Position Tweaking

I spent the better part of the weekend tweaking my position on my mountain bike. I had two main issues with my position at the beginning of the year. The first was that I tended to feel kind of "cramped" on the bike. The second was that I noticed I sat much more upright than most of the other people I rode with. Part of the reason, I think, is that my bike has a relatively high front end to start with, mainly because the fork is fairly long for only having 100mm of travel.

My position for most of the year was similar to this (although I did have a couple spacers under the stem that aren't in this picture):

My solution was to lower and flip the stem. This definately felt like a more aggressive position, and did get me lower, but I still felt a little cramped. Riding descents in this position (even not-so-tough Michigan descents) was a little unnerving. The bike felt much more willing to flip me over the bars (it never did though). I don't know if this reflected a problem with the position, or if it was just because I wasn't used to it.

Lowered and flipped 90mm stem:

So, this weekend, I "borrowed" a 110mm stem from my singlespeed, and put it on my Kona. Again, I installed it with no spacers and flipped it to keep the negative rise. Sitting on the trainer, this feels much better. The bars are farther away from me, but they are actually slightly higher than with my 90mm stem (the rise angle on the 110mm stem isn't as large).

After studying some other pictures, I also lowered my saddle slightly and moved it back just a little.

So, the position I came up with at the end of the weekend looks like this:

So, now the real test begins. I need to get out and ride the bike like this and see what I think. Unless it's a total disaster, I'm going to keep this position for a while and really try to get used to it.