As I posted before, I have bought a new bike as my previous bike, the trusty but heavy #Mongoose was going to be very expensive to fix.
The new one, a Chris Boardman Comp MX was purchased from Halfords. They had a special discount event on at the time so was able to get the bike with 10% off the price as well. The ordering on line and collection of the bike was fine.
The bike has a 2 – 10 gear ratio – my previous bike was 3 – 7. The number of gears therefore, isnt much different, with 20 vs 21. What is completely different is how the ratio is when cycling. The 3 – 7 ratio allowed for a climb up hill faily easily, with a very easy first gear to pedal in. The new bike requires a high torque to get the wheels moving, even in its lowest gear.
This forces a different style of cycling for me – a slower cadance allows for the same progress, but a high level of force is required. This was quite hard to get used to at first, but now I am really seeing the benefits in the average speed i can travel.
The frame is a 21″ frame and again, it is significantly different to my other bikes. My other bikes have a shorter saddle to handle bars distance and so the new position for cycling is again a big change.
The bike brakes are staggering. I have used cable disc brakes for some time and use standard V brakes on my Tern. Although the difference between cable and hydrolic brakes isn’t as pronounced as the V brakes, its most definitely a more responsive breaking system.
The gears are fine – easy to change (although again a different system to the last bike which means I am dropping rather than raising gears more often than not).
The front forks have a 60mm (ish) travel on them with a lock off. The lock off allows for varying stiffness as its not simply on or off, but a gradual turn. My old bike had pretentioners but this new one doesn’t – not a big deal.
Overall very impressed and happy with the bike, I have had one issue with Halfords which I will post later one…
