Swinley Forest on a Session 8

I decided to modify Stumpys Estranged Cousin, also known as a Trek Session 8 and swapped the cassette out for something that gave me a couple of climbing gears instead of 6 down hill and 4 hold on with your teeth gears.

I got the ratio quite well I did not loose much top end down hill gears but was able to climb a good number of hills. I went for a SRAM PG1070 12-32T instead of the factory SRAM PG1050 11-26T. First thing I noticed when I took the old one off was how light the new one was in comparison, did not expect that much of a difference.

Riding around on the Session with the new cassette made transitioning between trail sections easier. I found the change gave the bike better handling as I could pull off easier, even do wheelies which is achievement as the bike is about 18KG.

That said I had a lot of fun moving around trails designed for XC bikes. Although there were 3 points in the 28K run where my handle bars got erm stuck between trees and going into one corner it just could not turn without almost stopping.

Anyway a couple of vids of the day (it was 28 Degrees Celsius too)