(Ed’s Note: Matt modestly plays his speed and fitness down here, but the 26 year-old bike coach has been riding for fourteen years, and placed first in last year’s Clic24 24-hour solo race. It’s worth bearing that in mind).

Cannondale Scalpel 3

If you read part one you’ll know the Scalpel had already surprised me during a day’s photoshoot at Afan – it’s quick, clever and a whole lot more fun than a serious racer has any right to be. I arranged to borrow the bike from What Mountain Bike and really put it to the test with laps of my home trails. How much quicker would this 23lb carbon racer be than my 28lb, 140mm trail bike?

As a mountain bike skills coach (www.pedalprogression.com), I’m all about technique and I genuinely believe that an improvement in technique will result in an improvement in speed and enjoyment. Skill should always come before fitness. If you’re riding regularly your fitness will develop itself, but fitness without skill is futile. Where am I going with this? Well, while I’m not unfit, I’m no gristly-legged, gel-popping race junkie either. However, a childhood in bicycle trials has gifted me with an arsenal of trail skills. Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why I lapped my local trails over two minutes faster on… the trail bike Zesty over the light and racy Cannondale.

The Zesty weighs in at 12.7kg (28lb) and with 140mm of travel is no XC racer, but it does inspire a confidence the Scalpel lacks. I can throw the Zesty into corners aggressively where the Scalpel begins to wash out. Saying that, the straightline speed of the Scalpel destroys the French lemon in less technical sections, but Ashton Court is a smooth, rock-armoured trail centre of a place. It doesn’t get much less technical than that – it’s interesting that even here, that extra straightline speed doesn’t pay off.

The 100mm Cannondale Lefty fork wasn't too troubled by the trails of Ashton Court

After riding with a RockShox Reverb for the last year, it’s a struggle ride a bike with a fixed post, as a dropper has radically changed the way I ride. A low seat allows greater body movement and helps massively in getting low into corners, as well as over the more technical sections. Adopting the most power-efficient seating position on the Scalpel made the technical sections difficult, but the flat-out singletrack even more rapid. The extra pound or so of a dropper post would almost certainly add real-world speed, rather than lessen it.

My conclusion in this little experiment is that Scalpel is simply too much bike for me to get the best out of right now, and though thoroughly enjoyable to ride, it’s not going to make anyone quicker just because its a race bike. I was slower in the corners on the Scalpel, and in theory should have made that time up on the faster sections, but my body wouldn’t allow me to sprint as I’d have liked! You’d really need fantastic fitness to make up that deficit, as so much of any trail is corner. There’s a lesson here for perhaps the majority of riders.

There’s no doubt the Scalpel is a rapid and fun race bike for the punter who has great bike skills and fitness combined. But until I feel fast enough to wear Lycra suits and obsess about leg hair, I’ll continue to beast the laps on my Zesty.

Matt Legg-Bagg, What Mountain Bike tester and Pedal Progression skills coach

You can see the 2012 Lappiere Zesty and the Cannondale Scalpel in an upcoming issue of What Mountain Bike, where they’ll be tested within an inch of their lives.

(Ed’s Note: Matt modestly plays his speed and fitness down here, but the 26 year-old bike coach has been riding for 14 years, and placed first in last year’s Clic24 24-hour solo race. It’s worth bearing that in mind).

Cannondale Scalpel 3

Having dabbled in cross-country (XC) racing last season I’d considered buying a race bike, but after testing various Scales, Flashes, Epics and Whippets I decided that carbon hardtails were uncomfortable and race bikes were boring! A blanket judgement I’m sure, but whether I’m racing or not I want a bike I can have fun riding, and in these models I hadn’t found one.

Then photographer Seb (Rogers) rocked up with a brace of bikes loaded on the Thule rack and Steve (editor of WMB) in the passenger seat. We were off to Afan to shoot a bike test and magazine cover. I was excited to see a Lapierre Zesty 514 on the back – along with a Ghost AMR and a bizarre-looking Cannondale. I ride a 2011 Zesty 514 and was keen to shred the newly evolved model, but my dream was shattered when Steve announced he’d be riding it, no matter how well my riding kit matched. I ended up with the Cannondale, the one bike I didn’t really want to ride…

It’s a Cannondale Scalpel 3 with a carbon frame, 100mm Lefty fork and DT Swiss wheelset – all specced out with a mixture of high-end SRAM and Shimano kit. One of the Scalpel’s main oddities is its lack of a main pivot. Instead the frame is made from a springy elastic carbon that allows the chainstays to flex, with the support of an 80mm RockShox Monarch shock.

Carbon frame makes for flex in the chainstays

Weighing in at 10.5kg (23lb) with M520 pedals, it’s an amateur XC racers dream. Once I’d got over the head-screw of a frame that bent 80mm as well as having half a fork missing, it occurred to me I was having a really good time. In fact, I was highly stoked! So stoked I decided to nab the bike for the following week to really put it through its paces. Was this the enjoyable, super-quick race bike I’d been looking for? This was now a proper experiment involving my local trails and timing equipment. The results were interesting…

Fast and fun

The day’s riding at Afan had got me buzzing. I felt like a Maths dropout who’d finally ‘got’ algebra; I’d found a race bike that was comfortable, responsive and pinned. Suddenly everything made sense and I couldn’t wait to get it back to Bristol for an Ashton Court loop… or five.

The Scalpel is built with some top kit including XT and X7 mechs, SLX shifters and a SRAM chainset with a big old BB30 bottom bracket. The mixed-make 2×10 shifting actually works a treat.

Although fast, the Schwalbe tyres appear to be made from soggy toilet paper with the rear ripping on my very first thrashing, leaving some kind of inner tube haemorrhoid popping out of the side wall! A quick Park tyre boot later and all was well.  The Lefty fork can pull the bike to one side when locked out, but when in its travel it’s effective and comfortable, and I was surprised at the lack of flex. I expected to get some sort of shudder when braking with just the front brake, but there was nothing. Impressive for such a light and flimsy-looking piece of kit.

While my peers were freaked out by the flexy stays, I was finding the benefits in this very clever technology. The carbon in this part of the bike is super-springy and adds an element of fun I’ve not found in any other bike. Over whoops and flowing corners you can carry speed by pumping the bike and flexing the stays, only for them to spring back, sending the back light and ready to be thrown into the next turn. The Scalpel has amazing agility and feels ready for anything. Surprisingly it also manuals incredibly well – I only wish I’d had time to take it to the pump track!

This is a super-fun and fast bike there’s no doubt, but could I keep it pinned enough to be quicker over a lap of Ashton Court? Check back in a couple of days, when all will be revealed!

 Matt Legg-Bagg, What Mountain Bike tester and Pedal Progression skills coach

As ever What Mountain Bike is packed full of bike and gear reviews to help you make the right buying decisions.

For First Rides we’ve taken the Devinci Atlas RC out for a spin to see how packing 29in wheels into a 26in-style frame works out. Hint: the results look positive. Considering the potential for wheelsize hype, we test the Jamis Dakar 650b Comp to find out if the middle wheelsize (27.5in) is indeed where things should be at. Plus tests on the Stevens Fluent ES and Silverback’s Storm 1.0.

First Rides - Devinci Atlas RC

First Rides - Jamis Dakar 650b Comp

First Rides - Stevens Fluent ES

First Rides - Silverback Storm 1.0

Our bike test concentrates on homegrown big wheelers, pitting five UK cutting edge 29ers against each other – Singular Swift, Cotic Solaris, Kinesis FF29, Pace RC129 and Genesis Fortitude Adventure.

Genesis Fortitude Adventure and Pace RC129 battle it out in our bike test

Our look at the best UK trail centres finds its way to Scotland to bring you our top 10 centres of excellence north of the border.

There are trails to suit all abilities at Glentress

More series continue with the second part of WMB‘s Ultimate Skills Guide -  this month our expert advice shows you how to scrub off speed safely and stop on a dime. Our ‘Brief History of…’ continues with a look back at how mountain bike wheels have evolved over the years.

Expert advice on where and when to haul on the brakes

Fancy a challenge? We show you how to put the mountain back into mountain biking with a ride/push and carry up North Wales’ Cadair Idris and a fun blast back down.

What goes up has fun coming down - descending Cadair Idris, North Wales

If you want adventure, but on a slightly smaller scale, our route guide riders and writers head to Dartmoor to bring you three routes over the moors, taking in the scenery, myths and magic of the area.

Take in the tors as you traverse the terrain of Dartmoor

What Mountain Bike 136 brings you all this plus grouptests on trail helmets, 1×10 chain devices, £1000 women’s hardtails, technical advice and workshop knowhow, and loads more.  On sale now!

So after the driest March in 59 years came the wettest April in 100 years. What will May bring? Snow? Volcanoes? A hail of frogs? Perhaps all these things. But for now it’s still wet. After the dry, dusty tease of spring, it’s even harder to take – right? I thought so. Until last night, as I listened to the warm white noise of rain in an otherwise silent forest, and fell in love with it again.

Having grown up on the coast I find the sound of breaking waves incredibly relaxing, as do many people. But rain billowing into the flat, pattering greenery of a forest is a very close second, an almost secret second, and nothing is better than a mountain bike for giving you such experiences. They take you further than your feet alone can; they provide warmth through your pedalling; they slither across every incline, camber and obstacle, boosting what’s easy/flat in the dry to a tricky, shimmying test of balance. Mountain bikes – and the frankly amazing clothes and kit that keep us warm in the worst of it – make it fun to be out in a downpour, threading through a tangle of sodden deadwood, tree trunks running like slow waterfalls, and glistening fresh leaves.

So it might be grim out on exposed hills and ridges right now, but it’s warm and ugly-pretty in the woods, with the best soundtrack you could wish for. Get out the map, head into your local woods and see what you can find.

Last night I had mud in my teeth because I couldn’t stop smiling.

Steve

Nobody wants to ride a frame that behaves like two unicycles joined with string every time the front wheel hits the deep end of a squirrel’s toe print. And nobody sane misses the days when stiff chassis were beyond many manufacturers. But has all that hydroformed and carbon-weave strength gone too far? While lateral strength adds much-needed tracking precision and cornering stability, excessive vertical strength just ends up fatiguing and even unbalancing the rider… meaning less control, not more.

Just man up and get on with it, some might say – race bikes and cross-country (XC) hardtails are supposed to be stiff. Uncompromising. Manly. But how does making riders suffer make them faster? Without the rider, the fastest bike in the world will just fall over and lie still. The rider is an intrinsic component. So it’s stupid to ignore their needs.

Take the carbon Niner Air 9, for instance, which tech ed Justin Loretz has been running for the last year. “It’s near the top of the stiffness scale,” he says. “When I ride it, I’m thinking about how long the ride’s going to last, because it’s uncompromisingly direct chassis prematurely wears me out. Whereas when I take the Seven Sola – a compliant titanium hardtail that’s the antithesis of the Niner in concept – I’m thinking, ‘How long have I got?’ The frame’s working with me, not against me. So which one, in the real world, is actually more efficient? For me it’s the less-stiff one.” The Niner is a stunning bike, make no mistake, but it’s a design that asks a lot of you.

Interestingly, there’s a parallel in motorcycle racing. For decades the quest has been to build stiffer and stiffer chassis to contain the ballooning power outputs of MotoGP bikes (they’re past 250bhp now…). After years of frighteningly bendy frames, the materials – aluminium and then carbon beam frames – have caught up. And gone too far. Even Valentino Rossi couldn’t get on with Ducati’s insanely stiff carbon ‘airbox’ chassis, as while it was technically the best solution – according to computer data – human riders couldn’t tell what it was doing (Casey Stoner was the sole exception, and having seen him ride in person, we can confirm the guy is a superhuman robot). MotoGP manufacturers now invest heavily in controlled flex, designs that bend in one plane but not others, to allow riders not comfort, but that all-important, performance-enhancing feel.

Mountain bikes are now in a similar position. Frame stiffness can surpass a rider’s ability to make it pay off. Trek seems to have realised this with its road bikes – it’s just released the Domane, which has a seat tube that’s partially decoupled from the top tube for comfort on cobbled events. And if roadies are realising comfort isn’t a dirty word, surely it’s time hardtail mountain bikes got the same attention.

Steve

THIS is a mountain. In UK, perhaps for obvious reasons, a lot of mountain bikes never go up mountains. As in properly up, right to the top, rather than skirting the slopes, swooping around hills or just lurking in the local woods. So it’s good to get the mountain into biking sometimes. Especially times like these.

This is the top of Cadair Idris in North Wales, where we were just a few days back – on a mission. From here it’s about 7km back to where we parked. Oh, and 850m vertically. That’s 4.3 miles and 2800 feet in old money. That’s a lot of feet and a lot of rock.

It’s mostly rocky outcrops and loose boulders here. Sure, Coed y Brenin’s purpose-built trails are just a few minutes up the road and I’m certainly not averse to a bit of trail centre blasting – but really, there’s no contest. Just look at it! In fact, don’t just look – get out there. But you’ll need a plan. You have to watch what you’re doing in the mountains, of course, so we’ll be telling you all about the hows, whys and wheres in an upcoming issue of What Mountain Bike. Don’t miss it.

Mike Davis

Sharp cut
Blunt cable cutters can cause ragged cuts and frayed, kinked ends so buy a new set; even cheap ones will cut well for a while. Don’t whatever you do try to use the wire cutters on multitools or pliers.

Cable ends
One of the biggest crimes against bikes is fitting fresh gear inner cables, trimming them neatly then leaving the ends bare. These raw cut cable ends are sharp and prone to fraying. Small alloy cable ends are cheap and easy to use.

Proper crimping
We recommend at least two passes with the crimper over the cable ends. Most cable cutters have crimping slots on the jaw’s inside edges. Fact: pro mechanics often have a ‘signature’ crimp style that they use to sign off a finished bike.

Solder on
As an alternative to crimping the ends on trimmed cables, place a small drop of solder onto the freshly cut end, just enough to stick the individual wire braids together. Tip: file any excess solder away to achieve a smooth finish.

Clean up
Keeping your inner cables clean is the best way to ensure they last as long and work as effectively as possible. A regular wipe down with a cloth will remove any floating muck, tainted lube or trail debris that may have got into your cables.

Add lube
Some cables come pre-coated with a low friction Teflon, which helps them to slide more effectively inside the outer housing. All cables require some sort of lube to aid sliding inside the housing. Use a light lube and remove and replace it often.

Fresh outers
If you’ve gone to the effort to ensure that your inner cables are fresh and oiled, check that your outer housing isn’t letting you down by being kinked, cracked or just rusty. It will add to the cost but taking care of it will be worth it.

Rubber baffles
Fitting rubber baffles to your inner cables is especially useful in areas where water is likely to run down them and sit on the entry points to the outer cable. The baffles disrupt the flow of the water and help seal the cable outer.

First Rides: A head to head battle between two superbikes – the Pivot Mach 5.7 Carbon and Intense Carbine

First Rides: Kineses Maxlight XC130

First Rides: Carrera Vulcan

Bike test: The right bike can make the difference between enjoying and enduring marathon trail riding. We look at six of the best for around £2000

Group test: The braking scene has recently undergone a big shake up, so as the dust settles we find out the final verdict after testing the best options from basic to bling

Ride guide: Get out and discover the trails beyond Cannock Chase’s trail centre

Bike test: Are big wheelers the answer if you’re looking for a smoother, more controlled and faster ride for around £1000

Group test: Is it possible to buy a home workshop in a box? We see how a wide range of products perform when the going gets grimy

Bionic bikers: We meet two mountain bikers who’ve kept riding despite suffering lower leg amputations

PLUS: Steve Worland’s 20 top tips to spend your money well to become a better rider, how to shorted Magura disc brake hoses, your tech questions answered and the usual mix of news and bike and gear review. Issue 132 on sale now!

Just as we’re committed to bringing you all the latest mountain biking news and freshest products, we’re also striving hard to make our decidedly glossy mag even more portable than ever. Apple’s new Newsstand app allows users to download their favourite mags straight to their iPhones and iPads.

We’ve done our best to ensure that the digital edition is as intuitive and easy to use as possible complete with absolutely every last ounce of mountain biking wisdom that you’ll find in the paper copy.

Don’t believe us? Think we’re pulling your pecker? Then get on to Newsstand now and track us down – we’ve even put a free issue on there for you to download and try out gratis. FOC. For nothing. Free! Better than that, we’ve now got a massive range of back issues also available to download from as far back as Novermber 2010.

Obviously, MBUK is still the greatest adornment that you can make to your coffee table but imagine being able to thumb the pages of Britain’s best cycling magazine when you’re waiting patiently outside the Topshop changing rooms, on the bus or even sitting in the motor waiting for everyone else to turn up for the Sunday blast?!

If you don’t ‘do’ Apple then you can also check us out on Zinio for Android too.

We bring you the best of British with five £700-£1800 hardballs that will defy the rigours of year-round riding

Four bikes get the First Ride treatment – a head to head battle of the Merida Big.Nine against its120 sibling, Mongoose Slayton Expert and Giant XtC Composite 0 29er

Everyone wants to cut their carbon footprint but sometimes four-wheels are necessary to get you to that trail centre or start your riding day. We look at cars that you can comfortably stash your two-wheeled steed in

For our route guide we’re head out into the Malvern Hills

If your New Year’s resolution was to get fitter and train harder, why not sign up for an event to give you something to aim for? Check out our pick of 10 of the best to inspire you

We go behind the scenes with Ian Alexander at Whyte for a cuppa and a chat

Plus the usual mix of technical know-how and bike and kit reviews
WMB131 on sale now!