With le Tour having finished I think it is opportune to dig into a few things I noticed. This won’t be a stage by stage blow by blow, rather – analysis of segments where equipment (potentially) made a critical difference.
As a general comment, it was nice this year not to see continual massive pileups in the first week (the loss of Contador was a blow) – the drama has come from hard racing and close finishes. It’s the close finishes that I’m most interested in analysing…
Fuji is one of the few brands in recent years to have committed to developing a new carbon track frame – the Fuji Track Elite. It’s a very nice addition to the market – sizing, features & price are all positives compared to competing products. I built one up for the first time so had an opportunity to take some photos and measurements.
Cervelo have released a successor to their Halo road bike – the R5Ca makes way for the RCa – the Ca referring to the fact that the frames are built in California. Unfortunately the price tag that accompanies the R&D and exclusivity (only 325 made) means that discussion of this bike is for most of us an academic exercise. But that doesn’t make it any less interesting (after all – no one can afford space ships but sci-fi movies are very popular).
Unlike the cycling media I’m not going to repeat all of the press release – what is particularly interesting is the tube shaping that has gone into the new frame and the comparative wind tunnel testing performed during development – so I have, of course, done a bit of extra analysis on that information.
After I finished yesterdays article about Triathlete Magazines Windtunnel Testing it occurred to me that there were additional elements worth considering. So today I’ll look at the effect of different bikes at IMNZ and consider the impact of adding a water bottle to the frame – which works in the favour of the Specialized Shiv Tri.
Triathlete Magazine has made drag data available from a recent bout of Windtunnel testing involving the new Orbea Ordu, Specialized Shiv, Trek Speed Concept and Cervelo P5. Unfortunately the conclusions they draw from the data are rather simplistic.
Happily Speedtheory is here to do the complicated analysis and then present it in a way that (hopefully) makes it meaningful for our readers…
The new range of Trek Speed Concepts finally arrived in NZ last week, allowing two of my clients to finally get some sleep (as they both wished to race on the weekend just gone).
The XL model had to be special ordered so is the only one around, the small is a bit more widely available.
Having recently acquired a new road bike it’s time that I detailed what led me to the choice I made and what I think of the bike now that I’ve got some miles on it.
The choosing:
Anyone who has read any of my articles (on this site or others) will notice that I’m quite a fan of being as aerodynamic as possible, so surely my options would be confined to the aero road bikes? As it turns out – not necessarily.
As anyone interested in Triathlon equipment knows, the P5 has finally been released. While we’re still waiting on some information (like the most important bit – windtunnel data) there has been enough revealed to draw some early conclusions.
One of my clients wanted to upgrade his Tri bike from the faithful steed that I set him up on five years ago. At the top of the option list I gave him was the Speed Concept 7.0 – not only does it offer the best value but after running the numbers it also offered the best match for his position (it’s nice when life works out that way).
It’s an impressive bike on paper and in the flesh, the thought that has gone into the Speed Concept (SC) range clearly shows. It’s no stretch to say that the announcement of the SC range was the most exciting news for 2011 Tri bikes.
