We chat about gear on this episode of the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast. Our cycling coach Devlin Eyden gives his take on whether Samantha should be riding a dual suspension or soft tail mountain bike.

Transcript

Brad Brown: You’re listening to the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast and I’ve got our cycling coach, Devlin Eyden with us. I’m Brad Brown, Devlin has just got back from riding the ABSA Cape Epic and we’ve got a gear question today, particularly on a mountain biking point of view.

It was submitted by Samantha and she wants to know, should she be looking a dual suspension or a hard tail? She’s looking at getting into mountain biking, what is the right way to go?

Devlin Eyden: I think in this regard there’s a couple of things we need to look at firstly. What sort of rider are you, with regards to, are you someone that is looking for more of a comfortable ride and spending longer times out on the trail versus being more of an elite rider and someone that is not necessarily spending the time out there.

Are you chasing comfort or speed?

From a comfort side of things and making sure that, look, there’s a couple of benefits, firstly, from a dual suspension in the sense of, like I mentioned, comfort, and as well as, you’ve got more traction with the dual suspension when you’re riding very technical climbs and rocky climbs that it actually allows more traction on the back wheel versus a hard tail which is bouncing around quite a lot more as well when you do go over the rocky sections.

Again, as mentioned, if you’re more of an elite rider and you’re spending short periods of times and it’s a shorter distance race, the hard tail is probably going to be the way to go in the sense that the bike is also lighter and if you’re looking from a weight aspect of the bike, that’s going to be more important. I think to you though, to find something that is a little bit more comfortable that will work for you, dual suspension, hard tail, there’s pros and cons to both bikes.

My personal opinion, I’m all for the dual suspension, I like to ride something a little bit more comfortable as well and enjoy the option of having that extra traction on the back wheel.

BB: Awesome stuff, Samantha, get to your bike shop as well, get them to chat to you about what it is that you’re actually looking for and make sure that you do get on the right bike.

Devlin, thank you so much for your time, don’t forget, if you have a question you’d like answered, all you need to do is head over to coachparry.com, also be part of the online community, go to coachparry.com/join and be part of it right now. Until next time, from the two of us, it’s cheers.