RobynE 🚵‍♀️

What you did is come on, completely disregard the OP’s question, make a whole heap of assumptions, and bring in scientifically flawed statements about breaking bones. Whereas I assumed that OP had a doctor on board, is otherwise feeling well, and ready to get on a bike. Like the contents of the original post. And so I answered her question as helpfully as I could. “shouldn’t be allowed on this forum” - huh? @Mapsito can you send a link to the ATX? If I recall there are older ones and newer ones, 26ers and 29ers, so specifics would be helpful.

Um, no, Michael, you’ve totally turned it around. Obese people are at no greater risk for fractures than anyone else, in fact there are studies showing that obese people tend to have higher bone density in the absence of things like type 2 diabetes. Lean people are more at risk for fractures. You can literally google it. So, you specifically said fractures, I said probably not and more likely soft tissue. Could that be catastrophic ligament and muscle tears? Maybe. Roasties? For sure. But obesity doesn’t automatically equal a higher likelihood of fractures. I think the OP probably knows themself better than we do and if they feel they’d like to ride a bike that’s their choice.

27.2 external dropper on BH Marketplace

Well, not necessarily, unless the person has T2 diabetes or some other comorbidity. Soft tissue injury is probably more likely but falling wouldn’t be my main concern. It can be super demotivating to fall (she says, having fallen off 5 times during the Marakele MTB 70 a few weeks ago and who is most excellent at both Superman and Scorpion style falls mostly courtesy of clipless) - but if you stay on flat surfaces and ride within your comfort zone and you don’t have stupid pedals in soft sand lol you’ll probably not fall and if you do it’ll be a roasty.

Someone was advertising a Stronglight 53t the other day, 130BCD. I think he had two of them.

I’m going to respectfully disagree with you on the 2x for a newbie, Zebra - only because, until you get a feel for it, it can be clumsy and requires thought, and there are times where you change the front and find yourself either spinning out or in an unplayable gear - both of which affect your rhythm. I love the feel of a crisp 2x and you’re bang on about having smaller increments etc - but yeesh when you spin out or pretty much come to a halt it’s a little soul crushing. @Mapsito my bike in 2022 was a “modern” hybrid. Upright riding position, 1x10 speed, 80mm coil fork at the front, gravel tyres, mechanical disc brakes. I upgraded the fork and tyres, and as I got fitter and more confident I started pushing the bike outside of what it was designed to do (example: I did a Cradle Mountain Trophy and Lion Man on it - these are most definitely MTB events lol - my poor hybrid). Admittedly it wasn’t a heavy bike - 14kg stock from the shop and got a little bit lighter when I changed the fork to an old Fox air fork. But I did over 1000 very happy km on that bike before I changed to a proper MTB. It gave me hella confidence having last ridden a bicycle in high school. The Qubeka, or another good quality hybrid (I would really suggest a suspension fork and at least 10 gears though) may well fit the bill for you now.

Howzit! Welcome! So it is tricky business because no bike is rated for 160kg. Most go up to 130kg “system weight” which includes your water bottles, kit, etc. So you’re not going to find a bike that advertises suitability for your weight. I’d suggest that you start out with a tried and tested 27.5” hardtail mountain bike, medium frame. Something like a Trek Roscoe or Titan Elite Plus+. The geometry of these bikes makes them SO easy and comfortable to ride. They have low stand over geometry so easy to get your leg over, too. The 27.5” wheel is typically strong and will take a wide tyre. This will add comfort and be part of your shock absorption. Don’t bother with a full suspension bike for now. You want strong rims with lots of spokes, and they must preferably be double-butted spokes, and tubeless. For now you’ll want to stick to smooth surfaces and use tyres with low rolling resistance and fairly high pressure. This helps you keep the wheels turning without fighting knobbly low pressure rubber on tar. If the bike needs new rims Jetset are excellent - reasonably priced and really strong. Their AM30 (27.5” rim) is really solid. You want easy gearing, so ideally 1x11 or 1x12. You might pick up one of these bikes with a Shimano SLX 2x11 setup and very easily convert it to 1x with a ratio of 11-46 at the back and a narrow-wide chainring no bigger than 30T for now. Any bike shop can do that for you. A soft seat is not the best idea. You want a seat that offers proper support. These saddles are normally pretty firm. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that a well-padded seat or seat cover will help you. It will not. Get yourself good quality bib shorts with a decent pad. Don’t try do this without bib shorts. Regular cycling shorts will clump and bunch. You need bib shorts. Get grippy flat pedals and grippy flat shoes for now. Start with short, flat rides and gradually start pushing yourself for short periods. Don’t overdo it. Ride every day without fail, no matter the weather. Keep chipping away at your fitness. You’ll find yourself riding further and easier as time goes by. Don’t be afraid to take breaks during your rides at first. You’ll find yourself taking less breaks over time. And keep yourself hydrated - a sip every 10 minutes no matter what. A hydration backpack is a great solution to get to your fluids without losing your balance. Carry a banana with you to give you a little kick when you need it. Electrolytes are good, crazy sugary stuff is not. Links to bikes that I reckon will suit you nicely: Roscoes 27.5 medium frame I can’t see any Titan Plus+ in M size at the moment. NB this is my opinion as someone half your weight, but I came into cycling at the tail end of two discs being replaced in my neck and in advance of a disc being replaced in my lower back. I lived in debilitating pain up to the point of my lower back op and couldn’t even walk a strong dog without neurological fallout and intense spasms for days. My activity levels were down to pretty much zero. Suffice to say my fitness levels and athleticism were nil and I had absolutely no core strength when I got on a bike for the first time in 2022 at the age of 41. Over time I could graduate to a more playful, lightweight carbon bike and while I still moer off fairly regularly, these days I can soldier my way through 70km MTB events with 1000+ metres of elevation without resting or pushing (I’ve had another 2 unrelated ops in the interim so it wasn’t linear progress). But when I started out I could barely do 2km without feeling like I was going to have a heart attack or bust a lung or vomit on the pavement. Looking forward to seeing your progress!

I haven’t but I’d probably give it a go. The build quality of their calipers and lots of other bike stuff is really good. Will it perform like a 12k dropper? Probably not. Will that matter for what your goals are? Probably not.

Try with the ones that come off stock bikes. We can get them here for like R250, decent size Maxxis non-tubeless, brand new.

I have both styles and they both have their merits. I still use my hanging rack for quick trips or where I know it will be very bumpy going. Platform rack for trips on better roads.

This, plus, if a bike has a rear shock it can make hanging tricky, but you can get adapters for it.

Oh and make sure the drivetrain isn’t toast - it must shift smoothly under load in all gears. New cassettes these days are not cheap. So you might find a well-priced bike and think you’re getting a bargain but a new freehub, cassette and chain will quickly knock you back 5k. If buying from a dealer such as Bike Market ensure that the condition report matches what you’re looking at and if the report says the drivetrain is Fair or even Good, ask them how much to sort it out before you purchase. Smashing your bits on a saddle or top tube because you’ve slipped a gear under load is not fun and you’ll soon be second-guessing your idea to ride bikes again.

Ok so this is a bit of a “how long is a piece of string” question. In terms of budget, if you stretch it to around 9k you’ll probably get something decent ie 29” wheels, robust drivetrain, decent brakes. Second hand. 5k won’t get you much at all and you’ll very quickly spend another 5k fixing stuff. If you’re buying second hand stick to known brands - Trek, Giant, Merida, Momsen, Scott, Silverback, Titan, etc. 27.5”/650b is also a capable wheel size. 26” is not dead but for someone your size wanting to ride, not a long or even medium term solution. Minimum ie entry levels of brands you want to see on the bike are Deore/XT/SLX, SRAM SX or NX, Rockshox/Fox/SR Suntour. You don’t want to see Nutt, Zoom, Tektro (only if it’s hydraulic brakes), Tourney, Alivio, Microshift, L-Twoo. Some of these are just ***. Others are fiddly, others have no local support. Stick to tried and tested components. Doesn’t mean the ones that I listed as good WILL be good, second-hand, but chances of their failure/irritation factor will be less. Make sure the gears change smoothly and the brakes work properly, and that nothing is cracked. Check that the seals on the fork aren’t perished and that the wheels spin freely. Then ride it until the upgrade bug bites. The bug is a persistent and fast-moving thing. Tubed vs tubeless: tubeless has no tubes. Not all tyres are capable of tubeless and it requires your rim to have tubeless tape and valves, and sealant. Then, when you get a puncture, it usually seals itself without you even knowing, or you can seal it with a mushroom plug or new-age patch, put air back in, and carry on. Typically tubeless means there’s no removing wheel and tyre to fix a puncture. You top up the sealant every few months. On an MTB there’s no logic in running tubes anymore. Every tyre over ~R500 these days is capable of tubeless. To ensure the tyre is tubeless it must say TLR or Tubeless or 2Bliss somewhere on the sidewall. Tubeless tyres have different construction to tubed. Tubeless all the way.

I will never stop combining 3 of my favourite things. Getting out into nature with my dogs on my bike. 7 of my bubs giving it gas at Danielsrust this afternoon. (I have 11 but the two oldies stayed home with the youngster and the one who hates car rides) IMG_3920.mov

A lovely bike; though unfortunately not worth very much. There are some (ie commuter bicycles) in this Marketplace and on FB Marketplace that don’t seem to be selling priced at around 3k without rust or blemishes. Realistically you would get between R1500 and R2500 on FB Marketplace, I think. If it were my bike I’d price it at R2500 negotiable, voetstoots.

It would have been Capital Classic but entries are being refunded for that.

Here’s our little blurb! Any and all pledges welcome! We will finish within the cutoff, that’s all I can promise 😂

Show us a pic of what you’ve got. Bigger ring will also need longer chain and your gears will need to be tweaked so it’s not quite plug n play.

I can only answer on the fundraising side. We ride for Border Collie Rescue and we pledge R2000 per rider which we fund raise ourselves. This excludes the cost of our entry which is the normal entry cost. For our R2000 we get to support the cause, and we get an Anatomic BCR shirt and a goodie bag. This is all arranged by BCR. You raise the R2000 however you want to - friends, family, clients, yourself, etc. Ypur benefactors pay it directly to your charity or I guess you could pay it across yourself. The charity needs to sign up, then people sign up to ride on behalf of the charity. I don’t know anything about the charity signing up process. The charity uses your tickets to ensure you receive your access/dedicated start time/hospitality access, etc. If it’s for Brainy Birds I’m sure it’s not the first time someone has signed up for them, so the owner or someone on the committee should know, I would think.

Horses for courses I think. I regularly see really old 26ers at what I have considered pretty tough MTB events, and their owners have finished miles ahead of me 😂 If you don’t feel you’re missing something, you’re not. On my return to cycling at 41 having last ridden a bike at probably 16, I got a taste of a “modern” bike with a model that is commonly used for bikepacking, and now I can’t imagine doing any rough stuff without a decent suspension fork, rims, gearing. The most expensive bike in the world won’t make you faster or fitter but if it makes you happy, go for it.

And on this note, as we went around the bend and gunned down that beautiful hill towards WP1 at our top speed for the day of 56km/h, the crosswind nearly picked us up and deposited us into the veld on the left 😂 Lots of tandem pilot lessons learnt yesterday 👀 🧠

Thank you to Attie and family/team for a fantastic event yesterday. Kiddo and I only made 57km of our 145km target on the tandem - lots learnt, some stuff to change up on the bike, but most importantly we loved our time together yesterday and that was my goal as a mom. We really had a lot of fun out there. The 57km we experienced varied between sublime and ridiculous. Sublime because of: the location - it is so beautiful out there. Route was well marked, road users were few and mostly respectful. It felt like a really safe route. I think we had 4 cars pass us over 57km and there were no dodgy characters that we saw. There were some epic sections of really good gravel where you could get up some proper speed and keep going for miles. It was as the name suggests a gravel ride with not too much road. Ridiculous because of things that the organisers have little to no control over - weather and what comes along with it. When the wind picked up on the sections we were on it was clear that keeping those roads smooth is seriously challenging. I live on dirt roads so understand the mechanics of it all. Most of those roads have been graded down to bedrock. There isn’t much else to be done. Just had to pick your lines and do the best you could. Everything was very rideable barring a few sections of soft sand - and this was on the tandem. Obvs I don’t know about the 80-something we didn’t manage to get to but I’m going to assume the roads were much like the last 17km that we were on when we got swept - windy and somewhat corrugated and lots of soft sand, and the pretty brutal headwind. It can’t, realistically, be helped. I think that the definition of gravel is still a bit loose. I consider yesterday to be what one would expect of gravel. There was nothing technical - just a bit jarring in some places. Race To The Sun was more technical in some places (we did the first 50 miles on the tandem). It was great having a quick howzit with Kaze Pete and Danger Dassie (my @ won’t work for some reason) and of course Attie. And a couple of other okes who kindly asked how we got on and expressed interest in our effort. Cheers gents. We’ll definitely be back next year and with some changes (gearing - 53/39 11-34 Sora just doesn’t work on gravel, kiddo’s seat - she was very sore on the Selle Italia Diva, and rear disc brake - v was touching a lot) leading to feeling good on the bike I reckon kiddo and I will be good for the 92km 💪

Very mixed reviews of the Thundero online specifically viz puncture resistance. Rolling resistance seems good but lots of comments about crazy levels of punctures on front, back; numerous punctures in a single ride from different users. I decided against them for that reason. People seem to think that reviewers were solicited and paid to positively review and punt them. I’m just stating what I saw online but it was enough to put me off. They’re a sweet looking tyre for sure but I am not a fan of punctures.

Crosswind on the tandem is going to be heaps of fun. Emphasis on heaps. 😂

There’s this - but you’d probably need to speak to them to find out. Link