Michael Hanslip Coaching

If you want to go faster, you have to pedal harder

The endgame for most helmets...

15/01/25 19:35 Filed in: Gear
Almost every road helmet I have owned has reached an end of life point when the pads perish. Pressure between head and foam, intense salty sweating and being really thin and light mean that the seams on helmet pads typically fail for me after something like 2 years of routine use. Instead of a pad, I end up with a multi-layer mess: inner pad stuck to the helmet, mid-layer foam held loosely in place because the foam is usually semi-rigid and front face fabric flapping in the breeze. They quickly become uncomfortable and unless replaced, call for the end of a helmet.
I try to replace the pads at least once in the life of my helmets. Sometimes that is easy. I've had a couple of helmets that came with spare pads even. I'm currently trying to replace the pads in my Bontrager helmet - a discontinued helmet as it happens - and Trek keeps pushing the due date for them back in time. Maybe they won't ever come? They are also a significant portion of the price of the helmet, about 20%.
The best practice to date has been the Fox Proframe. There are 2 shell sizes and 2 pad sizes. Together they make 4 helmet sizes (S/M/L/XL). My partner's Small comes with the thick pads installed and the thin pads in the box. My XL comes with the thin pads installed and the thick pads in the box. Between us we each have a spare set of pads for the other's helmet. Then replace the helmet a couple of times and we have a good selection of spare pads. These pads are easy to remove, run through a wash cycle, and reinstall without risking damaging helmet or pad.
Another pathway to spare pads was crashing in a race in my then-new Fox Speedframe helmet. I replaced the helmet with another straight away, leaving the soft pads from helmet 1 to be spares for the helmet down the road.
Neither of these is a great option for someone who has a helmet and needs spare pads. I believe the pads need to be readily available, and for a few years after the helmet is withdrawn from the market, at 10% of the helmet price or less.
I would really like to see a helmet that lacks fabric pads. I don't know quite how it would work - the bare foam sitting directly on the forehead of the cyclist seems suboptimal. But something like this would be fantastic. Even the best pads store up salty water and drop them onto lenses or eyes at the worst possible time. No pads should see no source for big drips.

Finding the flow

11/01/25 23:39 Filed in: Riding
The other day I was out at Stromlo by myself - quite literally as it was a warm day between Christmas and NY and there were about 2 cars in the parking lot and I saw zero people on the trails - having a contemplative sort of ride. I was pushing myself, but certainly not at race pace. I rode up the front side and then back down the front side - a lap I have done a thousand times. The descent turned out to be one of those times where everything just felt perfect. I knew I wasn't going to be setting any speed records but everything was simply effortless. Jumps attempted were landed well. Corners flowed, linking together nicely.
It reminded me of the flow states the main character in "Senna" (Netflix show in Brazilian with English subtitles about Ayrton Senna) described when he was driving well. Only in Ayrton's case, he was doing it at maximum possible speed.
It is days like that which make mountain biking worthwhile. All the rides and all the bad moments and bad gear and everything collectively culminate in those few good times.

Great lap at Thredbo

09/01/25 21:20 Filed in: Riding
This season Thredbo renamed the All-mountain Trail with 3 new names so as to bring it into line with other trail naming conventions up there. The traverse across the top to the top station of Gunbarrel is now Panorama - fitting with the sweeping views for most of the way. It is also now a Black Diamond trail. After spending a day riding it repeatedly, I feel like I know why it has been uprated.
There was quite a lot of rock armour on it before. But also long bits of open dirt. Now it is rock a majority of the way. Past seasons the melting snow would make mud out of the dirt and it took sometimes well into the new year to dry out enough for good riding. But now it is almost all rock, I suspect not only can people ride it as soon as the snow melts, but the upkeep will be way lower. The rocks are boulders so chunky and rough. Every small descent ends in a boulder with no downramp. There is a bit of a drop off on each one. Either you pop off the final rock or drop off it. It could overwhelm a novice rider with so many.
The lap becomes up the main Kosciusko lift, across on Panorama to Gunbarrel lift, and then down to the bottom of Gunbarrel by one of the choices available (Dream Catcher is the new name for a lower portion of the All-mountain and is identical to past seasons). Then up the Gunbarrel and across the traverse to the Flow trail and down to the main lift again. Obviously one could take that traverse from the first time hitting top of Gunbarrel, but that doesn't do the lap justice. With 2 lift rides and lots of traversing sections it takes around an hour to do the figure 8 lap. The roughness of the rock armour will leave an impression in your shoulder muscles too.
But it is fantastic fun and if you clean the little climb on Panorama it means you were paying attention to what's ahead - it is easy to get caught in the wrong gear if you don't see the climb approaching.

Suspension "balance"

03/01/25 23:16 Filed in: Gear
Many set-up guides will assist getting the settings in the suspension fork and the shock close to correct for a rider - even if the rider doesn't know what they are doing. I keep reading that most people do not play with the suspension settings at all. That's disappointing because there is so much potential contained in turning a few knobs and adjusting air pressure.
One thing the guides seem to deal with less often is the concept of fore-aft balance. Set the two ends of the bike up in isolation and go ride. If they are quite far from each other in behaviour, the end result is going to be an ill-handling bike. Most suspension runs an o-ring on the inner suspension piece to visually reveal how much travel was used. Probably not on any single run, but certainly through a couple of hours of riding, the front and rear should exploit a very similar proportion of travel - and that proportion should be near full travel.
You don't have to bottom it out every time out. And if you have an Enduro bike, as the best example, riding it on lower speed trails will not push the suspension through its travel if it is set up to deal with higher speed impacts. But if you never bottom out the suspension, then something is not set correctly.
 
Take my recent ride at Thredbo. Even a low-speed day at a ski hill is a high-speed day compared to almost anywhere else. The runs are long, tend to be steep, and give plenty of opportunity to let the bike run wide open. I was running about 1/3 sag in the shock on my DH bike prior to the day. I put a little air in, dropping sag to 30%. I didn't touch the fork. By the end of the day, I had used 95% travel up front and only 80% travel out back. It felt off all day and I think it was the rear not working in harmony with the front (the test will be next time with the rear restored to 33% sag).
If the rear is too high in the travel, it steepens the head angle and pushes weight forward.
Meanwhile my partner's bike used about 98% travel at both ends. Perfect. Those last few percent of travel require hitting something HARD because there is a bottom out bumper inside that has to be squashed out of the way.
 
I suggest you tinker. Change one thing at a time. Keep notes. Try the extremes to see what they do - rebound and compression can cover a small or wide range of actions depending on the brand and model of suspension. I like to bracket - 0 clicks is not enough. All the clicks (just for this example, let's say that is 10 clicks) is too many. Five clicks is close but too little. Eight clicks is close but too many. Six clicks seems good. Seven clicks seems good too. When in doubt, I would default towards less damping. In the example, that would be 6 clicks and not 7. Having decided on 6 clicks, it is time to try something else - if that was rebound now try compression. These things interact. With X pressure and Y clicks of compression, there will be an optimal rebound setting. But change air pressure and/or compression settings and the optimal rebound is likely to be different. Experiment.
 
While I prefer "set and forget" I acknowledge that sometimes the optimal is a few clicks different at different trail locations (different altitude, different dirt, different slopes). And if you sometimes carry a few kg of stuff on your back, where other times you do not, that can alter best suspension settings too.

Helmet fit test

08/12/24 18:14 Filed in: Gear
I neglected to paste this in the previous article (ie, the one below):

Put your helmet on as normal. Grab the rear of the foam and try to roll the helmet forwards off your head. If the straps are adjusted properly and it fits well then it will not roll off the head. If it does roll off, you need to address your helmet's fit - maybe the wrong helmet or the straps are too loose.

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