SARAH’S SANTA CRUZ BLUR XC C S £5,599

Tuning and new tyres make for a Blurry good time for tester Sarah

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been running a volume spacer in the RockShox SID SL fork, to see whether it’d make a difference to the support through fast berms and drops. If felt better, but I wanted to see whether the set-up I had was as good as it was going to get. Tweed Valley Bikes run a suspension set-up service, and they kindly agreed to fit a Motion Instruments data acquisition kit to the Blur XC, to show how well the fork and shock were working together.

With this in place, I looped a short trail of varied terrain, making changes to the shock rebound and air pressure between each run, based on feedback from the software. The data showed that the fork performed better for me without the Bottomless Token fitted and that it was the shock that could actually do with a volume spacer, in addition to me speeding up the rebound damping.

Even though I’m not interested in competing, I’m keen to improve my riding so that I can go faster and have more fun – something these changes should help with. I’m now running the shock rebound one click from fully open, and the bike feels smoother and my confidence in it has increased a lot, so thank you, Tweed Valley Bikes!

Having dialled-in the set-up and made some additions – including a Peaty’s x Fidlock Lockin bottle (which has been brilliant, by the way) and a 32t SRAM chainring – it was time to think more about tyres for some sorely-needed traction in muddy conditions. I happened to find a virtually new Maxxis Ardent in a bike shop’s tyre bin, waiting to be scrapped – I’m grateful to the person who threw that away! – so I fitted it in place of the Blur XC’s Maxxis Aspen front tyre.

Convinced it would be grippy enough, I went for a run down the ‘New York, New York’ and ‘Wardell’s Way’ trails in Caberston Forest, aka The Golfie. A combination of the recent maintenance work and dry-ish conditions meant the tracks were running perfectly, reaffirming what an amazingly capable wee bike this is. My only issue was having to pump the SRAM Level TL brakes repeatedly before dropping in. A couple of times, nothing happened when pulling on the back brake, forcing some panicky manoeuvres. A full bleed is due, then!