Before I decided on what I was going to ride, I consulted in others. After speaking with a number of previous racers, something was recurring. Titanium. A rough road race, titanium is the perfect material to tone down choppy roads and leave me not having to worry about damage from rocks jumping up.
The bike came from Guru, master custom builders from Canada. Guru has built their name around custom carbon, especially time trial and triathlon bikes. But Guru has an almost secret metal program which is really quite great.
Guru built this bike with thin seat stays for added comfort but with an oversized head and down tube to increase stiffness. A standard English threaded bottom bracket, integrated headset, and bead blasted finish round out the frame.The gruppo came from SRAM, Red has made it's way onto all of my bikes. This particular group was on my road bike last year, migrated to a Focus Mares carbon cross bike for the entire season, then was plucked from there and installed on this Guru. Shifting is still perfect as expected, nary a hiccup. The brakes are from TRP, the new CX-9's are a great brake for everything but the muddiest conditions.
Power goes into the Rotor 3d crankset with a Quarq powermeter running 46/36 FSA chainrings. I've had great luck running Quarq and find their accuracy to be as good if not better than anything out there. The only down side is calibration, but their method for calibration only takes a few seconds.
The Guru cockpit is from Zipp, SLC2 bars, Service Course stem. A Thomson Masterpiece seat post, Fizik Aliante saddle, Crank Brothers Candy pedals, and Lizard Skinz bar tape round out the contact points on the bike.
Last, and certainly not least, was the wheel choice. Barry-Roubaix has a lot of climbing for a race in the Midwest, so I knew I wanted something light. Since the race wasn't going to be blisteringly fast, I didn't feel the need for deep aerodynamic wheels. The Zipp 202 seemed to be the perfect choice with their feathery weight. Maybe more importantly were the tires, and I chose Challenge Griffo XS 32c tubular tires. Fast rolling and still offering a little grip in the gravel corners. Also important was tire pressure choices since the course offers a lot of variation in riding surfaces. Upon polling past racers, I decided on 63psi rear, 60psi front.
Looking back on my choices, I have to say I think I nailed it. Many of the decisions were no brainers to me, and the real variables I received guidance from past racers. If you're looking into doing Barry-Roubaix, I suggest titanium, carbon tubulars, and SRAM Red. Duh.
*I don't want to talk about it. Age Group winner, "wave" winner, and I THOUGHT overall winner. Apparently only one ROAD race on the day wasn't determined the same way EVERY road race is determined. Whatever.
No comments:
Post a Comment