  My current recreational obsession is mountain biking. I compete in a mountain bike orienteering league which is here: urlLink EBOR - Bike-O . With 7 events down I am defying the advancing years to hold onto 9th place (I am 39, and the senior league is 18-40). I reckon I need two good results out of the last 4 events to hold onto a top-ten finish (my target for the year). As a typical man I shall start by describing my mountain bike! My mountain bike started off 2 and a half years ago as a stock urlLink Specialized Rockhopper Disk .
Over time I have replaced everything except the frame, stem and handle-bars. I have tried to wait til things wore out before replacing them. This is the state of it the bike now: Forks: Were originally: urlLink Manitou 6 comp . Reason for replacing: I thought the seals were going (although it turned out to be the headset) although I had never really been happy with the performance. The lack of rebound damping meant that fast downhill rides were very exciting (read uncontrolled and scary! ) and during a competition I was bucked off the bike completely in a spectacular manner. With a huge audience!
Replaced with: urlLink Pace RC36 Pro-Class II Verdict: Fantastic forks! British! Better than that, made in urlLink North Yorkshire (my adopted home county). What happened was, after research I had decided that I wanted a set of Pace forks but was going to buy them when I had saved up enough money. When I heard that Pace were bringing out the hollowform forks I decided to bring forward my purchase. This turned out to be a good decision as I got a lockout equipped fork for the same price as a non-lockout. Having used a lockout I would never buy a fork without now. It makes a huge difference on the road and up-hill on fire roads if you get out of the saddle. In use the fork is very smooth and never seems to get out of control. Its particular strength is fast bumpy tracks (it is a race fork after all).
I have left it on the 80mm setting. I may change it to 100mm so I will let you know how I get on. I had it serviced after 1 year and one of the springs had broken so I only waited 6 months for the next service. At the next service another spring had broken so I am going to stay with 6 month services at the moment. A broken spring doesn't seem to make to much difference to the performance although the forks were noticably smoother after the service. Well as it's beautifully sunny outside, I will finish now as I need to be out on the bike. More details later. Look out for a rant on Magura brakes! 
