Okay, I've had a little bit more time on the new bike and feel as though I have gotten over the excitement and can give an honest impression. Nothing changes. The bike is amazing.
As I said last time, the bike descends incredibly. On the Valley Forge Death Loop ride I do there are two sketchy descents that test a bike with broken pavement and multi-apex corners that make picking a line tricky at best. Coming off of Forge Mountain I pulled a huge gap on everyone that I was riding with. I can pick a line and stick with it, or use the brakes to change the line at any time. The bike never feels twitchy or scary. Descending takes confidence in your equipment and this bike delivers confidence in spades.
Because the R series bikes are quasi "Endurance" bikes as well as just being all-arounders, I was kind of happy that they ripped up one of the roads on the shop ride last week to repave it. I hit the crap section riding with Peter who has a Cervelo S1 (alloy frame). I got in the drops and just held my pace and when I reached the end of the section, Peter was lengths behind me. Coming from an Alloy Allez, I couldn't have been happier with how smooth the bike was over choppy surfaces. That being said, I did have a scary moment where I was slowing down for a 180+* turn and hit a short, choppy section as I was braking, and I lost control of the bike for a second. It was easy to correct, but for that split second I almost shit myself. The bike stayed straight and upright but traction was lost, so I'm going to chalk it up to operator error.
Other than that, all is good. I don't want to do anything to the bike other than a different set of wheels, and that's only so I can put the HED/King wheels back on the CX bike so I can put that bike back together. The R5 is perfect.
No comments:
Post a Comment