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A message to the bike businesses that make all this great and expensive stuff. The guys that started mountain biking as a thing are now getting into their sixties and seventies. We're still riding and hope to ride forever. However, there are lots of companies out there that seem to think all riders are 25 with ideal bodies. There are two products that have been especially problematic for me. You likely have encountered issues too.
Handlebars. There has been thread after thread about wrist, elbow, and shoulder pain in the old farts forum and this one. I've now got Surly Terminal bars on my FS bike to try to match the angle and height of the grips to my hands where they naturally fall on the bars but 35 degrees is too much sweep and my hands still hit badly, just opposite of the stock bars. Too much sweep after too little sweep. Fatback made a bar with 16 degrees of sweep but it doesn't seem to be available. SQ labs comes close. We older folks need a range of bars with sweeps from about 15 to 20 degrees to complement the narrow assortment of swept back bars that typically sweep 25 to even 45 degrees.
Shoes. As people get older, arches fail (from abuse in my case) and feet get longer and wider. At this point, the only shoes that fit at all comfortably are some of the Lake shoes that come in a wide. We need an assortment of widths to fit older feet and there are a lot of older riders - just hit the trails on a weekday and you'll see us.
So, get with the picture and serve this growing portion of the mtb community and make some money while doing it.
Anyone got anything to add to this list?
Handlebars. There has been thread after thread about wrist, elbow, and shoulder pain in the old farts forum and this one. I've now got Surly Terminal bars on my FS bike to try to match the angle and height of the grips to my hands where they naturally fall on the bars but 35 degrees is too much sweep and my hands still hit badly, just opposite of the stock bars. Too much sweep after too little sweep. Fatback made a bar with 16 degrees of sweep but it doesn't seem to be available. SQ labs comes close. We older folks need a range of bars with sweeps from about 15 to 20 degrees to complement the narrow assortment of swept back bars that typically sweep 25 to even 45 degrees.
Shoes. As people get older, arches fail (from abuse in my case) and feet get longer and wider. At this point, the only shoes that fit at all comfortably are some of the Lake shoes that come in a wide. We need an assortment of widths to fit older feet and there are a lot of older riders - just hit the trails on a weekday and you'll see us.
So, get with the picture and serve this growing portion of the mtb community and make some money while doing it.
Anyone got anything to add to this list?