Gravel / Gravé / Gnarmac / Groad / ATB

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_2m77XP-N7g

You can probably harvest any ratchet out of any left hand double tap shifter and retrofit that into the 1x ... I have one of the guts kicking around here in a drawer somewhere. Come past and I'm happy to pass on

I’m in Canberra toward the end of the month- any good to you?

What made brakes die so quick?

Dare I say, sounds like old-school MTB/Cross V-brakes would've been easier to quickly wipe down and continue riding if braking was that compromised. Or just rotor and pad clearance that's more forgiving, like you know, on a mountain bike?

Organic pads and mud. Mud acts like sand paper and just eats the pad material.

Ah, I should probably check mine then as that's all I ever seem to ride in

Does anyone have a nice mixed surface / quiet route from New Forest to Southampton? Rail replacement bus on Sundays from Brockenhurst to Southampton, so need to ride that leg.

Ah, I didn't even think about that, but it makes sense. When I was running Hope RX4s I always had sintered pads on hand for such rides, but haven't purchased any for my Level/AXS brakes.

I’ve got Hope All Weather pads on my RX4 did you ever try them (I’m not convinced)

Unless I got my colour codes wrong, I mostly ran them. Braking was good even after a mud bath. Biggest issues I had was never the pads, but the sticky pistons and the master cylinder on the older sram 'cone-head' levers.

Even sintered pads didn't last more than 250km over 3 rides in these conditions.

Liquid sandpaper indeed. But possibly also mud/grit jamming behind pads preventing them retracing properly. It's just the price to pay for these conditions, not surprised it happened, just that it happened so quickly.

Sounds like rim brakes could be the answer

Not really ... Jealous. Will you be hitting the bike parks?
happy to post it to your hotel if you give me a heads up.

I think @youramericanlover will agree with me that a fixie is the optimal bike for these muddy conditions

Just make sure he removes the mudguards first.

Isn't that part of the braking?

Dare I say, sounds like old-school MTB/Cross V-brakes would've been easier

^ Me earlier. I normally cuss the life out of rims to trigger certain folk, but being objective about it, I truly believe what I said above lol.

@giofox yeah that's what's so surprising. I've been on some (but not many) long, wet and muddy gravel rides but this sounds way too quick. I normally commit the sin of running fenders in such filth though, which I imagine offers a small amount of splash back protection.

Either that or don't ride too fast so you don't have to brake

Have done it a few times will look through my strava later. pretty good cycling infra getting out of Southampton which makes it bearable

I'd ride to Hythe and take the Ferry to Soton if I wanted to have a nice time. But it's only hourly on a Sunday.

The only real alternative is - Take some gravel tracks (nice 👌) to Lyndhurst. Get a bit stuck on the Lyndhurst gyratory, then chug along a cycle path next to a big road until Ashurst. Wiggle through some suburbia and then follow cycle paths along massive roads through Totton into Soton.

You bunch of noobs

Premium Rush outlined this for everyone 10 years ago

"I like to ride. Fixed gear. No brakes. Can't stop. Don't want to, either."

agree with me that a fixie is the optimal bike for these [madlib adjective] conditions

Rode Badlands last Sept and got a 34T AliExpress chainring so had 34-42. Would highly recommend going as low as you can around there.

Smallest GRX chainring I could find elsewhere was 36T Wolftooth but over 2x the price and was out of stock at the time. The AliExpress one was absolutely fine.

GRX is now available in 30T and cheaper than Aliexpress.

That would've made my life a lot easier