i.e. 13 stone or less. I've noticed that heavier riders tend to break lightweight parts easier, so they can't always risk using such parts, hence need a heavier bike. It's a vicious circle, and any rider who is only about 10 or 11 stone is laughing really as they can get away with superlightweight stuff - and they're lighter to start with, so climb much faster. That's where the difference is made in a race.

Losing body weight isn't always an possibility for anyone, but it really makes much more difference than losing 2 or 3 lbs off your bike.

I agree with previous posts stating that it's better to have a lighter nimble bike and load your backpack. I think that makes you quicker over rough terrain. And if you've loaded your hydration system so that you're constantly drinking, you'll go much faster than other riders who are dehydrated.

There really are so many better ways of going faster than just buying a light bike.

There are too many different terms for rider types. We're all XC riders, and most races are XC. I ride over mountains, up and down, but it's all XC to me. I could never be a DH Racer though - much too scary !

CycloRos

Joe_Pineapples wrote:

If you're trying to build an XC whippet, then weight is your enemy.
If you're trying to build swiss army knife do-it-all trail bike, weight is worth keeping a wee eye on.
If you're building a doonhill weapon of mass destruction, weight doesn't matter a great deal...
What's that old saying....light, strong, cheap - you can only ever have two of the three.

^^this

XC race =20ibs, trail = 30ibs, DH = 40ibs, and most folks bikes will be somewhere in between those marks dependent on riding style and where your priorities are.

Anonymous

I'm not keen on the XC label anyway. It means different things to different people. You just have to look at the reactions to the Olympics course being built to see it's not what many of us would expect. XC as a discipline I believe refers to XC racing anyway and not the general weekend warrior cruising round woodland singletrack and descents that many of us do. There seems to be no actual discipline of "trail" biking other than just for recreation, but that probably covers what many of us would describe as XC. Probably the majority of bikes we own here are trail bikes, not XC (even if the manufacturers stick 'XC' labels on them).

Indeed to quote from (yes I know) Wikipedia:

Although intended for off-road use, Cross Country mountain bikes with their emphasis on lightweight construction are not designed for use on the most steep or severe terrain.

Whatever the pigeon holes, myself I just love flat and down. Up is just necessary to get to the good stuff, but I don't see it as part of my enjoyment. Thankfully with experience and exercise the up stuff is getting easier such that it doesn't bother me too much, but I'm not going to go seek out lots of climbs as a thrill. Anyway, I wouldn't be obsessed about a super light bike if it's going to cost me the enjoyment of steep descents and technical trails.

yeehaamcgee wrote:

Hmm. Curiously, I find anything under 30lbs to be too skittish, but I'm by no means an XC rider, more of a brain-off-pleb.

That's my feeling at the moment, but I've only ridden a few lighter bikes. They're great for climbs, but I'm unsure about the weight when throwing them around. Maybe being 11stone myself I need a heavier bike to compensate, or maybe that's just rubbish and I just need to get used to a different bike weight or I lack the skills (probably both).

I do feel that with a heavier bike, it's like a beast of a machine (or tank) that I can throw at the trail and it will blast through whatever .

Anonymous

blister pus wrote:

yeehaamcgee wrote:

I do find it amusing that technically what I do is cross country, but it differs so greatly to what is marketed as XC.

isn't that where that "All Mountain" tag comes in?

I just call it "mountain biking", really.

aneesh99

Like some have said before, depends on what you're gonna do with the bike. It matters, but in what capacity depends on how into it you are. If you ride XC for the hell of it, then I don't think it matters, and more weight means more work, good to train up If you're a racer, then yeah, stupid as it sounds, a few hundred grams may not mean much but it all adds up after a good 80 miles when you're going for it. Personally, I now ride XC alternately on my dad's GT Force 1.0 and on my Iron Horse 6 Point, mixes things up a bit, totally different weights

meanwhile

Thewaylander wrote:

Important thing.

You all talk as if the bike and the rider are one lump of mass in physics terms, they are not that is why it is important to put as much stuff in your pack than you.
The bike has attributes like rotating mass and all sorts that make it act almost like a seperate body in motion with you providing force.

This is why it is easier to ride with a heavy pack and maintain handling and accelleration rather than carrying it on a bike. think of that in terms of rations, i add 10 kg pack to me its 10kg on an 11 stone rider(70-80kgs) so whats that a 1/8ths difference not huge, do that to a bike having a mass of 11kg... get the picture?

If you add 10kg to the rider or the bike, the effect will be much the same. Oh, it's a bit complicated - putting 10kg on the back axle will bugger handling. And weight on the rim has double the energy requirement for a given speed on the flat... But how can you add 10kg to the rims????

njee20

Losing body weight isn't always an possibility for anyone

Yes it is! It may not be practical or fun, but it's possible.

I'm the archetypal XC racer, but still prefer going down to going up! Races are won on the climbs, so you make the bike (and often the rider) excel at that, that's not to say that that's the enjoyable part though, you can't beat a good descent!

XC racers aren't some odd breed who relish every climb and find descents miserable and something to be endured! I do enjoy climbs more for being good at them though, when I'm unfit or on a heavy bike they're more of a chore!

Anonymous

njee20 wrote:

Losing body weight isn't always an possibility for anyone

Yes it is! It may not be practical or fun, but it's possible.

I'm really not convinced it is. Some people are just built like tanks.
I used to work with a bloke who really could have been a cover model for men's health magazine, the guy was absolutely ripped, and annoyingly, always had the girls swooning left right and center.
He was told by the works nurse that he was morbidly obese, because he weighed over 16 stone, and was only about 5'10" or so.

Likewise, a lot of the folk I grew up with are just huge, which probably comes from helping out moving bails and stuff on farms from as young an age as possible, along with rugby and the like. I don't see that most of those people could get down to an "ideal" BMI based weight, without losing a limb or two.

Shaggy_Dog

If they stopped the rugby and chucking bales of hay around they'd lose the weight, depends how dedicated to the cause they are. My mate is a male model and absolutely ripped, spends all his spare time down the gym polishing his guns, can't get a girlfriend. Another friend of mine is a ladykiller of 007 proportions, 5'6" and built like Contador, climbs like him too.

spongtastic

Not important for me, I ride an inbred.

Plus with lower weight comes more cost. I'd love a set of XX stuff, but when I could replace almost the whole group with deore for the RRP price of a new chain and cassette it makes no sense for me as a non competative, non pro rider.

Anonymous

Who the hell is Contador?
Big guns aren't everything though. My own brother was an European champion weighlifter, and although he was built like a brick shitehouse, he didn't have massive guns. He was just big, full stop.

But regardless, if your upbringing turned you into a man mountain, even though you may be as lean as a pro athlete, is it really healthy or desirable to lose that weight?

Shaggy_Dog

Is it desirable? Depends on your priorities. If you want to be built like a comic book superhero then mountainbiking is not going to make you that way. If you want to be a great mountainbiker then being built like Arnie is going to do you no favours at all. Any exercise I do goes towards making me better on a bike, since I don't really want to be too ripped from a vanity point of view that suits me fine. I find doing road work in my local hills adds more than enough to my frame, I'm of Scandinavian-Scots descent so I'm naturally quite broad.

Is it healthy to lose weight? I don't know, I'm not a doctor, I believe it is unhealthy to lose too much bodyfat and unhealthy to be overfat, being overweight through muscle is less of a concern I would imagine, maybe you're putting more strain on the skeleton and ligaments, maybe even the circulatory system but being muscular is surely healthy, within reason.

Anonymous

Hmm. I dunno. If you're naturally big and broad, that's it, I reckon. It would be unhealthy to go too low.

I've always been a big bloke, and I know full well I'm carrying too much fat these days, but I digress...
When my knee went, the first doctor I saw said he didn't want to do anything until I'd gone down to under 10 stone. That was ridiculous, it meant losing nearly a 3rd of my body-mass.
Another doctor saw me and said, maybe I should lose a stone, stone and a half or so, maximum, based on my build, that I should aim to get down to about 13 1/2 stone. He also reckoned that my weight wouldn't affect my knees, since I have legs like oak trees - there was no way they were damaged from my being overweight.

So... if even doctors can't agree on this, I'm not sure there is a definitive answer.
I really don't think I could ever get under 10 stone as the first doc suggested though, wihtout becoming severely emaciated, or cutting a leg off or something.

Kiblams

I am almost 17 stone now and have a 38inch waist, a few years back (before the desk job) I was 14.5stone with a 34inch waist and a defined six pack. Not sure i could ever get below 13st without somehow starving myself into eating the muscle away, and that certainly doesn't sound good to me :shock:

Anonymous

Some people are big boned (or so they say ). But you can still lose weight if you hack off a limb

Northwind

If I lost much more weight I'd also lose a dimension.

njee20

I lost 5kg over winter, from 72kg to 67kg and it made a massive difference when climbing, more than I expected it to! I am pretty skinny though (5'10"), certainly not in the 'ripped' category by any stretch!

I agree there are some people who would look really rather ill at my weight, but I doubt many (if any) on here were genuinely as light as they could be.

chiefgrooveguru

BG2000 wrote:

I wouldn't say that MTBs were ever road bikes with knobbly tyres - that's what cyclocross bikes are. In the early days (late 80's) MTBs were much tougher and heavier than road bikes so people looked at ways of reducing weight.

They were certainly heavier but we used to bend bits all the time and that wasn't riding anything like the gnarliness nowadays. They were even road bike shaped in terms of geometry, just with straight bars! The wheels were particularly flimsy...

There does seem to be an annoying durability penalty with lightweight components, however much money is involved. With frames you seem to be able to have it all if you have enough money, which is nice for those that do!

blister pus

i felt like crap generally at 15.7 stone and cycling was hard, i needed to lose surplus shite and excess weight i was carrying, so i got down to 14 stone and it's about right. i can crack off an 18 mile road / xc loop in 1hr 18mins now which seems reasonable - i wouldn't want to lose any more as i've found the right weight for me which is what it's all about i guess.

Steve_b77

I've got down to 79kg this summer - lost 7kg without really trying to be honest, just a better diet and regular riding.

I'm much better at going up hills but thats come with the added fitness of the extra riding.

I know full well i could loose another 4kgs pretty easily, but No.1 the wife would kill me and No.2 I feel good at the weight/dimensions I am now

However on a if your bike is lighter tilt ...............