It's almost race season!

The latest addition to the fleet.

After months of ordering parts, the new rig is finally rolling, with only two weeks until the first race of the season. I spent this weekend roughly tuning the suspension, trying different tire pressures and putting the bike through it's paces. And it's fast. It's ridiculously fast. But in a more controlled manor. In three days of riding it, I've gotten 6 King of the Mountain's and 5 other personal records on Strava, despite crashing once, sliding out in some corners, and awkwardly coming off of a jump. I don't really know how to ride this thing yet. Previously, I was lucky to crack the top ten on Strava segments.

Leading up to this, I've been training on my single speed and really pushing the limits of what that bike is capable of: cornering hard enough to make it flex like a wet noodle, rolling/burping tires, two-wheeled drifting, etc. One could argue that my technique can't keep up with how fast I want to ride, but after almost four years on that bike, I'm going to say it's the bike. 

Before building my new bike, I had a total of maybe five hours of ride time with rear suspension, so I wasn't sure just how much of a difference it would make. I assumed it would be faster downhill, but it's faster in the corners and even faster uphill. I can apply full power to the pedals without worrying about the rear wheel spinning out, losing traction, or bouncing off course. Today I was actually 14% faster on an uphill sprint compared to my old personal record; consequently claiming that KOM from a semi-professional roadie who was on a cross bike at the time.

So, now that I have almost four functional bikes, I've come to the conclusion that the ideal number of bikes is five - coincidentally one more than I currently own (n+1). There's the racing mountain bike, the club-ride/racing road bike, a back-up mountain bike/dog-hauler (rigid, single speed), a commuter (something lightweight, minimal maintenance, cheap - fixed gear), and a wet-weather commuter/training bike/grocery getter with rack and fenders. Maintenance on more than two bikes can start to be a hassle, so the commuters/back-ups need to be simple, reliable, and somewhat cheap. Let the race bikes be the high maintenance, performance machines. Of course, depending on location and interests, you could add in fat bikes, bmx, touring, cargo, downhill, enduro, vintage, track, tandem, recumbent, trials,....