First Proper Ride

I’d been looking forward to this since the initial test ride, but a combination of little kiddies, socialising and sundry other inconveniences had made me put it off until the night before last. Finally I had the opportunity to get out into the hills for a proper long-distance shakedown ride and to put the new wheels up against the sort of stuff they’ll have to deal with on a regular basis from now on.

I’m an incurable fettler and am always trying new bits and slightly different set-ups, which means that I rarely ride a bike twice with the same configuration. This constant fiddling can sometimes make it difficult to ascertain exactly what difference each change makes to the way the bike rides, because sometimes I’ll have made several alterations between any two rides. This is compounded by having a garage of four bikes (not including Mrs P’s), which means that the gap between taking one of them out and then getting round to riding it again can sometimes be weeks. Even since the test ride I’d swapped the elastomers on the Inbred’s Koobi PRS saddle from hard to soft!

However, this alone is not enough to mask the change to the character of the bike caused by the new wheels. Although my backside appreciated the extra give in the saddle I still noticed an improvement in the stability of the bike, which I suspect is due to the wider F519 rims effectively plumping-up the tyres and giving the a wider stance. The WTB Mutano Raptors don’t offer a great deal of grip at the best of times, even at a portly 2.4”, but they seemed a little better than usual even with some damp patches still around following the weekend’s deluges.

After rattling down some singletrack at around 20mph or so for starters I checked the wheels: still perfect. Next up, a big out-of-the-saddle climb: no problems. Then a careful run around the local jump spot, not because I was nursing the wheels but because it was damp and those dodgy tyres would jump at any chance to deposit me in the undergrowth! We have history, those tyres and me, and both bike and rider wear the scars of previous directional disagreements. Not for much longer though, they’re off as soon as I get a moment to fit the truly enormous 2.5” Syncros FLTs that I’ve just picked up for a tenner apiece in the sales.

At the jump spot I finished up with a vein-bulging eye-popping climb out of the old gravel pit. At this point it’s worth bearing in mind that my Inbred is a fully rigid singlespeed with no suspension fork. Some might argue that this imposes additional strains on the wheels as there’s little shock absorption in the whole set-up, but I don’t agree: I think it certainly puts more strain on the rider, but seeing as the poor bugger can’t then ride as hard or fast as they could with a bit of bounce up front I’d say that the wheels actually get an easier life as a result. A singlespeed set-up, on the other hand, gives the rear wheel a harder time. Out of necessity singlespeeders tend to have stronger legs than the average rider, and this is certainly true of me. I have huge thigh muscles, a product of having played rugby and been a competitive skier between my teens and mid-twenties, and I can lift multiples of my already considerable 15st body mass in a gym. The force that I can put through the pedals is consequently pretty mighty and I’ve even managed to break a rear hub spindle while attempting to climb a particularly steep slope. Another comedy incident occurred in a similar scenario, when I was pushing so hard that when the chain snapped the resulting release of energy sent the bike shooting out from under me. It finished several feet away yet I’d been almost stationary at the time! I tell these tales not out of a need for self-aggrandisement but in an attempt to illustrate the huge forces involved in honking a singlespeed up a steep slope. These forces are all transmitted from the cranks, via the chain, to the hub of the rear wheel and then, crucially, from the hub via the spokes to the rim, tyre and finally the ground. Another good reason for spreading these forces over 36 spokes instead of 32, I’m sure you’ll agree! I chose the climb out of the gravel pit deliberately because it replicates these stresses: it’s a tough enough climb with a 9 speed cassette and 22t granny ring at your disposal, let alone on a 32/16 singlespeed. In fact, I’d only ever cleaned the climb once before using the Inbred. The wheels coped perfectly!

Obviously I was pretty stoked by all of this, and with no need from now on to periodically check the wheels I headed out on a long loop containing more of the same and rode as I would on any other day. A quick check on the wheels at the end of the ride, an easy 13 miler, showed that they’d not budged even a fraction of a millimetre out of true. Their final test will be to fit them to my DMR Switchback, a heavily-built aggro-XC hardtail with a 120mm fork, and take them out for a real kicking (this is relative, I’m 100% XC jeyboy at heart!) but this will first involve swapping over 6-bolt disc rotors and all that kind of fuss so it can wait for now. I am a happy boy!