To Suspend Or Not Suspend?
Sick of traffic? Cringe every time you have to pay your MOT? Sick of trying to find cheap red diesel suppliers? Riding off-road, traversing precarious bends and hurtling downhill at what feels like a hundred miles an hour is something that is never less than exciting. But one of the things that newcomers to this aspect of mountain biking find hard to decide upon is whether or not they should get a new bike with or without suspension. Suspension would seem like the obvious choice, but is it in every case? While many pros ride with suspension, some say that they prefer to ride without, and most riders who only ride on the weekends say that you don’t necessarily have to have suspension to have a good ride. Here are the pros and cons, so you can decide what works for you. Suspension pros: with suspension you feel a lot less of the harsh off-road landscape than without. This means that the jolts are less, and your body will be given a much smoother ride. With the advances in technology that suspension has enjoyed, a decent set-up will smoothen out even the harshest lumps in the ground, meaning that the morning after you’ll be raring to go again. All those aches and pains will be a thing of the past. Suspension cons: there’s one problem with having suspension and it’s that it makes you lazy. Instead of having to work out the best route through a trail yourself, you can let the bike do all the work and relax a bit. But it’s not about relaxing, is it? In the eyes of some the whole point of going off-road is to be challenged by it all, the harsher the better. Also, if you need another, suspension on bikes, especially bikes with front and rear, is costly and not only that but it requires constant maintenance which can be annoying.