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<\/a><\/p>\nEvery rider, in an ideal world, needs at LEAST two mountain bikes; a racey bike and a fun bike. Now, how fun and how racey each bike is depends on the individual, where you live, which brands have brainwashed you etc etc. There are a million different options on the scale from super light racey twitchy bikes, to gnarl monster heavy downhill bikes. If, however, you are like me and can afford only one bike at a time, is there a bike that can fit the do-it-all role for our South African conditions?<\/p>\n
<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nIt all began when I was invited to ride the Isuzu Trucks PE Plett<\/a> race as part of team bikehub.co.za<\/a>, a real honour. I took my bike in for a fork service about ten days before departure which revealed major issues and ended up costing me an arm and a stanchion, and the bike would not be ready in time for the race. I made a call to SJ at Revolution Cycles and he organised me a demo Pyga. Rad! Now, my bike is a hardtail 29er race machine, lightweight and upright, with as little travel as you can respectably ride on a mountain bike. It’s a great bike for its purpose, competing in XC races (I won one, once<\/a>).<\/p>\n The demo PYGA OneTen in relation to my bike is a super fun, trail hungry, machine with a fair amount more suspension. I was going into the race a bit fitter than my partner Matt so I was very keen to give the “fun bike” a real try, and I wasn’t really worried about the weight penalty of the Pyga over my carbon race machine.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n SJ told me the bike as is a R52,000 build. All in, it weighed just over thirteen kilograms.<\/p>\n The bike is a real head-turner. I personally like the look of it and think the colour scheme is awesome. SJ put on a bottle cage for me and said it “looked cool”. I think it was more like a camouflaged bottle cage to confuse me while riding but it did suit the bike.<\/p>\n I am a fan of dropper posts; I had one on a previous bike and loved it. The thing is, on a racey carbon hardtail, it just seems weird to put on a dropper, and so you never really see that. With the Pyga though, it would seem weird NOT to put one on. At the end of the day, if your bike has a dropper, you are gonna have more fun. I’ve gotten used to chafing my bellybutton on my high mast saddle whenever I go down steep sections but it’s definitely more awesome and faster with a dropped saddle.<\/p>\n I had only really pedalled about 100m on the bike before the start of the race but the setup was done well, (large frame with a short stem, which is all the rage right now) and the suspension was dialled to my great weight. It immediately felt comfy and I had no problem familiarising myself with the slacker head angle.<\/p>\n Fairly new for me was the X01 groupset. I pushed on the phantom front derailleur shifter a couple of times by mistake. The X01 was flawless, despite the muddiest riding conditions I’ve ever put a bike through. I’ve always known that 1×11 option was a good option, but never really thought it was worth the extra cash if weight-saving was the only benefit. It’s not. The narrow-wide thing works in such a way that there is no chain suck or shifting issues in harsh conditions. I was very impressed how flawlessly it performed, whilst my partner was fighting chain suck at the most inappropriate moments.<\/p>\n Also, with a tough stage race as a tester, I found the 32 tooth front ring was adequate. If the climb is so steep that a 32 ring doesn’t suffice, it’s probably easier and quicker to get off and walk. And on the other end of the spectrum, you only run out of gears if you are pacing down a tar road at high speed and then you must either tuck in behind someone or learn to spin a bit faster, but you very seldom need to go that fast on a mountain bike race.<\/p>\nSo what are the specifications?<\/h2>\n
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