Seeing that my budget did not allow me to buy myself a dual-suspension 29er for the Joberg2C, I’ve had to choose some new weaponry for my current bike to get at least some comfort.
Firstly, I’ve upgraded my wheels to Fulcrum Red Metal 3, these are strong, and more importantly, they’re tubeless ready. I’ve been riding with tubes all along, but seeing that my bike is a hardtail, I’m trying to get the tyres to take a bit more of the shock, instead of my backside. A tubeless setup allows me to run a much lower tyre pressure, give the sidewalls more flex, and more shock absorbing ability.
Coupled with the new wheels, I chose the Vredestein Black Panther Extreme tubeless tyres. They have thick sidewalls, allowing me to run at 1.7 bar pressure. More grip, and a softer ride. Win-win in my eyes.
My wrists have been suffering in all the training rides, so I changed grips to the ESI grip, going with a nice green to match the colour scheme on my bike. The first few training rides have proved that these are a lot more comfy than the expensive crap I was using before. I’ve also changed the angle of my brake levers to make sure that when I’m using them my arms/wrists stay in a straight line.