Current Projects chat and miscellany

There are two parts to this. On the one hand, if you haz skillz, you can be faster than somebody who doesn't regardless of how much extra tech they are aboard. On the other, for equal skill levels it doesn't take very demanding terrain before that bike tech starts making itself useful. I found it surprising, but informative, that my disc braked hard tail MTB on 26x2.3 tyres was actually faster than my cross bike on 700x40c tyres on something as undemanding as the ungraded sections of the Thames Path.

Agree. But I live in the New Forest which is not very demanding terrain (at all) and it allows an average off road speed of over 15mph. And on sections where 20mph can be held for 1/2 a mile or so getting in the drops means I can keep the speed more easily than the MTBer.