2 April 2016

Pink bike report! We have had an amazing early spring here, so warm weather and dry roads have meant some decent rides on the new bike. The more I ride it the more I like it.

First – eTap: still retraining my brain/fingers for shifting. But it is very nice. Just the right amount of tactile feedback from the shift buttons, fast shifting. No issues so far. The only thing that I have noticed is that when eating on rides I tend to hold the Clif bar in my left hand. Which doesn’t leave an easy way to shift to an easier gear. But I have realised that I can easily reach the left side Blip shifter (mounted under the tops) with my right hand, so that resolves it.

Tires – on the first ride I had them at 60psi (35mm tires), which was too hard. 50psi seems to be about right for smooth roads, 40-45 for rougher roads. They still seem to roll as well as a racing tire. To test the speed I took the bike on the local Thursday night race ride – a 26mph rolling loop that is run off in an hour. Subjectively it was maybe a hair slower than my race bike, but I still finished with the front group. My guess is nothing lost to rolling resistance, but a bit more aero drag with the big tires and disc brakes.

Today I did a 95mile, 6600ft ride with a mix of smooth asphalt and really rough forest roads. High speed cornering on the smooth roads feels faster – the bigger contact patch and built-in micro-suspension of the tires feels like infinite grip; it is more about how hard I want to push the bike through the turns. Then a fast, technical descent on a really beaten up chip seal road – what a joy! A massive difference in both speed and control – I left the rest of the group (all on skinny tires) way, way behind.

Normally on a ride that length I would be carefully rationing my water – but with the third bottle loaded up I didn’t have to worry about it, and just ended up draining the last bottle as I got home.

Overall I am very happy with it – it is also very quiet; the tires remove a lot of vibration and the new groupset runs without noise. No real gravel riding to speak of yet; at some point I’ll mount up some Schwalbe G-One tires (tubeless) and take the pressure down a bit more and go explore :-