Catharine Pendrel's Orbea Oiz Bike Check - XC World Cup Round 1, Nove Mesto

 They're insane to ride as well and they weigh like 9.9kg!

 @Scotj009:

 @Scotj009: just read the other day the new Spesh Epic with SID fork is 7.8kg, the fame is the lightest frame Spesh has ever built (of any kind) at 800 grams. That's just incredible!

 @kipvr: hard tail though right?

 @Scotj009: Lighter. My Cannondale is 20.9 pounds (my poofer bike).

 @richierocket: Not necessarily, my Trek Top Fuel 9.9 rsl is 9.9kg with pedals and bottle cage, my Trek Procaliber is 9.2kg

 @kipvr: You have a link to this article?

 @kinimod: yeah below mate, it is a hardtail though as Scotj009 pointed out and which I should have mentionEd..

www.google.co.uk/amp/singletrackworld.com/2017/04/bike-check-andy-blairs-7-8kg-specialized-s-works-epic-hardtail/amp

 @kipvr: yep

 @rrsport: yeah but how much do you weigh heh.

 @sevensixtwo: 62kg plus or minus a box of donuts

 @rrsport: Mine is also an XL as I am 6'3 with "heavy" Shimano DX clip pedals.

 Dogs and cats living together...Mass Hysteria!

 img.clipartfest.com/df5c32f81d3e644f1a722997d85a94db_567x794px-catdog-8058-kb-203911-cat-dog-cartoon_1280-1024.jpeg

 Not ALL of them. Some seem of them seem to lack pretty basic descending skills but the top contenders probably all rip these days.

 The skill level got up by a lot. The top girls are really skilled. Catharie Pendrell, Jolanda Neff, Emily Batty, Maja Wloszczowska and few more are solid descenders that would crush many of us here. Emily Batty posted a video of her doing a hipped, 4-5ft tall drop in Utah. The way she did it was immaculate. But some guys lack basic skills, they look down put their arses far back as soon as terrain drops, ride on the edge of OTB all the time. Look at roadies at mountain stages at Giro or TDF - Nibali and Sagan tear it apart, but VAST majority of the field has no fkng clue about anything else than not crashing into a dude in peloton. I cringe when I look at some guys leaning hard into corners with knee out, some of them can't even fkng get outside-inside-outside. Like that dummy Froome. I guess it is proportional to the number of fit downhillers under 25, some of these kids surely can let go off the brakes but have hard time holding to the bars at the bottom of the hill.

 @WAKIdesigns: Froome is probably in the top 10% of descenders but I get what your're saying.

 @WAKIdesigns: I ride some of the same trails Batty calls home. There's a small area with some "DH" trails that folks will ride with full downhill sleds meanwhile I've watched Emily clean the same lines on her XC bike. Unreal skills.

 @jclnv: until it rains. He did a local crit here in Tasmania (with friend Porte) and it was a greasy flat course. I was SHOCKED at how poorly he was riding. His body (and facial expression) suggested he was not at all in his comfort zone.

 @jclnv: depends what you mean with descenders... his position on the bike suggests otherwise. He may dare to do more, he may have dialled his braking points better than most (despite being against disc brakes...) but he tends to get most of his body weight to the insides on sharper corners, his shoulders and hips are pretty much always in line with the bike or to the outside of the corners (yikes!), where top echelon rides MTB style.Nibali, Sagan, Contador. Also judging by his upper body physique he is much more into power meter than into power cornering

 @Feideaux: Yeah maybe. He's tall so he has a crap CoG which probably doesn't help in the wet. Maybe top 10% was a bit optimistic but top 30% for sure.

Quite amazing how he improved.

 @WAKIdesigns: Well minutes on the climbs and seconds on the descents so power meter all the way.

Valverde is for me the best descender. Sagan is too heavy and suffers slowing down in tight hairpins like in San Remo this year.

 @jclnv: Sagan suffering on hairpins due to being too heavy, honestly... I like to talk to you man, there's always something's to learn from talking to you, and generally you seem like a cool guy, but that bit is honestly the worst kind of commentatorial bullcrap. That's why I don't like watching sports, everything is blown out of proportion, based on far fetched speculation.

 @jclnv: he improved just like Lance did, except he was "clean"

 We can talk about centers of mass and sht on road bike descending the moment they road downhill becomes an actual sport (yea yea Red Bull tried)... until then, C'mon, take it easy there. Dude guiding a bike through optimal line around corners, braking late, turning in late, in the right spots then pointing his hips and shoulders to the exit of the corner and trying to keep his mass on the outside of the bike is a sign of skill. It just goes together with laws of physics. Most of these guys lean too far to the inside and leave the shoulders and hip at the first spot they see behind the apex, often turning in too early, being thrown to the outside. Half of them like Froome have no upper body athletics what so ever. Their upper body is like a corpse of skin and bones hanging on shoulders. It's just bullshit, pure demolition of human body in an overdeveloped sport. And you can tell, the most normally looking riders are most controversial, treated as misfits. Sagan, Cavendish, Contador, even Armstrong and Ulrich looked like fkng people. Bullshyte.

 @robwhynot: I was at a relay race this weekend and Emily came and participated for a few laps with the field. She passed me at one point and I tried to keep up with her.. didn't last too long haha!
She's super nice though!

 @ryanlaf12: didn't you get testosterone boost?

 @WAKIdesigns: Don't get me wrong Sagan is mega but watch the descent of the Poggio in San Remo this year. You can see Sagan struggling to slow the bike down in the tight 180 hairpins while Kawasaki looks easy. Sagan is a heavy guy, even for a Classics specialist. When it's wide open Sagan is obviously at least as fast as anyone.

 @WAKIdesigns: amen brother

 Yeah, my point exactly. Last year we had Shimano riders practically begging for larger range cassettes. When they arrived pros had to run the heavy (and hideous) XT, and now they're running One-Up? How much time does Shimano need to make something proper?

 @volvoshredder: I'm interested in what makes a cassette 'hideous'???

 @mikeyspaff: affordable = hideous

 Nope. A SRAM NX cassette is cheap and fairly good looking. The 11-46 XT cassette looks like its off a Walmart bike. The machining and build quality is poor, compared to even a last generation XT cassette.

 @volvoshredder: The jumps on the XT 11-46 cassette do not work for XC racing. The 37-46 is just too big you are either under geared or over geared. You hear the simiplar complaints from XC racers using the SRAM Eagle.

 @volvoshredder: The 11-46 cassette does sort of look like a sculpture made of old junk someone found in their grandpa's tool shed.

 @volvoshredder:Who cares what a Cassette looks like. The NX Cassette looks cool and eighs a cool 100g heavier than the XT. I will take the XT all day every day.

 @scissors888: (Applause) If you like ugly looking bikes that's cool. The worlds best cyclists deserve top level parts, and Shimano currently isn't providing them.
I would take an XT cassette over an NX as well. My point was that a cheap cassette doesn't have to be ugly.

 @WhatAboutBob: Agreed. And yet, they are still running them, even when they have a choice of 2x.

 Stock bike with carbon post weighs 10.6kg so i suspect with all the weight savings on this bike and the dropper added it probably weighs around the 10kg mark!

 Not to mention that was a 29er

 Wide range is nice, bit it's hard to argue with the shimano action. Such smooth shifts and transitions. Also bulletproof.

 More like the market want's you on a wide range cassette. A little bit wider range every year.

 *yet

 How much more time do they need?? When one your team riders -and one of best riders in the world- is running a One-Up, you gotta wonder what is going on.

 @volvoshredder: "How much more time do they need?? " Agreed. Based on their historic product cycles (new Dura-Ace last year) the new XTR should drop this summer. Surprised stuff has already started leaking/showing on WC bikes. With the 9000 brake debacle, and SRAM fixing their brake issues in addition to dropping Eagle, it better be fantastic.

 @aquanut: Yes, Shimano has some catching up to do in a variety of areas. Good to know it should be out fairly soon. Have you seen pics of the new XTR already?

 I was at a local XC race here in Sweden. Many girls and women had droppers. Only few guys, either teenagers or old dudes had them. The real men, real racers were too proud I guess. They definitely weren't too good. They will get there....

 I was fortunate to be able to pick Catharine and her husband's brains about dropper posts. They did a few timed runs on our local trails of similar gnarliness as those you'd find on the World Cup circuit. They both said that although the dropper post was only a tiny bit faster (about a minute and a half to two minute descent), Catharine's heart rate was consistently lower while using the dropper post, allowing her to get on the gas faster for the climbs.

 What the hell are you going on about? Rissveds bike is set up the same but is slacker and she's probably the favourite.

 @jclnv: Really? Oh. Haha, I don't keep up on XC, just DH, so I didn't know. While my statement is still true, I'll make sure to do a little more research before I post a comment next time, .

 @J-Fletch: She didn't race so you win!

 I was there. He kicked my 47 year old ass! Why am I not surprised.

 The electronic compression adjust is pretty rad actually.

 I agree they are looking like trail bikes but I don't think that is a piggy back shock, I think that is the fox electronic thingy.

 Dunno....but Gorilla tape might work just the same. I've been using that stuff around the house for a couple yrs now and am blown away by how strong it is...yet you can pull it off without leaving residue or having it disintegrate into a million strips of glue dust/fibre. Try it.

 Yeah, black & blue, just absolute craziness. ??

 @CaptainSnappy: Black, dark blue, dark red, orange, gold, white. Clusterf*ck.