Lung and I were talking, on our most recent ridery adventure, about how he likes his ride to be slammed, and how mine are generally unslammed, or whatever is the opposite of slammed, especially the last 6 months as I recover from my back injury.

For the last week, just for fun, I decided to try slammery. Well, semi-slammery: I left one spacer, so I could employ my bell.

Thoughts:

- I haven’t cut the steerer down so I have the spacers stacked above the stem. Wise choice when you are experimenting. However, it’s also a nice way to impale yourself.

- the ride position is nice and aero, very aggressive, especially on a pursuit frame geometry

- there is an unnatural weight distribution on your arms. It’s normal enough if this is all you ride, but general bike fitment is that you are never supposed to be resting weight on the bars, using core strength to maintain your ride posture. It’s so obvious that after each ride my arms feel it. It’s really weird.

- subsequently, one hand riding is a lot dicier: I’ve done coffee runs and felt a little unsteady with one arm partially holding me up AND steering.

- I need to lower my seat. I think I cranked my seat on Crook higher to get more of that dropped riding position, previously, and never really messed with it as I recovered from my back stuff. So now I just dropped about 4cm and thus my junk is crushed.

- even short rides feel more aggressive. It’s nice to have differences in riding position on different bikes.

So, I’m still adjusting. Tonight I’ll head out with the seat dropped a bit and see if that helps solve the more, uh, urgent issue.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. Crook: Notes From the Getaway
2. Ghostal: The First Ride
3. Bike Build Process Log: Fix-e – Drop it like it’s Dropped