Finally got a chance to ride my 2014 Specialized Crave Comp 29er Saturday morning....well....for a little while anyway. For the most part, flat single track with some tight turns and fairly long straights. Couple of dips here and there, but trail is about 90% shaded, which makes for a great ride. My wife was riding her 2005 Women's Rockhopper and couldn't keep up to save her life. She was pretty winded after about 20 minutes of trying to keep, so we finally stopped and took a break. I didn't understand why she was lagging behind so much. I know she'd said something about her bike being hard to ride, hard to pedal, and just generally unpleasant overall. Said she'd gotten a little spoiled to riding my brother-in-law's 2014 Rockhopper Comp 29er and was definitely wanting a new ride soon.
So being the nice husband that I am, I offered to swap bikes with her for a while to see if that would help. Granted, my bike is a little small for her being a 17.5, so she was a little bit cramped (she's 5'8"), but she immediately changed my mind as to why she was so slow. The difference between my 29er and her 26 was night and day. Like a Cadillac vs. a Pinto. I pedaled my ass off trying to keep with her and by the time we stopped, I was about to keel over. Granted, I'm in terrible shape right now, but holy shit! I was huffin' and puffin' and she was barely breathing harder than normal. I was so worn out by the end of the trail that I had to get off and walk a few times even.
Ordered her 2014 Specialized Jett Expert 29er on my lunch break. After the trade-in on her bike and the sale price of the bike, plus a little price-matching, we'll get it for roughly $1575 before taxes. Not too shabby...
I did manage to snap a couple pics of my bike before the ride, though. Should have one or two edited and posted this evening.
