Bike Check: Mark Weir's Carbon Jekyll

This is his carbon Jekyll for racing this year. Cannondale is very proud of the how stiff they have made the linkage, with big 15mm axles all round and that big piece of carbon over the top keeping everything in check. Mark describes it as the only bike he's ridden that is so stiff that it oversteers.

At the heart of the bike is the unique Dyad shock. Built in partnership with Fox, Cannondale has a raft of proprietary technology tucked in there. This one on Mark's bike is a prototype based on the slightly longer stroke shock found on the Jekyll's bigger, more descent-orientated brother, the Claymore. This gives his bike "slightly more" travel than the 150mm these bikes usually have. With the top-down view of the shock, you can see the separate rebound adjusters, as the shock has two modes: one for climbing and one for descending, that can be set separately.

Up-front Mark runs a big 180mm Fox 36 fork. Although it outmatches the rear travel by 30mm (with the stock shock, anyhow) he doesn't find that the bike feels unbalanced. Most important of all is the head angle. For the speeds that he likes to attain, the Jekyll is a little bit steep, so the big fork stretches it out nicely. Cannondale is currently working on an Angleset for the frame with Cane Creek, but it is not available yet, and he does say that if he could get the angle he wanted, he would prefer to run a shorter fork. Inside is a coil and the RC2 damper, weight doesn't bother him much, but damping out on the trail is everything. What you can't see is that his 36 has Fox's 2013 internals, the main difference being an air-assist in the spring leg.

After talking to Fabien Barel on the Trans Provence last year, Mark is trying out his idea of a bigger frame and a tiny stem to help him feel more inside the bike, rather than on it. Although when you meet him you kind of assume he's a big guy (he's got that kind of presence) he is actually only 5'9" tall. With this setup he has gone up from a medium to a large frame with a 40mm stem to keep the length down. He's not 100% yet, but it doesn't seem to have slowed him down...

One of the reasons Mark is so happy on Cannondale: that little metal plate there was added by Cannondale after Mark fedback to them that the cable rub there was causing problems with the frame.

1 x 10 gearing out back. Simple.

Mark is one of the lucky few to have got their hands on Fox's DOSS height-adjust seatpost.

"Yeah, I want everybody to think - that guy's weird."

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