Weaknesses: Flex fore-aft No on-the-fly adjustment Some maintenance required.
Overall: Purchased last October, these forks suffered from the "stiff when wet" syndrome that some 2003 RC36's seemed to have, and also had greatly increasing stiction over the first couple of months of use.
I bought them directly from Pace, and on reporting these difficulties, they were taken in and fettled under warranty with no hassle at all. Stiction gone, fine now in all weathers and behaving much as I expected they would which is as a nice, lightweight coil fork.
Maintenance of the grease lube system is no problem - 10 secs extra after every ride and maybe 15 minutes cleaning every couple of months.
Nice in a fork of this type and weight to have adjustable travel (it's a spanner job to do it).
Overall, you could say the engineering is a little old fashioned (apart from the sexy carbon) and a step or two behind platform damping, travel adjust on the fly class leadership of the market leaders.
I'm happy with them at the moment, but probably wouldn't choose them again.
Strengths: Predictable Reasonably light Reasonably fast
Weaknesses: None so far
Overall: I tried these as a replacement "general" tyre for my Fire XC Pro 2.1's. Basically, it rides like a lighter version of that, good all round grip, no surprises yet, but definitely feels lighter and faster than the Panaracer.
Ridden in the dry, wet loam and wet sand and pretty good grip perfromance in all of them. I have it paired with an Escape Pro and that's not perfect, but for now I'll keep the combo together and see how we go.
Strengths: Specific to MTB Disects the training needs for you to reassemble
Weaknesses: Really requires you to take the content and design your own programme Contains some extraneous material on race prep - but that's only 3 out of the 183 pages, so I'll forgive him.
Overall: A well thought out book aimed exactly at the need that most keen amateur MTB racers will have - that is, how to be a better self coach.
To that end, Metcalfe's book is not really prescriptive but instead describes the components of MTB fitness - including Flexibility and Strength as well as the "obvious" cycling components of aerobic fitness, leg power and strength etc.
The approach is very much "here are the components, here's how you might put them together, now go sort out what suits you"
In that sense, it feels very empowering, and because it is obviously absolutely MTB specific (rather than a tweaked road training manual) it inspires confidence to give it a go.
Strengths: The most detailed view of HRM use I've seen
Weaknesses: Loads of irrelevant, bland stuff
Overall: This is supposed to be a general introduction for HRM use, for anybody - whatever sport, whatever level of prior knowledge. From that point of view it's just too general.
For me, the (cheaper) Polar Precision Cycling book by Edmund Burke and the John Metcalfe Mountain Bike Fitness Training books are more specific and more credible. So get some background information from the net and give this book a miss.
Strengths: Concise, authoratative - covers most of what you''ll want and everything you need.
Weaknesses: For its size - none. It''s a slim volume (40 pages at about A5 size) so it''s not comparable with the big training tomes.
Overall: I was very impressed with this. I was also given Sally Edwards Heart Rate Monitor book and Burke's book is much better lthough being both smaller and cheaper. All the padding is removed and he just gives you the best of his insight in a very compact and readable form.
As a lightweight introduction to cycle training, it's terrific - covering basic principles and giving a number or workout regimes for different purposes. From these you could deduce principles and move on to vary them.
Overall: Does the job and is simple to use. Can't really see why I would want 2001 functions on an HRM, so the A3, with zone rates, seem to be a good start.
Would be nice if it held Max Heart Rate in a session, but apart from that I'm happy.
