It is no secret that oval chainrings have been a controversial topic ever since they came out. From the old school, bio-pace rings to the new and highly advanced oval chainrings from brands such as Absolute Black. The amount of testing and development the team at Absolute Black put into their products is simply mind-blowing and it can be seen in the quality of their products. You might be saying to yourself, well that’s great and all but I can’t run any tests, I don’t have an oxygen monitor, power meter, and near perfect trail conditions to get accurate results, how do I know if an oval chainring would benefit me or my bike? Well, because we can’t really replicate chainring testing as Absolute Black can, we decided to do some real-life back to back testing with a few of the guys at the shop.
We had a few riders at the shop, including myself on both my cross country bike and my gravel bike, perform a back to back test between oval and traditional chainrings to see if they could notice a difference and see if one feels better than the other. Adam and Chance went through the adaptive period that Absolute Black recommends, with about 10-15 rides over about 2-3 weeks to get used to the differences. Michael had never ridden the oval chainring until the day of the test, so he was fresh to the feel. We then put each rider back on to the round chainring after a test run to see if they could in fact, notice a difference on the same section of trail back to back.
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From Worldwide Cyclery
We're a group of dudes who really enjoy three things. Bikes, Business and Beer. We see value in enjoying our lives, working in an industry we're passionate about and around people we actually like. We built this shop on a backbone of exceptional customer experience, unique product offering, attention to detail and a modern day business model. We care about innovation, technology and bringing value to our customers. This is in many ways disrupting the way retail has been done in the bicycle industry for the past several decades. But by now you know, we are far from the typical bike shop and love being different and being better.
