Mountain bikes for women... specifically designed for your riding needs? Seriously, you'd be mad not to get your hands on one.
OK, you've got the riding bug. You've ridden against the guys and you've beaten them... but the bike fit was bad enough to put you off doing it ever again. Sore butt, shoulders and neck, not to mention the legs.
The problem, is you're riding bikes designed for guys, and guy's bodies work differently. Just always the smallest size frame is not going to solve the problem. However, women's specific bike ride Butt improve things for both the shoulder, neck e. Unfortunately, we can very sore feet, come with the territory.
"The uniqueness of this mountain that even considered?"
Let's get down to the basics. The truth is that there are 4 major anatomical reasons;
They tend to haveshort back and legs longer than boys. This affects the length of top tube, which should be shorter and thus affect the range. (Unfortunately, in recent years, the trend here has been extended on the top tube, things even more uncomfortable for women.
Your hip swing is different from that of boys. You girls tend to bend and rotate in a different way and this has an impact on the geometry of the base of the mountain bike for women.
The anatomicalrequirements of your butt is also important. Your hips tend to be wider and the padding is more specific to your requirement.
Unless you're an Olympic swimmer you'll probably have narrower shoulders than the guys too. So the bars are smaller, as are the grips, for the smaller hands.
"OK, so is there a full range of bikes, or am I going to end up with something that's cheap and cheerful and pink?"
I'm glad to say, the days of "shrink and pink" are behind us. Most of the serious manufacturers now have a good women's mountain bike range that are marathon and race capable. They also have some very good trail bikes.
And it's not just restricted to Hardtails. Fullies are out there too, with manufacturers like Specialized developing rear-shocks specifically (you tend to be lighter) for their range of bikes.
Manufacturers to watch are Scott, Specialized and Trek.
The Scott Contessa range provides excellent Hardtail (Scale) and Full Suspension (Spark) rigs.
Trek also provide the 8000 WSD (HT) and Fuel EX8 WSD (FS).
As of going to press Specialized have reduced their line of women's mountain bikes down to two, the Safire (FS) and the Myka (FS + HT versions).
I can't promise you, but there may still be some mountain bikes for women out there in the inevitable...pink.
