Scott Scale 29er Ride x.1 and x.2

I spend a fair amount of training time on the road.   But I like to train on what I race, which means I ride my mtb on the road.  Since these rides cannot really be part of the "ride it 5 x before you make you mind" test ride of the Scale 29er, I'll enumerate these rides as x.1 and x.2. I know you can't really get a good sense of a mtb by riding the road, but it does allow to detect some nuances I might otherwise not pick up on while barreling down a rocky trail.

One of the things I noticed pretty quickly was how stable the bike is.  For example, on my Epic I cannot let the handle bars go at more than 25mph.  The front wheel will shake like crazy.  I've never let go long enough to find out what happens after wards or at higher speed.   On the Scale the bike just plowed comfortably forwards regardless of the speed or if my hands were on the bars.  This actually has a small mountain bike application for me.  My back tends to really tightened up during racing, so I often like to let go of the bars and sit up straight to stretch out.  Maybe now I can stretch for longer than 1 second and without having to slow down.

My local training route includes a couple of smaller hills at about 5% grade in a residential area I ride several times over.  For entertainment I usually ride figure 0 and 8 up and down through the neighborhood.  On the way down I can pick up a fair amount of speed and have always needed to slow down for the turns (especially since the rain always deposits a nice little pile of sand right at the bottom of the turns).  The Scale, through those turns, felt very stable and comfortable and the increase in traction was very noticeable.  I don't ride with a computer anymore but I know I was taking those turns at several mph higher.

On ride x.2, I rode the bike path to Providence to do my "weekly" College Hill workout (which I actually have not done in while).  This consist of ridding every hilly side street off of South Main street to the top.  I start at the Wickenden street intersection and then rid up: James street, Williams, Power, Planet, College, Waterman, S. Court to Meeting - that one hurts like a mofo!- and if I have anything left, Jenckes (I haven't had anything left in a while). I'll then ride to Casters Bike to refill my bottle and ride them in reverse order on the way out (though since it's the off season I have been leaving Jenckes and S Court out!) .  I rode this last week on my Epic, and since it had been a while since I had done this workout, when I crested that last little 20 % riser on Meeting street, I almost passed out, then almost puked!  So I thought this work out was going to be significantly harder on the Scale based on the weight of the wheels and the overall bike.  Yet I was happily surprised and made it up all the hills (w/out ever feeling like I was going to vomit!).  I did notice however that this bike wants to be climbed while standing and requires more raw power than the Epic, which I can sit and spin on  (bad phrase there!)  Anyways, not too interesting stuff here but there it is...

Data from an old College Hill climb session!