New Cervelo Day (very long post)

Today I drove up to the upper corner where PA, NY and NJ all meet to get training on the 2012 Cervelo products, have lunch, and go for a bike ride. Jon, our Cervelo rep, led the whole thing and bought us lunch. He lives in the town (Milford PA) and took us to, what he considers to be, the best restaurant in town. The food was fantastic and the conversation amusing. Isaac and Anna rode up with me, and Jude and Ryan came up in the van, so we wasted little time making fun of each other and the other people we work with.

After lunch, we headed to a shop that Cervelo had rented out so Jon could use it to educate the shops that he oversees. It was air conditioned and had a bathroom, but not much else. What it did have was a projector, an R5 CA frame and an S5 frame for us to look at. I can't talk about some of the stuff we covered, and most of it was pricing for 2012, so I wont put you to sleep with that, but I will talk about the R5 CA and S5.

R5 CA - For those of you who don't know, Cervelo has a place in CA where they build a facility so they could see through every step of the bike building process except for painting it. They came up with the R5 CA which is just a top end Frame for the R5 line of bikes. It uses a steeper seat tube angle than the normal R5, but also uses a zero setback seat post to get the rider into the proper position. The advantage, apparently, is slightly lighter weight and added stiffness.

The frame weight for the R5 CA is 690g. Yeah. It's also the stiffest bike Cervelo has ever built. I got to hold a forkless frame with BB bearing in place and seat collar and it was absolutely silly how light it was. I picked it up at the same time as the ridiculously light S5 frame and the S5 just felt like a pig. The difference is surprisingly impressive.

S5 - As you may, or may not know, Cervelo killed off the S3 and launched the S5. When I first saw the S5, I just assumed they put drop bars on the P3 and called it a day. It turns out I was only partially right.

The S5 does use the rear section of s P3, but it has been redesigned to be better. Down facing dropouts instead of rear facing on the P3, and a redesign of how the curved section that the rear wheel nestles in. They even went as fas as to use the metal plate that the rear brake mounts to as a way to prevent pebbles from entering into the space and scratching your frame.

The seat tube is different as well. The seat stays were shaped to hide the rear brake from the wind, and the fork was designed to remove a turbulent area behind the rear of the fork.

The bike is also equipped with BBright bottom bracket technology, which we all knew was coming. having been on an R3 so equipped, I can tell you that other companies need to jump on this bandwagon quickly. It is noticeable.

While that all may sound like me throwing up Cervelo's marketing to you, it only kind of is. I haven't been on an S5 yet, so I can't give you an impression, but from a technology stand point, it's an awesome bike. Cervelo has a whole bunch of numbers to support their claim that you're x% quicker on their aero road bikes than any other bike, but that's not important to me. The amount of testing, and how they test is important to me, and they're changing the way bikes are being tested and how data is recorded and that's good. Of all of the cool things that come from working at a Cervelo dealer, the amount of information they give you to show you why something is faster is second to none, and that is why I believe most of their claims.

Now that we got that out of the way, lets get to talking about the ride. Go to Milford, PA and ride your bike. Just do it. The roads around there are awesome and Jon took us on the "easy loop" which wasn't murder, but it did blow up Anna. Jude and Ryan completely bitched out and didn't even go on the ride. They just went home. So Anna, Isaac, Jon and myself went out and had a mostly relaxing but fun ride.

We did have to cross a bridge that was 150ft above a river when we crossed into Nj, and that was a bit tough for me. I hate heights. After that, it was just beautiful roads through the trees and good conversation until we got to the first hill of the day. It wasn't a super tough hill, but it wasn't easy either. Isaac tried to gain as much speed as he could in the beginning because he thinks it makes climbing easier. A quarter of the way in he had to start tacking up the hill to keep himself going. I started off going a bit quicker than I probably should have, and at about the same point as Isaac, started having difficulty. I pulled myself back, found a steady pace I could deal with and alternated between standing on the steeper parts and sitting and recovering when it was less steep. Because Isaac was tacking, I pulled him in and passed him quickly. Anna was slowly pulling up the rear, and Jon started off keeping her company, then easily closed the gap on Isaac and myself and chatted with us for the rest of the time. The three of us reached the top together and slowed up while Anna regrouped. It was about two miles of climbing at about 4% if I had to guess, which I did, because my Garmin was dead and I didn't even bring it.

The descent was awesome, but when we got back to the flat stuff (it was all rolling terrain, but not too bad) it became clear that Anna wasn't able to keep pace. She couldn't even keep up with us while drafting. It wouldn't get any easier for her.

We stopped at a craft shop to rest for a few minutes. We talked shop and I complained about how I just tightened my rear King hub and it was already shifting up to 1/4" in each direction. I'm actually really pissed about that, but that's for another time.

When we got back on the bikes, we immediately started another climb. Isaac started hard again, and this time I didn't hold back. I passed Isaac almost immediately and didn't look back. I reached the top 30second before anyone else. To be fair, if Jon wanted to, he could have crushed me, but he was awesome, riding with each of us and never leaving us or ramping up the pace because he was bored.

The hill officially broke Anna. After that, she was constantly off the back and could never get close to the front. The descent this time was long, steep and really fast. Going up would have been the hard way. I'm glad we went the easy way.

Because I had no faith in my wobbly rear hub, I was on the brakes a little more than the other guys, but Anna must have melted her rims, because she rode them the whole way down. The roads back were rolling and she was having a tough go of it. Not once did she complain, but you could tell by her face that she was hurting.

Jon had asked us early in the ride how we felt about doing a little gravel riding and we were all for it. He told us how a lot of the people he takes out on the ride have complained when he took them on gravel, so when we finally got to the gravel part, he was very clear about what we were about to do. All three of us told him we not only didn't care, but wanted to do it. He still, semi-reluctantly lead us onto a gravel path. It was awesome, and every single one of us had a blast. We had to turn off at one point and get back on the road because of how rough the path gets (it has signs warning you!) but a few miles later we hopped back on. One steep hill and a lot of wheel spin later, and a massive descent with track marks that went into the woods at the last turn, and we were back on the road for a few blocks until we got back to the store front. Anna made it the whole way. She had a great time.

I think the funniest thing about the Cervelo day was that other than Jon, we all rode Specialized bikes. Cervelo is a much, much smaller company than either Specialized or Trek, and little things like not having demo bikes at things like this are reminders. That being said, I learned a lot, and had a fantastic time. I'm eagerly awaiting next year's meet up.

Force

The coolest part about working at a bike shop is being able to E.P. (employee purchase) products directly from the manufacturer. Companies want bike shop employees to ride their product because they know that if the employee likes the product, he will tell just about every customer that walks in how much he enjoys it. Offering discounted prices on their products is basically just paying for advertising. Very cheap advertising.

That's not to say all is bad. A lot of companies make really good products, and being able to ride stuff you would never be able to afford otherwise is great. It's an even trade in my book.

SRAM has a pretty cool E.P. policy they call the SRAMbassador. They offer most of their products as cost or less for a period of time. If you keep in mind that SRAM owns Zipp, SRM, Truvativ, Rock Shox, Avid, and has a partnership with Garmin, and your options to buy just about anything but a bike are pretty damn good.

While I probably could have afforded a Red group, I wanted to save a little coin for some other parts and went with Force because It's similar, or better, in most cases. Sure, Red is lighter, but the front derailleur is made so light and thin that it doesn't shift as well as the Force unit. If you check out the spec on Tour bikes that are Red equipped, almost all of them have listed a "prototype" Red front derailleur that is just a Force FD with Red labeling.

Red Does have some better things, like ceramic bottom bracket bearings and rear derailleur pullies, but I don't need that shit. And if I ever want it, I can order just those parts and throw them on.

Speaking of bottom brackets, you may notice that in the picture, there isn't one. Or that the crank is not a Force crank and has no chain rings on it. I already have a Force compact crank on my cross bike, and seeing as how I bash that bike into stuff much more than my road bike, I decided to swap it over. So there, full Force group on my road bike, but now I have no crank for my cross bike. That's where that S900 crank comes in. The S900 crank is a carbon armed crank that is meant to be a slight upgrade over the Rival crank, or anyone else who wants an inexpensive carbon crank on their bike. It's a little bit lighter and stiffer, but also a little bit more expensive.

The chainrings are missing from this particular crank because of Specialized. "Huh?" you ask? Basically, one of the guys I work with ordered a Specialized Crux aluminum cross bike and when he put it all together, he noticed the rear brake mount was off by 5mm and caused his brakes to contact at very bad angles. Specialized replaced the frame, but the new one they sent him was an upgrade and had a BB30 bottom bracket. All Specialized bikes with BB30 BB come with a Specialized crank and bearings already, and the S900 crank wouldn't have worked even if it didn't. The bike, strangely enough, did not come with chain rings, so he took the rings from his S900 crank and tried to sell just the crank arms and spider. To the surprise of no one, the crank never sold. I bought the crank for the price he paid, minus the cost of Rival chain rings (he never used the crank) and will order rings next month after I get paid. The only downside to the crank is that the guy I bought it from is a bit of a beast, and ordered a standard crank bolt pattern. That means that the cross gearing I'm stuck with is 46/38T. That's a whopping one tooth smaller front small ring than the standard crank on my road bike currently. If I find it to be too much of a pain in the ass (or knee), I'll sell the crank next year for what I paid for it and buy a compact version of the S900 with easier cross gearing for the same price. Another plus of getting that discount is that when you sell it for what you paid for it, people who don't work at a bike shop think they're getting a deal. They are, so it's win, win.

Other good news is that I ended up getting a white FSA bar that is just an aluminum version of the bar on my cross bike (which I find really comfortable) and I got white cable housing to go with it. My bike is going to look so obnoxious, I can't wait. Pics will surely follow after I build everything up.

Miscillanious Stuff

I've been riding a lot more lately, almost exclusively road riding, and I've had some good days, and some bad days. I have to charge my Garmin and download the rides I've done, because there are two that I want you guys to see. One of them is the shop ride, and that was one of the bad rides for me. I was getting over a respiratory infection, but I couldn't wait to get back out and ride, so I figured I would just hop right into a 24 mile ride with almost 1,500ft of hills. Yeah, smart. I blew up halfway through because this one guy was really pissing me off with his being all over the road and making it so you had to pass him by going into on coming traffic. We had a talk with him after the ride. Either way, it is a B & C level ride, and for the second half of that ride, I was the C group.

The other ride I wanted to post up was a 31 miler that Isaac and I did on Thursday. Awesome ride! We went to Valley Forge and did an extended loop that Isaac had never done (the one we did, Ted) and then we did the Audubon Loop and followed that up by heading to the dog park in Phoenixville. My knee got a little tender on the way back, but overall, we had a blast. I even broke my 85* heat limit. It was 92*.

Over the past few weeks, I've been making little adjustments to my Tarmac because I hate it. I don't really hate it, but I've never been really comfortable on it. That's why I almost bought an R3 earlier this year. But since I decided to keep the Tarmac for another year, I also decided to make it work for me. Firstly, I need a BG Fit, badly. Isaac doesn't have time to give me one, so I've been slowly doing it one step at a time. My saddle height was waaaay to low. You can tell by how many As I used that it was really low. Like 2.5cm. That adjustment has increased the amount of miles I can go without knee pain from twelve (12!) to 26.

I also ordered a zero set back seat post because I probably should be on a 54cm Tarmac because of my reach, but since most people size on height, I'm riding a 56cm. With my seat jammed all of the way forward, I'm still about 2cm away from optimally fitting on the damn thing. Hey, guess how much further forward a zero set back post will move me. No, seriously, guess. Did you say 2cm? Awesome, give yourself a cookie.

While I'm listing complaints about my Tarmac, I hate the handle bars. they have a weird shape to them, and they do that stupid nonsense where the hoods are flat when they're lower than the top of the bar. I like my hoods flush with the top of the bar. It's just more comfortable. When I changed my bar tape the last time, I adjusted my shifters to make my hoods flush, but by doing so, I made the drops borderline useless. I didn't used to spend a ton of time in the drops, so I didn't care at first, but since I flipped my stem I can comfortably get in them, so now I notice all of the time. Zipp makes a really nice aluminum bar with a traditional drop. What's really cool about it is that the traditional drop is less than 1cm lower than the shallow drop on my Specialized bar. I'm ordering that on Monday in a 44cm width. I'm probably going to throw some Roubaix bar tape on there too.

Lastly, for the moment, is my group set. It's last generation 105 with an Ultegra rear derailleur and Sram 11-28 cassette and 10whatever the cheapest Sram chain is. I think 1050, but I'm too lazy to look that up. I've said before that I would have a hard time getting ride of it because it shifts so perfectly, that I couldn't really justify it. Well, about that... It still shifts perfectly, and is as smooth and flawless as any Shimano group I've ever used, but there are two things that are killing me. 1) I can't do the standard gearing anymore. When I'm used to it, it's fine and I can climb well with it. When I'm not used to it, It breaks me. My knee can't take the big gears and I waste all of my energy for the next big hill on the first one. I'm done with it. 2) It's not Sram. Every time I shift, I want it to be, and no matter how many times I tell myself it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, I just prefer the way Sram shifts. I find myself up shifting with Sram just to do it. I'll let you know what happens with that. If anyone wants a 105 gruppo with Ultegra RD, minus a cassette, make me an offer.

There's still a little work left to do. I adjusted the preload on my King's because there was a ton of flex. I adjusted my brakes for pad wear. I tightened down my headset because it was loose. The bike is filth, and the drivetrain isn't any cleaner. Little stuff, but it's coming around. Once I get the post and bars, I'll put up a post on if I feel any better.