{"id":1265,"date":"2009-02-18T09:06:56","date_gmt":"2009-02-18T09:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1265"},"modified":"2010-03-08T15:50:49","modified_gmt":"2010-03-08T15:50:49","slug":"which-full-suspension-mountain-bike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/02\/which-full-suspension-mountain-bike\/","title":{"rendered":"Which Full-Suspension Mountain Bike"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Commencal<\/a>

Commencal meta 5.5.1<\/p><\/div>\n

I’ve been wanting to treat myself to a full-suspension mountain-bike for a while now. Maybe it was just peer pressure and trying to keep up with the ‘Jones’s’ but there’s nothing like a nice new toy to keep the motivation u.<\/p>\n

Trouble is there’s just so much choice. For a start there’s the amount of travel to decide upon.. Short travel XC style bikes with around 100mm of travel, a 140mm Trail bike or something bigger. In the end I decided that I wanted an all-round trail bike with about 140mm of travel. Of course there is always a compromise to be made and no bike will do everything really well. There just isn’t a bike out there that is lightweight, has lots of travel, is an efficient climber and doesn’t cost ridiculous amounts of money… In fact, even if money was no object then that holy grail of a bike that does it all still doesn’t exist.<\/p>\n

next decision was the type of suspension<\/a>, single-pivot, 4-bar linkage, DW link there were just too many to choose from so I decided not to worry too much about this.<\/p>\n

Next I had pretty much made up my mind that i didn’t want a bike from one of the big three manufacturers, Specialized, Giant or Trek. No sensible reasons for this as you probably get slightly more for your money with a bike from these manufacturers, but they are just a little too ‘run-of the-mill’ for me, and why have a ‘Ford; when you can have an ‘Alpha Romeo’!<\/p>\n

I fell in love with a Lapierre Zesty<\/a>, but getting to demo one around here wasn’t easy. it looked gorgeous and seemed to be everything I wanted on paper, but the middle of the range 514 cost close to \u00a32500 and the better 714 was over \u00a33000. A lot of money in anyone’s books.<\/p>\n

There were plenty of other options, custom build options inclided a Yeti 575<\/a>, Intense Spider 2<\/a> or Pace 405<\/a>. Other off the peg \/custom options were the Santa Cruz Blur LT<\/a> or an Turner<\/a>, and the Commencal<\/a> Meta 5.5 always looked good too.<\/p>\n

Then last week Merlin Cycles<\/a> had an offer on which effectively knocked 30% off a 2009 Commencal Meta 5.5.1. Instead of a not insubstantial \u00a32500 it was down to \u00a31750. Still a lot of money for a bike, but a lot cheaper than anything else I had my eye on. On top of which ones of the guys I cycle with had one that I could have a go on, so after a quick demo on it at the weekend I decided to take a gamble and get one. I couldn’t really justify holding out for a bargain on one of the others. Although, I do still really like the look of the Lapierre, but the difference in price was just too much to ignore.<\/p>\n

Hopefully it will arrive today and i’ll get chance to play on it soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been wanting to treat myself to a full-suspension mountain-bike for a while now. Maybe it was just peer pressure and trying to keep up with the ‘Jones’s’ but there’s nothing like a nice new toy to keep the motivation u. Trouble is there’s just so much choice. For a start there’s the amount of...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1312,"featured_media":1266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhich Full-Suspension Mountain Bike - A Simple Life of Luxury<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/02\/which-full-suspension-mountain-bike\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Which Full-Suspension Mountain Bike - A Simple Life of Luxury\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’ve been wanting to treat myself to a full-suspension mountain-bike for a while now. 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