The GT Marathon rode very nicely. This being the first time that I have had a chance to ride the bike off-road; I was very interested in having some alone time with it. Thanks to some excellent training, I was able to experiment with the bike from the middle of the race on. During each lap, I picked new lines, tried climbing seated vs. standing, and tested the limit of traction. Coming from a hard tail, I had much more grip than I've been accustomed to.

Most ambivalent moment: I had been riding all of the corners hard, drifting under power, really getting a feel for the bike, that sort of thing. Well, I end up throwing a bunch of rocks over the edge of the corner and down the hill, which intern shower a lapped rider and his bike. I finished first, about 5 minutes ahead of the next guy. Due entirely to this super smooth GT Marathon.

I capped that off with pizza from Angelo's "Bishop".

Here are some numbers that I have run on the GT Marathon and a few other bikes for comparison. The numbers don’t lie, this thing is a XC racing machine. When the Marathon is in the large chain ring, the rider faces a 2% drag on the chain line at 0 travel and 4.5% at half travel. In the middle chain ring, the drag increases to 10% at initial travel and 11.3% at half. These numbers are very good when compared to other full suspension designs. For instance, this bike averages 8% drag. The VPP design averages 28.1% drag, and the FSR, 9%.