- Okay, today's pro bike comes from a rather wet Germany
ahead of Challenge Roth
and I'm delighted to be joined by previous course winner
from 2012, James Cunnama.
And I hope you have better conditions than this.
This is pretty miserable.
Yeah, it looks like it's gonna be hot and sunny on race day,
so we get this out the way ahead of time.
- Okay, so today we're gonna we going through a bike
that I'm pretty familiar with.
It's the Cervelo P5x.
(upbeat music)
First of all, we need to talk about the frame.
It is a beam frame design.
It's quite unique.
James, talk us through your, how you find it,
the riding, the size of the frame.
- Yeah, it's the large frame.
Equivalent, I was on a 56 on the P5,
I went to this frame on the P5x.
I've been riding it now since Kona 2016,
so 18 months, over 18 months now and love it.
They went with the beam design,
got rid of the seat stays and the seat post
and obviously there's a lot of turned heads
when that came out.
And I think Cervelo wouldn't build a bike
that didn't work and that was why I think
it took so long for beam bikes to come back
after those original ones 20 years ago.
- So, for those out there
that don't understand sort of the reasoning behind that,
the idea of taking away that seat tube
and seat stays is obviously for aerodynamics,
so every time that the air flow has to go round a frame,
it comes in, it creates turbulence
and then it's having to go round another seat tube
at the back here, so the idea
is you take that away, you smoothing out the air flow
and also, I've heard that it minimises
the vibration to your legs.
How much, I don't know.
- I've certainly very comfortable on this bike.
I haven't, vibrations on various road surfaces
has not been an issue at all.
I haven't had any issues
with it being flexible or anything like that.
It feels like a normal, stable, sturdy bike
that you would be on at any other point
but obviously there's nothing underneath you.
- Now let's take a look at the front end,
the cockpit and your setup
and one thing I've noticed is unlike mine,
you've actually got the bars coming up.
- Yeah.
That obviously makes no difference
when you're down on your aero bars
but as far as the comfort thing goes
when you're not on the aero bars
or when you climbing,
I just found it more comfortable
and having the extremely low,
I think it's six centimetres that it goes down
if you flip it, so you can flip these bars,
put this one on that side
and this on on this side
and the whole thing goes down six centimetres
on your base bar position
but I don't really see the advantage of that.
Ideally you'd be spending almost all your race
in your aero bars anyway
and the few times when you not in your aero bars,
you kind of want to be sturdy and stable.
Yeah, so that's why I chose to flip those.
That was a decision I made right in the beginning
and I haven't actually even experimented with flipping it.
- Great and then onto the poles themselves.
So, again, this is a little change that you've made.
So, you've gone for an S bend.
- My previous P5, I had the S bend
and I decided when I changed,
we actually changed just before Kona 2016
and I wanted the same position,
they put me in the same position and I'm very comfortable.
I've tried the ski bend since then
and I've gone back to the S bend.
- Great and then on the end of those
and on the bore horns you've got Shimano Di2 shifters,
so it's quite nice if you're not in the aero bars,
you can still shift on the corners to sense and what not.
And then on the aero bars itself,
you've also got your Wahoo Element bolts
which I believe is a partner of yours
and then you've also got your hydration setup.
So, talk me through that.
- The XLab Torpedo I use only in races
and this is my main hydration source,
so I will top it up with the valve here at the aide stations
and put energy drink if I feel like energy drink
or water if I feel like water in here
while down on the frame, I have a bottle
with really concentrated gel mixture in it.
- Okay and now let's move onto the wheel set,
the brakes, obviously you've got disc brakes on the P5x.
How do you find them?
- Disc brakes are revolutionary.
I actually I can't praise them enough,
I can't believe it took so long for disc brakes
to get onto the road bikes.
People say you don't need them in a time trial bike
but the thing with brakes
is you don't need them until you need them
and then you really need the best brakes that are available
and these are the best brakes that are available.
I've been training in St. Moritz in the mountains,
disc brakes are the future.
All bikes should be disc brakes,
it will be soon I'm sure.
- And you've currently got the TRP disc brakes on there
and then onto the wheels themselves.
You've got the NV 7.8
and on those the tyres,
you got the Schwalbe Pro ones and 25 mill
but they're tubeless,
probably our first tubeless on the channel, yeah, so.
- Find that hard to believe.
I'm surprised more people haven't adopted tubeless.
It's really easy to work with.
I mean, the Schwalbe tube, they even say tube is easy,
they're easy, they really are easy to instal,
easy to maintain, easy to work with.
It's a matter of, the only thing is getting the pressure
to get them seated and once you've got them seated,
put some seat into them.
They actually saved my race last year
when I won 70.3 Weymouth.
About 10 Ks from the finish,
I heard a (puffing)
and a little bit of spray of sealant
and I thought oh no, I'm leading by miles
and now I'm gonna be stuck on the side of road
and I bounced the front wheel a little bit
and sure enough it did sealed
and I carried on the rest of the way.
- You just lost a few PSI.
- I lost a few PSI and carried on racing,
didn't lose any time.
- How about when you're travelling with them?
Still just as easy?
- Just as easy.
Obviously you need to be conscious
of the sealant and how long it's be in there,
that it hasn't gone hard or that it hasn't gone ineffective
but it lasts a few months anyway,
so you don't have to worry too much about that.
Obviously for any big race like this one,
or then Kona, I would reinstall them completely,
new sealant, check the rim tape, everything
but only for the major races.
To be honest, if I did a 70.3 a few weeks after this,
I would use exactly the same setup with the same wheels.
- Okay, now moving back through the bike
and onto the crank set area.
As I've already mentioned, we've got Shimano Dura-Ace
and it's the 90/70 group set, front mech and rear mech.
Let's chat about the rotor to empower crank set power metre.
You're running a 170 crank length?
How do you find that?
It obviously quite short for your.
- Yeah, I went shorter a few years ago
and when I got my position dialled in
and I was pretty happy with it.
I don't feel like there's any real sacrifice.
Maybe when you're powering up a hill,
standing up, you have a slightly smaller range
but that doesn't happen very often in triathlon.
More comfortable in the aero bars.
- Okay, cool, and you're running a 54/39 change link setup.
And on the end of your cranks
you've got the Shimano Dura-Ace pedals.
Moving back from that,
all linked by this rather white chain.
So, this is the Ceramicspeed UFO chain
and you pop this on for each race?
- Yeah, most races, yeah.
It's a noticeable difference when you put it on.
Obviously it wears off after a few hundred kilometres
but yeah, very noticeable difference on race day,
so any important race gets a white chain.
- So, you put a brand new one on for each race
and then maybe train with it after a few?
- Yeah, so I would use this now
for the next month of training in Switzerland
and then probably put a new one on for Ironman Hamburg
at the end of the month.
- Great.
And then go back from that,
it's linked with the 11/25 Shimano Cassette
and then your Ceramicspeed OSPW Jockey wheels.
You've been riding these for quite a while.
- Yeah, a few years now.
Very happy with them.
They also, you know, all these noticeable differences,
you would think sooner or later
you wouldn't have to pedal your bike
but they do make a difference.
There is a noticeable feel when you put that on
for the first time.
- Yeah, we've talked about these quite bit
on the channel before and other pro bikes
but the idea behind it
is that you're essentially smoothening out the chain flow
rather than it going through tight angles,
eliminating that friction saving you valuable watts.
We've got the Cobb Plus saddle.
You've tried out a lot of different saddles.
- Yeah, the thing with the saddles
is if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The saddle works and I'm not messing with my saddle.
- So, it's kind of got that split nose sort of design.
- I do tend to sit right on that cushion-y point
in the front.
- The idea again is something we've covered
a lot on the channel in the past
is that if you can get yourself comfortably perched
on the end, tilt those hips round,
get into a really nice and aerodynamic position.
That's been great fun just chatting about your bike
in this shed and keeping out the rain.
Best of luck for the weekend, James.
- Thanks.
- If you like this bike
and you like this video, hit that thumbs up button.
If you'd like to see more videos from GTN,
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- And if you wanna see more of the P5x in action,
you can see Mark comparing it to a road bike,
just click here.
- Yep and if you'd like to see the descent version
of that, just click down here.