Ozzie NL

My guess would be that there is dirt and sand in the thread but that would be a little too obvious? There should not be any noise coming from those bolts when loosening or tightening.

All three are good bikes but I suspect there is one you prefer... just go with that It is just so lekker to ride the "best bike in the world" and not have a "should have" in the back of your mind

I would love to see him give the Epic a shot .... he always says MTB is his preferred discipline

Aaah, either way still a f0kken long day. Had a go at this once and after 5000m ascent decided the monotonous up and down is just not what I enjoy about riding. Good luck.

As I have it you’ll need to do 80 loops for full Everest; 8848/111. ie 185km up and the same down. Am I missing something?

Eish, that profile looks very irregular with really steep pitches. 185km there ain't gonna be a walk in the park

I initially went down that train of thought but there have been similarly hot and wet Epic previously. Have only come up with % single track as plausible explanation Either way after 3 years of ~30% drop pout rate I reckon we can consider it the new normal

I would say two things: 1) everybody has the right to decide how to spend their money ... most Ferrari owners are no racing drivers by any stretch of the imagination. 2) Due to the batched starting system, more accomplished riders will be in the earlier batches and hence in general not held back by those a bit slower. Obviously this holds for most races but as Epic stages are much longer there are way less bottlenecks. So no-one should be spoiling your experience much more than you are spoiling theirs on the segments where they are faster It is true that you will sometimes end up walking because someone else gets off on a techie climb or descent but in my experience the faster descenders are typically slower uphill as well as the revers

The unremovable bike sticker is a myth ...glo my

Your argument would therefore be that the average skills level in the last 3 editions of Epic is dramatically lower than in the previous versions? Personally I think it is rather due to the fact that the increased % of the route made up of single track vs district roads is the biggest contributor to the higher drop out rate. I have looked at correlations with total distance and ascent and found none but % single track has increased dramatically

Is there a reason you have not included 2023? Drop out was 28.9% that year

Same data, different format. The step up in drop out rate for last 3 years is striking

The argument people use is that by rotating chains like this the cassette take less strain... ie it is ridden for longer at less worn chains. PS: I do not rotate and just replace at 0.5 wear

I assume the poster means he rotates a set of chains at 500km intervals. Re XX1 chains ... I get about 3500km out of them .... so not cheaper to run than other chains but they seem to run a lot cleaner which in turn saves the cassette. I did 13000km on the last X01 cassette which included some hectic mud crunching up in Africa

I assume the poster means he rotates a set of chains at 500km intervals. Re XX1 chains ... I get about 3500km out of them .... so not cheaper to run than other chains but they seem to run a lot cleaner which in turn saves the cassette. I did 13000km on the last X01 cassette which included some hectic mud crunching up in Africa