On today's edition of the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast we look at how to make the best choice between a mountain bike or a road bike and chat about what type of riding experience you are looking for. Our cycling coach Devlin Eyden gives us in depth advice on how to choose the best bike fit for you.

Transcript

David Katz:          Welcome to the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast, I’m Mr Active, David Katz, joined by Devlin Eyden and before we get under way today with our first question, we’ve got a giveaway for you, we’re giving away ten tubs of Peptopro and all you need to do, well, the first five tubs will go to the first five listeners who rate the podcast on iTunes and there’s a further five tubs to the first five listeners who sign up for a cycling coaching package on the Ask Coach Parry website, so get there, do that, that’s some fantastic stuff on offer for you.

Today I’m taking over the podcast from Brad Brown, I’m going to ask a bit of a personal question from you Devlin and I want to know basically what’s the best bike for me and I’m talking about mountain bikes because I’ve got very little experience on a mountain bike. I’ve got more of a roadie past, just to give you some stats, I’m quite tall at 1.93m, although relatively light at 74kg, I have fair handling skills, but I’m definitely no daredevil and what sort of type, entry level would I be looking for, starting out, suspension, wheels, height etc? I’d love to get a bit of form in, but then do some of these races, buildup to a three day and possibly going right up to something like joBerg2c.

Devlin Eyden:      Great, I suppose the first thing is a couple of questions you’ll need to ask yourself, what type of riding experience are you looking for? What I mean by that is, is you looking at the more cross country racing type of riding, so short and aggressive racing geometry or are you looking for something that’s a little bit more the longer stages. You mentioned the joBerg2c for instance, as an end goal and trail type of riding. Why I ask those question is that’ll determine the kind of bike you’d be looking for. From between a hard tail and a dual suspension bike and we have touched on this briefly in previous podcasts, but just in the sense of, if you’re riding more as a cross country elite type of racer and want something that is slightly less comfortable, but more responsive and more rigid, you start looking more at a hard tail bike.

It’s a lot lighter, you won’t be riding it for as long, and you being a light guy as well, as you mentioned, you’ll probably get away with that to a large degree. The dual suspension, on the other hand, is something for a little bit more comfort and when you start doing the stage races and the longer type of rides. My suggestion would be to then go onto a dual suspension bike and then we start talking dual suspension, we then start talking about the type of suspension in terms of the amount of travel and that also will be determined more by the kind of riding you’ve got to be doing.

Typically if you’re doing the shorter, the cross country kind of racing, you’ll be looking at something with an 80ml or maybe 100ml travel on the suspension and then when you start talking more trail, something with a little bit more technical kind of riding, some drops, some berms, that kind of thing, you start leading more, 120ml, 130ml, 140ml travels without necessarily going into your enduro or downhill type of bikes. That’s something to look at firstly and then when we start talking wheels, there’s a couple of schools of thoughts from the point of, well, should you be riding a 29 versus a 27.5 inch or a 26 inch.

Firstly, the 26 inch, we’re finding almost becoming obsolete in our South African market, particularly, you can’t go into a bike shop now and buy a 26 inch or very rare to find them. Why I say the schools of thought, there’s also been the debate of, if you’re a tall rider or a slightly bigger framed rider, you should be riding the 29 versus a smaller, lighter weight rider riding a 27.5 or a 26 inch bike. One thing, for me, I’m a firm believer, I love the 29, I ride a 29 myself and I think if the bike is set up correctly, you’re going to have that 29 handling as you would get a 27.5 inch to handle, for instance, if it’s set up correctly.

A good example and something that sort of blows the myth out of the water is if you look at a Nino Schurter for instance, who is 1.73m tall, not a very tall individual, Nino, for most of his career, has actually ridden, well most of his recent career has actually ridden a 27.5 inch wheel and done extremely well, won Epic, won World Cup events, what have you and actually recently in the last month or two, moved over to the 29 size wheel and has completely excelled and is loving the bike. He two weeks ago went and won, or three weeks ago, went and won World Champs, last weekend he smashed another World Cup at Lenzerheide, so he’s a small guy riding a 29 inch wheel and has completely got full control over that bike and doing really well with it.

I think more importantly, for you to decide what you actually want to get out of the bike, most of the bike shops these days have got test bikes available and different models of bikes, my suggestion would be to get on a test bike, ride various options and see what works best for you and what would suit your style of riding and what you want to get into, before making that decision.

DK:         Devlin, I love that you used Nino Schurter as an example because he’s a phenomenal mountain biker, but the Rio Olympics I’m really looking forward to because between him and Julien Absolon, they’re dominating the sport at the moment, but they’re two, probably of the best mountain bikers we’ve ever seen over cross country, that’s going to be a battle. We’re throwing Peter Sagan into the mix, cause he’s not doing the road race, it doesn’t suit him, he’s going to do the mountain bike and who knows what he can do. It’s going to be a bit of lottery, you’re going to want to catch that mountain bike event at the Rio Olympic Games.

From Devlin, if you want to find out more about his coaching, all you need to do is hop onto the Ask Coach Parry or just the coachparry.com website, and click on the coaching tab and all the info is there, you can look at the packages and hopefully get some more fantastic insights from Devlin. From Devlin and myself, Mr Active, David Katz, we’ll catch up with you again on the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast in a couple of days’ time.