Randoms Round 3 - Eurobike 2017

There are a lot of people talking about Marin's new bike line these days--particularly the 160-millimeter travel Wolf Ridge 29er (at left), which is based on Nail'ds R3ACT rear suspension system. There are, however, plenty of other bikes in the Marin booth, including the updated Attack Trail 8 (shown above). The Attack Trail has been Marin's main enduro model for a while now, but for 2018 it gets a bit longer in the cockpit. The company felt the reach was the main thing that needed to be tweaked with the bike's geometry. The $4,200, Attack Trail gets a beefed-up Boost 148 rear end as well and is hung with a quality parts kit that includes SRAM GX Eagle, a RockShox Lyrik RC fork and a Monarch Plus RCT3 Debonair shock.

Bill Shook, the engineering muscle behind American Classic, came up with the 3430 wheelset after he found people were flat spotting the hell out of the company's Wide Lightning wheelset whilst enduro'ing about. The Wide Lightning, however, was never meant to be bashed about on longer-travel bikes. It was always an ultra-light, cross country wheel. The Wide Lightning, however, was wide as hell and paired well with big hunks of rubber...leading to its use on the hairier end of the mountain biking spectrum. Complaints of "Hey, I just bent my Wide Lightnings all to hell," gave Shook a clear understanding of how to design a wheel that would thrive in enduro's more demanding conditions.

Well, the latest addition to the Kickr line is the Kickr CLIMB. In a nutshell, as you begin to gain elevation during your pre-programmed, training rides, the fork attachment rises, giving you a more realistic approximation of how much it sucks to suddenly hit that 20 percent grade that, in the real world, would have you vomiting by the side of the road, but in our virtual, smart-trainer world, merely has you vomiting in your family room instead. Clearly, I've not joined the ranks of the smart-trainer, Zwift-obsessed. I am, however, surrounded at work by guys who've grown increasingly fast and fashionably wraith-like thanks to their smart trainers. Becoming addicted to indoor training seems as likely a proposition to me as growing addicted to plunging an ice pick in my eye. After seeing the results, however, I'm thinking there might be something to it after all.