Tuesday, March 16, 2010

New Bars

So, I mentioned that I bought a few new things for my mountain bike. One of them was a set of 26" wide riser bars.




I'd cut down my old flat bars to about 21". I've ridden on a setup like that for years. (Why? I'm not completely sure... I think I read somewhere once that your handlebars should be as wide as your shoulders. Besides, lots of XC racers use bars like this.) When Gene saw my setup, he was like, "Dude, your bars are so narrow. How can you ride like that?"

Well, part of the answer was that I couldn't ride well like that, which was the reason I was at his camp. So, on his advice, I got some wider bars. Actually, he recommended at least 27" wide, but it's pretty hard to find reasonably light bars that wide. As it is, going from 21 to 26 inches feels like a huge change... makes me feel like I should go huck off something... OK, not really.

The trails are still thawing, so I haven't been out on them yet, but I already notice a huge difference when I practice my figure-8 drill. I'm just much, much more confident leaning the bike over at speed. I think it comes down to how the bike responds to your inputs (the input being movement of the hands, not force at the hands). Basically, small movements at the hands translates into relatively small angle changes with wide bars, whereas with narrow bars, the angle change is bigger. So, reduced "twitchiness". That said, the wide bars also make me afraid for the health of my knuckles once I hit the trail and start squeezing between trees, so we'll see how that goes.

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