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Super informative. Great review. If you were riding at 30% power, do you reckon you'd be riding faster (on avg climbs) than fellow riders on acoustic bikes at the same level of fitness/kg as yourself? Or is the e-bike weight penalty significant enough to keep you from having an advantage once you dip into that lower level of power delivery?
Hey everyone. Apologies for the sporadic audio oopsies. The idea behind this video is to give you some ride impressions of the bike on the same day that Specialized launches it. We had a very short window to ride and shoot and publish before the bike was released and in our haste we positioned the lapel mic incorrectly. Peace.
Yea. Apologies for that. It was a tight deadline to make the video before the bike was released. We literally had 3 hours to do it and yes - we had an audio issue.
Crouch on approach. Stand into the face of the jump thereby compressing the bike mostly with your feet - 'drive' upwards from your hips. (it's the same movement you'd do if you were a 6-year-old, not on a bike and proudly showing your Dad how high you can jump) Your legs should reach full extension on take off and at that moment give a little pull on the bars (to stop the front end tucking). Dead sailor comes from being to stiff in the air. The work is done before you are airborn. Once in the air you are almost completely relaxed.
I just order the Slash 9.8 Gen 5 - Hopefully I'll have it in my hands next week and have an opportunity to find out if I made the right choice. Other option was the Merida One Sixty - 8000. I hope I made the right choice!
Everytime i watch your videos, I get the urge to do something stupid and pretend that I'm Greg Minnaar... 😂. As always, great video and thanks for making this POV. Now I need to share and convince the other guys that we NEED to head out there.
After riding a Trek Marlin hardtail for 3 years I realized that I was doing 90+% of my riding on roads, and not singletrack. I decided I needed a new bike that was right for the job. I went back and forth between the Domane and the Checkpoint, but finally went with the Checkpoint. I have the same 2023 SL5 in the radioactive red. 3500+ miles later I'm still loving it. At the age of 61, and having been out of cycling for 3 decades, it does all the things I need it to do. I do realize that the rolling resistance is there; but I can always buy a second wheel set with tiny road tires if I really need to go faster.
I am currently in the exact same situation. I have a Marlin, but I enjoy going for longer rides also on pavement. The Domane seems perfectly capable for light gravel (unlike the shown Emonda)but I think I will also get the Checkpoint (ALR) because of the additional mounting points for bike packing. Nice to hear that you like your Checkpoint.
@@a.h.534 I like the fact that the Checkpoint geometry lets me ride a bit more upright. My ancient lower back appreciates that every time I go out. I also noticed during test rides that the carbon frame sucks up the bumps quite a bit more. A bit pricier, but once again, my old bones are much happier after a rough stretch of road.
@ziphoxokozela8631 It depends. There are cheaper XC bikes to test the waters but the problem with those are if you want to do harder trails you will need a harder tail (HA!). The trail used in this example is still well within XC at least the parts in the footage used. The benefit of a trail bike is that it can do everything (although it isn't always great, jack of all trades) So if you have money to burn a trail bike is a better option since you wont outgrow it quickly and you can respec some parts to better suit what you want to use it for. Quickest and best bang for buck changes would be the tyres. If you start doing more XC stuff then thinner less knoby and fast rolling tyres will suit you best. Going down a really technical decents often? Beefy knoby thicc tyre's are the way to go as a simple example. Larger brake rottors might be a consideration for decending to increase breaking power (but kinda pointless if your tyre choice is wrong). handle bar and stem considerations would also improve downhill/technical handling. There is some nuance to this so do your research before buying. Most trails on trailforks will indicate what type of bike the trail is intended for and the dificulty of the trail so it might be worth checking out what is available in your area. No point in getting a trail bike if you only have access to green XC trails. As a biggener stick to green trails especially with an XC bike and learn how to handle different types of terrain and features like rock garden's,ramps,bern's ect ect. These should be quite tame on green trails just dont go too craze on your first runs. Happy trails👍
Great video, thanks. After years of thinking gravel bikes were a waste of time, I have recently bought one and absolutely love it, on and off road. Just one thing, your professor needs to go back to physics class. No bike can be any faster than any other bike at 40 kph.
He said … The aero road bike with narrow tires is 5-7% faster at 40kph than the gravel bike with 40mm tires. So the gravel bike is simply going 5-7% slower than 40kph. We can do that math.
Agreed. Was chatting with an industry insider last week about local pricing. Everyone misses the R10 to the USD of 2014. At that exchange, this new S-Works would be a somewhat more palatable R170k as opposed to R295k. Either way I agree, it's still a ton of loot for anyone. The top spec is a dream to ride and wasn't made as a value model. It's an F1 level performance bike.
Great review of a good looking bike (except for the orange fork) that has on point geo and good prices. However, there is some tough competition at that price point, with 2022 and 2023 models from the major brands still available locally at steeply discounted prices.
