Two weeks on the road, with chain factory grease still going hard.
So I recently gave my daily driver a big birthday – including an absoluteBLACK oval chainring and wider bars.
Chainring
Two weeks in, I think the oval thing has well and truly stuck. I didn’t notice a huge difference – likely because I’ve been oval’ed on my MTB for a while now. However, the summary of my experience is:
- Hills are still hard. Damn.
- I can keep a cadence more easily – essentially if I’m riding flat and come to a hill, I can push a little longer before dropping gears
- My hips and knees are very much less stressed
- Standing and mashing pedals feels more effective
- It’s a very bling bit of kit! The attention to detail is amazing.
So far, I’m really liking my family of notround chainrings. It’s safe to say the kool aid glass is empty here. I haven’t tested other oval chainrings to see if there are benefits to different ovality or clocking – but I’m so far very happy with absoluteBLACK’s design choices.
Wider bars
I’m pretty tall, at 187cm, and broad shouldered. Switching from 44 cm to 46 cm bars has been immediately noticeable – I can open my chest up more and breathe better! I’ve also noticed the extra leverage off road. It’s really nice to have that slightly wider lever when rattling along singletrack with a laptop in my backpack. Canberra – what a place to commute!
I’m pretty stoked on riding to work and back right now. Which is a nice place to be. Happy trails!