ryetoast

I thought below 38 was illegal? Did they do away with that? It was clearly unfair to small riders...

Here's a meandering anecdote about handlebar width and bike geometry that no one will read! My bike, a gen 2 Banshee Spitfire, had a 66deg head angle and 760mm bars when it was new in 2016. I'm 160cm with roughly 380cm shoulders - in 2016 and presently - so bars were basically double my shoulder width. I ran them unquestioningly for a year or so, then saw a video of myself descending a nasty, chunky rock roll - it was obvious the width of the bars was limiting how much I could move around over the bike. I cut them to 700 and rode that way happily for years. This spring, I slapped a -2deg angleset and 155cm cranks on the venerable Spitfire. All of a sudden, the bars felt like frickin road bike bars. The new 64deg head angle plus whatever resulting changes in wheelbase/BB height/front center made the steering floppier and slower; I felt like I didn't have enough leverage to control the front end. Plus, moving my feet 2cm moved my cg (read: ass) higher and also gave me more room to move over the bike, so the elbow room afforded by the 710 bars felt wobbly and excessive. I invested in another pair of 760s. They still look stupid, but damn do they feel stable. I think I could trim to 740 without really losing anything, but I also have yet to feel like the width is limiting. The End, finally. The moral, I guess, is that the geometry of the rest of the bike is going to have a dramatic effect on what bar width feels right to the rider.

Facts. I've gotten arm pump on an MX bike that actually locked my hands into fists somehow, kind of scary. Stopped wearing elbow pads, a watch or even tight sleeves or gloves after that, which resolved most of it, and I added those grippy frame guards to my bikes so hanging on with my knees works better.

Who the hell cares how much an ebike weighs? Spring mass damper systems work better with nonzero mass! And the mass pedals itself! Anyway, what really gets my goat is when a bike has made clear performance/durability/ease of maintenance sacrifices for what some marketing major perceived as aesthetic benefits.

Riding small frames, I wish this about every bike. Many have inner bottle mounts, few are usable. I run a Fidlock bottle on the underside of the downtube for short-ish rides and add a USWE hydration pack for long ones. Way more secure and comfortable than a hip bag IMO.

@litany: assuming you aren't planning on doing any suicide no-handers during your race... what's wrong with a leash?

Reminder for short people that if you cut 800mm enduro/DH bars down to 700mm, you are making them more rigid and more effective at transmitting higher vibe frequencies to your hands. Buy some cheap 31.8 clamp, 740-ish wide XC bars and cut those down instead. Source: years of unnecessary suffering.

I'm so glad there's a women's category now. Honestly just hearing post-run interviews with women after 20-odd years of nothing but dudes is so refreshing.

I'm still confused by pajamas, honestly

@WheelNut: But that's how forward-thinking bike brands set themselves apart! Take the cheapest, lightest, strongest structure for the job (a tube) and replace it with something heavier, weaker, more expensive, or all of the above (A bent tube! An extruded rhombus! Two half-tubes hand-whittled from solid iridium and then bonded together with Krazy Glue)!