[IMG]Commuter RockHopper by superissimo_83, on Flickr[/IMG]

I decided to broaden my lurking on BF by coming to this thread! I commute home nearly every day. It would be round trip but I don’t have a place to shower. That should change next week with a new job.

Here is my commute bike as it was set up since last year. I am not sure there is a “typical” commuter bike but it works well for me as it was the only option for several years. The tires happen to be Uff Da in 2.3 inch size. I know, they are way big. The issue is the MUP I travel on has a number of tree root bumps on it as well as a number of transitions that get old. I thought the bigger tires would be enough suspension. They have worked reasonably well. The other plus is they look bad ass on the bike!

Each trip is recorded when getting home so I have a decent idea of how I am improving and some idea of what contributes to good time vs slower times. Head winds are the core reason along with temperature. I like a cooler temp of < 75 for a faster run. The runs are pretty aggressive on average and the average MPH has steadily increased over the last year plus.
The bike fully loaded on the way home is about 47-48 lbs. so it provides a lot of resistance training!

One of the reasons for buying this bike back in 98 was to have a beater to use all around and as an off road or trail bike. Back then it was called mountain biking! That never happened for me. A couple of considerations in the purchase besides versatility was the fact that it was an end of year sale and the threadless fork. This model was also available with front suspension. I didn’t want to pay the extra for that so the thought was to upgrade when the time was right (financial).

In 2011, a Marzocchi SL 2003 fork was found on CL for $100 that had a steerer long enough (9.5”). It had just been overhauled and was in decent shape. The search had been going on for a couple of years but a steerer that was long enough was not found. Eventually a front wheel with XT hub for disk brakes was found as was NOS Avid BB-7. I can convert between the solid fork and suspension in about 20 min. This fork has three adjustments and a lock out, air suspension and came with a pump.

So last week I swapped forks for commuting. I know many of you say a suspension fork is not for commuting. I was curious if my performance would suffer based on the added pound of weight. So far the impact is in the noise of the data. Performance this month is no different than last month with a trend that I am still getting stronger. Perhaps a pound is too small a percentage to make a difference. I weighed the bike the other day and it is about 50 lbs with the Marzocchi.

Comments?