Lauf Elja Trail Ultimate Flight Attendant first ride review

The Lauf Elja is a box-fresh XC or downcountry bike hailing from the rocky outcrop that is Iceland. It features 120mm of travel at the rear, with 120mm or 130mm fork options respectively.

There aren’t many true single-pivot (frame and swingarm only, with no linkages or additional pivots between the swingarm and shock) bikes around these days. Starling and Orange are the only two brands that spring to mind – and neither of them make a true XC race bike.

Lauf’s Elja is a proper single-pivot cross-country bike, or if you opt for the RockShox Pike-equipped model, as I have here, a light and fast downcountry bike.

Lauf might be a new name to mountain bikers (unless you remember its Trail Racer leaf-sprung forks), but in the gravel and road world the brand has been making a name for itself, thanks partly to its drive for wider tyres.

The Elja is no exception – it rolls on 2.6-inch rubber as stock, and you can squeeze 3in tyres in there too – remember, this bike is built for cross-country racing.

Lauf Elja Trail Ultimate Flight Attendant frame and suspension details

While high-modulus carbon fibres save weight, Lauf claims the standard-modulus fibres it uses are more impact-resistant, and its frame comes in only around 100g heavier than competitor bikes, so it’s a price worth paying.

The early part of the swingarm, near the pivot, is built to be stiff, and is there to resist twist and bending forces from the rear wheel. A SRAM DUB bottom bracket provides a super-wide, and easy to replace, main pivot.

The swingarm is very asymmetric, with the raised driveside there to enable the chain to run without interference, and the non-driveside built for stiffness.

Shocks can suffer excess wear via side-loading on two-bar single pivots, so Lauf drives the shock via thin, laterally flexible arms, to take such loads away.

Lauf believes the rear wheel path’s centre of rotation is the key factor in determining suspension performance, with the shock offering fine-tuning via the air spring and damping circuits.

The pivot location is higher and further forward than most single pivots (including flex-stay designs), which Lauf claims offers increased resistance to pedal bob and better sensitivity under braking.

Elsewhere, there’s (just) space for two water bottles in the frame and a third under the down tube, damped bearings in the headset to filter out trail chatter and front-to-rear brake hose routing for easy maintenance.

The frame is compatible only with wireless drivetrains, and with all models shipping with a RockShox Reverb AXS dropper, there’s a hole for dropper cable routing next to the brake-hose entry, but no internal guides.

Finally, there’s no routing option for cable shock lockouts – it’s RockShox Flight Attendant (as seen here) or lever-operated only.

Lauf Elja Trail Ultimate Flight Attendant specification

Lauf will be offering the Elja in three build families, with two fork options in each – a downcountry 130mm RockShox Pike (as ridden here) and a 120mm XC-racer RockShox SID.

At this top end, it’s electronics all the way, with SRAM XX SL Transmission drivetrains and RockShox’s super-fancy Flight Attendant wireless control of the fork and shock’s compression damping circuits.

This also relies on an XX SL dual-sided power meter crankset to get the full performance from the electronics.

Stopping comes in the form of SRAM Level Ultimate four-piston brakes, the Fizik saddle is held by an AXS Reverb dropper and the Zipp 1Zero HiTop S wheels finish off a SRAM-packed build.

Elsewhere, the 130mm version gets a 50mm stem and Lauf’s own 780mm flat bar.

If you’re convinced wide tyres are the future of XC racing, where do you go? While there are a few options from Maxxis and Schwalbe, Lauf asked Goodyear to produce its own bespoke rubber – almost unheard of in cycling.

The Peak tyres come in at 2.6in wide and weigh 808g (on my scales). They have a low profile, closely packed tread pattern for low rolling resistance and are fairly rounded in cross-profile. They feature a 120 TPI carcass.

In comparison, the Maxxis Rekon Race 29x2.4WT, with a 120 TPI carcass, I have in my garage comes in at 827g.

Lauf Elja Trail Ultimate Flight Attendant geometry

Lauf looked at a range of current XC bikes and decided to follow modern trends when it came to the bike's geometry, rather than try anything wild.

On this 130mm downcountry build, there’s a 476mm reach in a Large, along with a 65.6-degree head angle. Add in 435mm chainstays and you get a moderately lengthy 1,223mm wheelbase.

The seat angle isn’t particularly steep, at 75.8 degrees, while the stack sits at 619mm – not slammed, but not high, either.

Lauf Elja Trail Ultimate Flight Attendant first ride impressions

This is a preliminary review of the 130mm-fork Lauf Elja, based on two rides at the launch event in Iceland, on trails I was unfamiliar with.

I rode the Trail version of the bike with a 130mm RockShox Pike fork, however I now have the same bike with a 120mm SID fork at home, ready for a full review.

Setting the bike up was pretty easy – I ran 30 per cent sag, as recommended by Lauf, in the SIDLuxe shock, with the stock compression damping set by RockShox and the rebound damping fairly fast, as per my preference. A small Allen key is required to alter the rebound on the shock.

Up front, I ran the Pike with around 20 per cent sag.

I ran the Flight Attendant with a -1 bias – a little more forgiving than the neutral setting, meaning it tended towards the open or pedal mode a little earlier than it might otherwise do, matching the greater trail focus of this build.

It’s noteworthy that Flight Attendant continuously updates its internal programming as you ride the bike more, and after only two rides, it would be fair to say it wasn’t necessarily optimised.

Data from seven rides is saved continuously to keep its algorithms fully up-to-date – more rides means better data and better performance.

The system works by aggregating a range of data – power input from the power meter, bumps detected by the fork and shock, and trail-inclination data from the sensors.

Merging all this information together enables the system to decide which of three low-speed compression modes the fork and shock should be in, and switches between them automatically.

It’s a complex system, which I won’t go into heavily here because it would comfortably fill its own review.

Tyre pressures are where I played around with the settings a lot more, starting with 20psi in the rear and 19psi in the front.

During my time on the bike, I dropped them as low as 11psi at the front and 13 at the rear. However, by the end of the riding, I’d ended up at 16psi at the front and 18 at the rear – set up for fast, rocky trails.

As I found years ago when plus-sized tyres were popular, small pressure changes make a big difference to performance. Therefore, in future testing and use, I foresee a lot of situation-dependant pressure changes being required – higher where necessary, lower where possible.

Lauf Elja Trail Ultimate Flight Attendant climbing performance

I’ll start with the bare basics – the seated position on the Elja is good. The seat angle isn’t super-steep, but it’s comfortable, and with the rear shock controlled electronically and almost always being in the right compression mode, the bike rarely seemed to sag and wallow, slackening the seat angle.

The front end is long enough to feel roomy and comfortable, rather than cramped and awkward. There’s ample space to move fore and aft to alter weight distribution between the tyre contact points, and my knees never felt threatened by the shifter pods hanging off each side of the bar.

The 780mm bars are about as wide as you'd expect on a bike more towards the XC end of the spectrum, and can be cut down should you want something narrower.

The wide tyres give the impression the bike will be slow to accelerate, but on initial impressions, this isn’t the case. Their weight is impressively low at 808g (lighter than a 2.4in-wide Maxxis Rekon Race), and so they spin up to speed with ease.

Although their tread blocks are low and closely spaced, as you’d expect from rubber that can be inflated to low pressures, grip is impressive.

The 120 TPI carcass is supple, moulding easily over imperfections in the trail and ensuring you need a real stab at the pedals to get them spitting dirt behind them.

At the pressures I tended to run, I didn’t notice them squirming under power, either, until I dropped them right to the lowest I tried, at only 13psi out-back.

The tyres also roll well. This may seem counter-intuitive, but as we see in the gravel world, there’s a growing body of evidence that tyres that iron out chatter without involving suspension or disrupting the frame chassis, roll fast.

Add in low-profile tread blocks and, even on tarmac climbs, I never felt the Elja was sluggish.

The Flight Attendant makes the SIDLuxe shock pretty darn firm, but despite the shock giving little away, the ride was still comfortable, that high air volume in the tyres offering impressive isolation from bumps and edges.

With the Pedal mode engaged on rougher climbs, the Elja really is a mountain goat. The shock is free enough to take the sting out of rocky steps and lumpy roots, while the tyres grip brilliantly between obstacles.

With Flight Attendant shifting quickly between modes, it’s almost always in an appropriate low-speed compression setting for the type of climbing you’re doing.

With not much time on the bike, and with the Flight Attendant system working effectively, it’s hard to be definitive as to whether, on climbs, the single-pivot suspension is ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

Certainly, I had no complaints riding up steep technical tracks, or long smooth drags, whether in or out of the saddle.

The Elja is a very competent climber.

Lauf Elja Trail Ultimate Flight Attendant descending performance

Once you tip into a descent, the suspension unlocks, unleashing the Elja onto the trail.

At the front, the RockShox Pike is a fine fork. Its 130mm of travel is well-supported and plush, working with the tyre to ensure there’s ample grip and comfort.

The tyres help the bike pick up speed quickly, and as with climbing, mould to the ground easily, ironing out chatter impressively well, while helping keep the bike nicely on-line.

The low tread does, as you’d expect, come unstuck a little in the mud, because the blocks can’t dig in and the volume of the tyre surfs over the top a little.

At higher pressures – say 18-19psi – the fairly rounded profile means that at speed the tyres can glance off rocks and roots a little, pinging more than one would like. Drop the pressures and this is mitigated against.

Likewise, that rounded profile means to get the most out of their grippy performance in corners, you have to trust the bike and get it leant further over than you might with a slightly squarer-profiled tyre.

Though inflated to only low pressures, I didn’t feel the tyres bottoming out when tackling rocky trails.

The shape works with, rather than against you on descents. The head angle is fairly slack, with the front centre long enough to give confidence at speed.

Further back, the fairly short chainstays won’t suit everyone – longer stays (on a Large or X-Large bike) would boost high-speed stability – but they help keep the bike feeling nippy and agile when negotiating tight tech.

Leaning the bike over onto the tyre’s shoulder treads, I noticed no undue flex – clearly, the boxy construction of the initial part of the swingarm keeps everything in check.

Likewise, once past my experiments with pressures as low as I could go, the tyres remained resolutely stable through loaded corners – they seem well-matched to the 30mm-wide Zipp carbon rims.

During my initial rides, I found the rear suspension more than capable of dealing with trails – smooth or chunky.

There’s a slight hint of pedal kickback when encountering awkward drops to flat, but save for that, the rear end feels responsive where needed, working well with the rear tyre to soak up hits big and small.

At the same time, the rear shock’s ramp-up ensures the absolute depths of its travel are rarely found. When they are, it doesn’t clunk or clank.

Get on the power on a smooth traverse and the Elja jumps forward as quickly as you’d expect from an XC-focused bike.

There’s a little pedal bob if you stand and sprint, but the Flight Attendant system quickly pops you into Pedal mode, if conditions allow.

Under braking, I failed to notice any significant loss of sensitivity from the rear end. Again, the voluminous tyres almost certainly help keep the rubber well-connected to the ground, both improving braking performance and filtering out much of any noticeable harshness.

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