MY BIKE FOR THE CATTLEMAN 100

TREK SUPERCALIBER Note: stock Trek Supercaliber 9.8 shown

What bike to ride for a 175km marathon? The best of both worlds. Racing for that amount of time over that distance, you need to be comfortable, and unless you’re riding a hardtail every day of the week, you will be broken after riding one for 9 hours. Having the benefits of a dual suspension bike and a hardtail was perfect, thanks to the efficient platform and remote lock out.

THINGS I LIKED Suspension

Even though the roads were exceptionally smooth in mountain bike terms, they were still rough if you were on a hardtail. There are enough mental battles out on course that you don’t want to add more, so having the harshness removed made a big difference, but it never felt like you were pushing a dually around. This was a big plus.

12 Speed Shimano

There were some steep, walking pace climbs with some long straight descents. Top speed was 85km/h and the minimum was around 5km/h. Cue Shimano’s 10-51 Cassette. Job done.

Dual water bottle capacity inside the main frame

While this seems like such a simple thing, it’s not a given with any cross-country fullsuspension bike. Just have a look around the other bikes in class and most of them have a single bottle cage. Watching guys carrying bottles in their pockets made me glad I was not one of them.

THINGS I DID NOT LIKE Body Position

I’m not used to riding XC bikes, so this isn’t a negative on the bike, more so the fact I wasn’t used to it before trying to ride 175km. It’s a bit different to the slacker bikes of enduro I’m used to.

Cable Routing

I mounted a Fox Transfer post for the race to get a bit more comfortable, which meant I had 6 cables running off the bar, 2 for the shock lockouts, 2 brake hoses, gear cable and dropper cable. My bike looked like a bird’s nest even with heat shrink and minimal cable. When you are staring at them for hours at a time, you could see better ways of running the cables. It’s the small things in life…