Denver area bike shops?
- Thread starter DouglasR
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Irrelevant
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This is where I'm at. Though if I want to get somewhere faster I do take my road bike (like need eggs for pancakes on Saturday morning).
Full suspension is also just more forgiving and the older I get them more forgiveness I need.
I have a ride I do once or twice a week. Just a steep dirt road with water bars. When I rocked the hardtail I would usually wreck once to twice a year trying to catch air on all the water bars coming down, or just get caught in a rut at the wrong time, or lose my concentration, or something else... Since I went full-sus I've yet to wreck (4 years) on that ride, while making way faster descents and poorer choices. I know the argument is that if you're good you can do everything on a hardtail just as well (outside of the massive aerials), but I'm not and not getting better.
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DouglasR
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My thoughts:
Moab is better than Fruita, but fruita is closer and the Kokopelli trail system is great cross country ridibg
Downhill is for people who don’t hear snap crackle pop when they get out of bed in the morning. I think it’s bonkers… unless you’re really good and then It looks fun as hell.
Full suspension vs hard tail mostly depends on riding style. Full suspension is awesome, but if you’re getting the bike for fitness and thrills vs just thrills, a hard tail is likely going to do the job.
That said, get a gravel bike and never worry about missing a hunting season bc of a stupid MTB accident. Like going over the handlebars.
Phaseolus
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Shoot, you’re not even riding a single speed
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rwc101
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I need my granny gears.
GrantK
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I was resisting getting into this one... I can ride my mountain bike out the door and be on 40 miles of singletrack in 5 minutes and I can still barely motivate myself to go ride, it's hard to feel like I'm doing much for my fitness, I much prefer to trail run... as said above a mid-travel mountain bike is kinda a quiver of one though, mine gets far more mileage riding it into town to the bar than it does on trails.
I do love some lift-served downhill every so often, I definitely feel like I'm cheating serious injury every single run though so I don't do it all that frequently, probably not worth owning a bike for that as cheap as it is to rent unless you find yourself camping in CO to hit the bike park all summer?
honestly, if you want to get fit gravel or road biking is the way, or a ticket to an exceptional level of hell if you want to push it that far, I don't really view it as a "fun" activity if you are doing it correctly...
Irrelevant
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sometimes I wish my granny gear had a granny gear.
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rwc101
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26 tooth.
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I think gravel/road biking is just far different from mountain biking in what it achieves.
Mountain biking can be fabulous interval training. On the right trail it can be great steady state cardio (no chairlifts).
From a pure fitness standpoint, I would agree a road or gravel bike is better. But really, none of the road bikers I see out on the back roads look like they are having all that much fun.
I think a nice combination of hiking/rucking, trail running, and mountain biking with some hella climbs in there is really checking a lot of boxes.
elkduds
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I lived in Fruita for 10 years. Wouldn't live in Moab for 10 min. 2 different riding experiences.
44hunter45
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This,
@JLS helped me in choosing a bike. I showed Mrs45 a lot of full suspension bikes before I spent $3k less on a hardtail. She was happy and I'm happy.
I made it my daily commuter and saw fast gains in cardio. I've gone from thinking I was definitely going to die to thinking I might die.
I'm not stumping, but am now using it on gravel. Not going up the gondola with it any time soon.
The neighbors are getting a kick out of a fat Billy Gibbons in his bike helmet. Tough, none of them could do the ride. I will spare them the spandex until I get down to 195.
As a commuter, I wish I had a bigger front sprocket, not more low end.
Irrelevant
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I would rather have my balls slowly pressed in a vice...
GrantK
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100% agree, I'm actually not sure that the fitness gained from competing with your power meter on a road bike translates to much of anything practical, other than just a general cardio base, and maybe the ability to really suffer for a long time...
my opinion on mountain bikes is for sure locally biased, pretty much all the local trails are so flowy here that it's tough to really push it that hard, you can be really unfit and still do fine, and if you have decent riding skills you may never get fitter... I'd have to drive a bit to get real climbs in, and for me if I'm doing that I'm hiking or running...
all i know is i've never hiked faster for longer than when i was riding my road bike 300-400 miles a week. did a lot of peak bagging those days and holy shit were we fast. but i also lived in boulder at the time. canyon riding for days.
road biking has to be done properly. though i would argue you can remain unfit owning and riding any type of bike anywhere. frequency and consistency is key with anything.
road biking has to be done properly. though i would argue you can remain unfit owning and riding any type of bike anywhere. frequency and consistency is key with anything.
That’s a good point. Some of the best fitness trails are not made for MTB. I rode some trails in the Highwoods outside of Great Falls that were as hard a workout as I’ve ever done.
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Irrelevant
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That's an interesting take. I can't peg my heartrate near as high running or roadbiking as I can mountain biking. Mainly because with running or road biking hitting that max heartrate is all mental, you can always back off just a bit, and my feeble mind always does. VS mountain biking, often just getting up the trail is so friggin' hard that it's everything I can physically do to get to the top.
Road biking is 100% about how far you can crawl into the pain cave and how long you can hang out there. For me, I barely look at the cave and then shift into an easier gear.
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