Guess what!. I´ve opened my ForoMTB mail and seen a question from a guy (Hi Andrés. Is this thread from where you saw us for the first time?) interested in a Berg Fuego 8.5 road bike. He wanna Know how the bike performance and a general impression of the stuff. After having been tested my bike for not as much as I´d like, I replied him with my most sincere idea of what this bike is. Fantastic entry level bike for the money. Do I seem like if I am a Berg worker? :fumador. Planetbike, do not worry about that. I myself am Spanish, proud of it. I feel like a child talking of nonsenses when I try to say something in English. I mean, there is a deep lack of accuracy when foreign people speak a non native language. You have to drill your brain within a local immersion by –for instance- living abroad for a long period of time to even be able to get by in a foreign language. After 20 or 25 years there is always something that you will miss, you will never speak a language 100% all right if it was not your mother tongue. Chainring has a pretty nice Californian accent when speaking Spanish. I´m sure the-man-on-the-bike can´t deceive us if he says he´s not from the UK. The most important thing when trying to write or speak a foreign language is not to be afraid of making a fool of oneself. There are some advantages when going to an anglo country: Everybody will pay attention to you and what you say, since it´s obvious you are a foreign guy!. Anyway, English and Spanish are the most important languages in the world, and we are lucky enough to say that at least one of those is our mother tongue!. This thread is useful as you say to practice the other one, but feel free to speak bable (the local asturian ancient language) if you wish!. What a beautiful landscape around El Atazar, a pure and clean natural water reservoir for the city of Madrid. I can imagine how hard but pleasantly it is to ride there… protective clothes are a must if you go fast on that terrain. Riding hard on a MTB requires half of your budget to buy the machine itself, half to protective clothes. Speed is the key to expensive things again. If you ride slowly in the dirt there is no need of even a suspension fork!. Here I see a difference between the real biker Chainring is and me (An Amateur rider for pleasure) , and I mean it. I really enjoy riding, no matter if I ride slowly, especially in the dirt where I happen to never ride a top machine… So, after 1 year into this I don´t consider myself as someone looking for his limits, more in the touring side… The good thing of not being a real biker is the low cost of getting into this!. The Chainring´s “twenty-bikes” dream would probably cost around 30.000 euros. If I make a progression on the same 20 bikes dream based on what I got now and the price I paid, 5.000 euros (just a good road bike price) is enough to get them all. Sometimes not being a real biker allows your dreams to come true, 5.000 euros burning a hole in your pocket … if room is not a concern. The extra 25.000 euros is all about speed. BMW, Do you like to ride fast? :biker Cheers!
Hey guys, nice to talk to you again. Interaptor, let me tell you something: Actually, you can't imagine how is riding there! El Atazar was though as hell. This was the easy part: (Chainring's Conor and my Yeti)
Easiest part!!!???????????? Oh my God! Is that the paht you have to ride through?. Oh dear oh dear!!! Thats not hard, thats in fact real hell! It´s not protective clothes what you need. But a helicopter!. You crazy man!
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well this picture says it all. Can you believe we rode down that? Actually I think we walked down parts of it, and a good thing. We're alive to tell about it, ha ha ha
Question. Are those oil lines on the front fork shock the maximum compression in your suspension you had in that ride? Can we judge how hard your ride was by seeing the height of those lines?
I have a zip tie around the front fork tube to see how much sag there is when I get on, and it also shows the maximum compression. By the way, here's another pic of our ride. That's me on the right and Doohan on the left. There was a lot of uphill, I think we started off at about 600m and went up to about 1400 or 1500m, which doesn't sound all that bad, but it was pretty tough. By the end we were all knackered.
I see. That zip tie is a smart trick of the trade little piece. Wow!. This last photo is what really makes me think of seriously join you –if I had the strength and pace to decently get into MTB- one day. Nice!. Thank you very much for posting such these beautiful photos… Cheers!
I think you'd be all right fitness-wise, but I'd recommend working on your mountain biking skills a bit before tackling the Sierras. By the way, if you're interested in getting a mountain bike, one of the guys we ride with is selling his hardtail. I think he'd sell it for 400 euros. http://www.foromtb.com/showthread.php/808571-BH-Expert-980-GOLD-talla-M-***********************
Oh! It´s a good bike, but it´s already sold... Thank you David. When I bought my roadie I thought of buying a entry-level MTB at the same time, another Berg offer, but I think I will wait some time till I get used to the road feeling first, then I will go for a MTB, get used to the mountain terrain feeling and probably join you if I can!. ThanK you David. That bike was pretty good, beautiful and made by a great bike maker.
What do you get if you cross the Angliru mountain with the Roubaix cobblestone? irat :lool http://player.vimeo.com/video/32720991?autoplay=1 :lool Cheers!
That's one serious uphill. By the way, you tend to get much steeper uphills in mountain biking than in road biking. In fact, when I started getting into off-road riding I had good endurance from riding on asphalt, but had some trouble getting up steep hills where you need strength more than endurance. Speaking of uphills, check out this video. Seems nobody told José Antonio Hermida that getting up this hill was impossible. [video=youtube;wPX4vpL2VAA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPX4vpL2VAA&feature=player_embedded[/video]
Wow! In biking There is no co-pilot assistance when riding, like those pilots in a rallye car race have!: Look out!!! 45% Uphill ahead!!! :walkman Nice video. Today I rode my hybrid 50 kilometers. What a fantastic sunny cold day, snow in the mountains around Madrid as a background. I enjoyed the hell out of the bike outgoing just as if it was the last one!... Many bikers did thought it is Tuesday. I say it again. There is an exponential grow in the number of bikers that I´ve recently notice. Good for all of us. That is our deaf critical mass, the one that is willing (and have permission to) to ride in a working day. The bicycle is becoming more and more popular, as it should be. I love the performance of both of my entry-level bikes. I have the impression of riding more expensive machines, and every time I ride one feel how different it is from the other, even what muscles demand each one from you to use, so now I Know first hand what you really mean by saying what all we theoretically must know on how different it is to ride on a mtb or a road bike. I´m preparing myself to get into MTB but experiencing with the road bike style first will allow me to get some of the previous endurance you had when got into it. Then, following your steps in a far forward way, I will try to get some explosive force, the power to climb and change your pace in a blink of an eye… Maybe I will give it a try in 8 or 9 months time, when I get used to endurance. My first problem with the road bike came when I had to inflate the tires and I had to deal with both presta valves… It is impossible to put air into the inner tube once I get some pressure. I don´t seem to have the right adaptor for the presta valve. The pump I use is completely new, I loosen the nut on the air release pin before I start to pump, push it down twice, insert the adaptor, lock the pump head… my tires are supposed to be inflated to 110 psi but when I got up to “some pressure” (my pump doesn´t even indicate it!) the pump head slid off. I tried to inflate them in a gas station, but it is all the same. I finally took it out on the presta adaptor. :compress So Now I have “some low pressure” but neither my pump nor the pump at the gas station can measure it. I didn´t expect this kindda trouble in pumping my tires up. I wanted to change my Schraeder hybrid tubes to presta tubes, but as far as I´m not able to properly inflate the tires of my road bike I think I will let them stay. This is the last problem I expected to have!. :whistle Cheers!
Why don't you get a floor pump? Mine takes both Shrader and Presta valves. I got it about 3 years ago for about 30 euros and it's been one of my best purchases.
It is in fact a floor pump, but for some reason it doesn´t work. The guys at Sport Zone inflated the tires with no problems at all. I´ll look into it since there must be something wrong. All right, Almost everything can be done by searching the web!. I will become a second to none MTB expert – Who is J. Hermida?- in 15 minutes when needed with Kurt Exenberger´s 15 quick lessons for beginers. That´s it!!! :saltador http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQpOvDjjUBA (when a lesson come to an end, click right down for the next to begin) Of course, that´s not for U, too simple, but this one could improve your downhill techniques: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkvWp5ypjg0 Cheers!
I've watched plenty of those how-to videos, and of course they can give you an orientation into the issues you face on a mountain bike, but there's no substitute to getting out and practicing. Actually it seems that once out on the bike, sometimes all the theory goes right out the window. Well, I guess that's been my experience, so sometimes it helps to go slowly and gradually incorporate new techniques into your riding. I mean, it doesn't happen overnight. In fact, sometimes it seems you're always going back to the basics. If you mess something up, it's because you've messed up a basic technique. You know, listening to myself here, I think I'd be a halfway decent bike teacher. Well, maybe for beginners :loco
Yeah! It rings a bell!. In the driving world we call them the bad habits which you acquired from scratch and are really difficult to get rid of once you´ve been used to them. So, talking about how different is theory from practice, I guess everybody out there prefer an 1 hour experience in flying planes pilot with no studies at all over a person who has devoted 2.000 hours on studying what it is to fly a plane by reading all kind of books but never actually flied one… :rasta But it is difficult even with a strong basement not to have at least one bad habit when riding a bike. Do you remember of having one of those?. Maybe some of them are not really bad for an effective ride but “peculiar”, which it is to say our own style. Cheers and have fun on your tomorrow´s road bike day!. :aplauso4
You can come along tomorrow if you like. Actually I'm going with someone I met today in El Pardo. Yeah, went for a quick ride this morning in El Pardo with a friend, and one of his friends came along and it turns out he's into road bikes, so tomorrow we're meeting up at 10:00 am at the Shell gas station in Las Tablas. We're planning on doing Guadalix, which should be about 100 km and take about three and a half hours. When I ride I don't think in terms of having bad habits, when I mess up it's usually because I forget to do it right (with good technique). Actually I think it's mental. I mean, sometimes if I don't feel confident in a section I'll tighten up, and typical advice is to stay relaxed and loose. Or in my mind I'll say, "I can't do this" and I don't do it, yet afterwards when I think about it I realise I could have done it. It's all in your mind!
Ups! Too late, but thank U David, anyway It would have been imposible to meet tou up since I´m not in Madrid and took my road bike with me!. On Saturday and maybe Sunday I will do some routes here in Guadalajara to at least keep in touch with my roadie when not in Madrid. But, -and this is my main problem- remembering of the 27 Kmts per hour uphill to Colmenar average speed Both of you Brian and you- had, I think it is too soon to decently join you and your mates. Even riding a road bike I´m not close to that pace, so I will probably take some time before to be able to join you. My last ride on the road bike was funny. Riding back home I meet a newbie on a beautiful Orbea road bike. Our pace was pretty the same and with no words we decided to go along cutting the air and enjoying the technique of passing each other to avoid the wind´s force when not in the lead. As it was obvious our pace was similar we, in a speechless implicit way, rode side by side or better wheel by wheel There is plenty of joy out there! :saltador Cheers!
The joy of bike riding: that's our drug! I'm not as fast as you think. My average speed is usually something like 27 km/h but then I go full speed from Colmenar to Madrid (which is mostly downhill) and that brings my average up.
I rode 6 Kmts uphill here in Guadalajara, it´s called the Alto de Iriépal, and I felt as if I had done the Tourmalet!. Step by step, this is what I consider my first ever serious uphill on the roadie. Average: 4%, Max. 9%, total distance: 6kmts. Then comes 75Kmts of easy, flat or downhill lonely beautiful roads. Nice!. I will take some photos if I can. http://www.altimetrias.net/aspbk/verPuerto.asp?id=621 More to come when I´m in Madrid
