(upbeat techno music)
- Well we are here a day before
the championship race in Slovakia.
All the bikes are racked up here in transition,
and one of my favorite things to do is actually take a look
through some of the age group bikes.
They're not restrained by sponsors or anything like that.
We get all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff.
So, let's take a little look around.
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Well this is definitely something
you don't see in the pro ranks.
This is a Look 596.
This is a pre-2010 bike here,
and pretty revolutionary for its time
because the fork is integrated
all the way through to the stem region,
and that's where things get really crazy
because the stem is actually split in two.
It connects on like a pivot point here
so you can completely change the height of the stem so
I guess really optimizing your position
and just making this bike really versatile
and giving you a lot of options with your position.
And also, just crazily thin here,
this person seems like they're a bit of a Look fan
because they've actually got some slightly newer cranks
on there where you can change the actual crank lengths.
It's got like a three point system with that.
Bottle cages are Look.
I'm imagining, well they're actually German not French
so that's thrown me.
(upbeat techno music)
Well, you might be worried about buying a bike
and making it fit for yourself.
Well Roman here has proved us all wrong
'cause he has practically got some scaffolding here.
You could clean your windows on the top of that.
But, that said, obviously it is super high so you might
be worried about the pressure and the weight
breaking that riser stack which is crazy high
but he's actually got a bar going across between here
to hold the two together
so actually a really clever idea.
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Now a set of wheels we don't see all that often here
because these are pretty odd,
these are the Xentis Mark 1 TT four spoke wheels here.
Interesting fact here,
now I think these came out somewhere around 2005.
Jan Ullrich rode them in the tour of Germany
that year in a time trial,
and actually his team mechanic fitted the front one
the wrong way round, costing him twenty watts.
Amazingly he still won that stage
because he's an absolute animal,
but he lost the overall standings by 31 seconds.
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Well in all honesty I have nothing to report here,
other than I just love this bike.
Fantastic set up Torbjorn from Norway.
You've got nice 858 on the front, a zip disc on the back
nice tan sidewalls, Canyon Speedmax.
I think I'm in love.
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Right now I'm not sure this is standard
or you can buy this from Canyon.
I think this has been homemade,
a little bit of a hack I'd say.
Now they have attached what looks like
a normal sort of camelbak straw,
so, a little valve which you can turn
on and off so you can close the straw or not.
Yeah really clever idea if you're worried about
fluid streaming out or whatever over the bumps.
This person really obviously goes to some detail
with their set-up because we've got some
51 Speedshop elbow cups which aren't standard
but are quite good elbow cups,
and also Drag2Zero poles so very nice work there.
Right loads of fun stuff going on here
we've got an SMP carbon saddle up here,
which obviously sounds horrific but apparently,
I don't know from personal experience,
but apparently they are meant to be quite good.
We've also got 650C wheels so on the back here we've
actually got a lightweight 650C disc wheel
and on top of that,
a 19 mil tyre which you don't see all that often.
Well another 2509 which is Eckhart from Germany
a treat to be in here because
he's got a home made disc wheel!
Big fan of that one, Eckhart.
But, whilst I was looking at that I've noticed
a few extra cool things on this bike.
We've got a 3D printed storage box
on the down tube of his Cervelo.
Fits perfectly with the bottom shape of that frame.
So whether he's had that made himself or not
I don't know but very impressive.
And then whilst I was looking at that I've also noticed
that he's got this tri-rig breaking system on the front
and the rear which isn't standard with the bikes.
He's obviously had that fitted himself,
but this guy obviously likes a little bit
of homemade DIY and a bit of hacks.
Well there are tons of disc wheels here in the age group
transition and obviously the pro transition,
but this one stood out to me cause I've not seen this before
and some viewers out there may be shocked at me,
but Kuiper or Kuiper I don't know quite how you say it,
but the bit that stood out quite significantly was this
embossed section on either side of the disc wheel.
Not entirely sure what it's for but obviously it goes
with the flow of the wheel so I'm going to take a stab
in the dark here that it's actually to disperse
the pressure from the wheel,
rather than you getting the build up
of pressure on the disc wheel,
it sort of follows that embossed section
and disperses that pressure.
At least that's what I think maybe, I don't know.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
Now the cool thing with SRAM Red eTap
is that you can put blips wherever you like on your bike,
and when we did a Pro Bike with Sebastian Kienle
I was quite impressed actually to find
that he put the eTap blips underneath the aero bar
rather than having them on the end of the poles.
I'd not seen that before and actually
had never seen anyone do that since,
but Eric number 2330 has done just that.
He's got them in exactly the same
position as Sebastian Kienle.
Sebby said it was quite nice for when he's going
up on the hills he sort of almost pulls back
on them and has his hands sort of slightly lower down
on the aero bar so they're in a perfect spot for him there.
But yeah, really cool.
And whilst we're here look at this bike actually.
Worth me mentioning.
This guy has actually racked his bike by the break levers,
whereas next to him you'll see it's racked by the saddle.
Obviously by the saddle is really quick
to take that bike out on race day,
but as you'll find with a lot of races
you have to rack your bike the night before
and you might worry that your bikes going to
sway around in the wind as you can see
some of these bikes in the distance doing.
So, good option is to rack it by the break levers
if you want to, and then on the race morning
you just flip it round so then it's just a limited
amount of time where it might be swaying around.
Just stumbled across this one this is the Muzzi team
so it's obviously a relay.
You've got a rental sticker on your bike mate.
Hope it's not hour by hour.
Well I cannot pass by this bike
without taking a closer look.
This is the Cat Cheetah bike which,
well this is like thirty years on
and this bike is still going strong.
I've actually just had to chase some of the officials off
'cause they were standing around this bike
wondering whether it's actually still legal.
Natascha Badmann actually rode this
back in I think it was 1996
when she won the World Duathlon Long Distance title.
It is a work of art.
Totally revolutionary for its time.
Really impressive.
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Well this is quite something.
Enriko has made his own aero cover
going over the stem and onto the top tube area.
It's a real piece of work it's fantastic.
He's actually put a 3T stickers on,
he's trying to fool us all there.
But actually underneath here he's got
one of the negative degree or negative angle stems.
It's a Ritchey stem so really low on the front
and his face is almost brushing the tire here.
But yeah, he's obviously gone to a lot of detail,
sandpaper on the top here, he's got rid of all the bar tape
so yeah, actually a really aero looking machine.
Well this weirdly just caught my eye
as I was wondering past.
This is just a Cervelo P3 but on top we have
something called a Gorilla Grip
and this is made by Pro Elite.
I'm going to take an absolute stab in the dark here
I have no idea what it's for, but it looks like you can
just open up these little ratchets here and put,
maybe gels in there?
So you can put the tab of the gel in there, lock them down,
and all we have to do is I guess just rip
the gel out and off you go.
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Well, Keith, this is a bit of a vintage machine here.
A Roberts bike, not sure quite how old it is,
but also there's some Cinelli bars on the front
which wow, serious work of engineering going on there,
all sorts of welding stuff.
Definitely wouldn't want to be hit by them.
I've also noticed, got a Garmin mount on your top tube here,
and also a CatEye bike computer on the front there.
Really is one of the, missed the opportunity
to upload that up to Strava hey?
Well we also have a very nice limited edition
Zipp Super 9 Disc in a nice yellow color,
but whilst we're here also noticed this saddle here.
This is by a brand called Dash.
You don't see these very often, very unique in their design.
But I've heard very good things about it.
Fully carbon throughout, even for the rails
and then just a nice little bit of padding here.
But, if you are struggling with saddles apparently
they are quite a good option.
(techno music)
Well another disc wheel cover here
on a standard set of wheels.
I'm not sure this is actually a homemade disc wheel cover.
This has actually got a slight groove here
as if its been made and I can see a brand name on there
saying Dracon or Dragon but still really cool
that someone's doing that.
But whilst we're here I also spotted
something quite interesting on the saddle here.
This is actually Velcro on the top of their saddle
so I think what they're doing is they put
the other side of the Velcro on their suit.
But, interestingly, this is the soft bit of Velcro
which would mean the harsh bit of Velcro is on their suit.
I'm not sure that was the right way round, in my opinion.
Well this has really caught my attention.
This is Ann's bike she's riding a Fuji but she's got
the PRO Missile handlebar-aero bar combo on her bike.
And, I mean I remember this from years back when
and, it is insane.
I absolutely love the look of it
and it really does look like a missile.
We've got this dropped bass bar and then the aero bars
are pretty much flush with the top of the stem.
With the elbow pads as well.
I mean, very different from what a lot of people are doing
these days with the ski bands but it is so clean looking.
Well this is a bit of a homemade hack here.
I really like this actually, because quite often it's really
hard to find a space for your bike computer once you've
got all your hydration set up and whatnot on there.
So what these people have done is managed to get
a piece of metal and I think they've shaped it themselves.
It's got a bit of a bend in there,
computer on the end of there and then they've attached that
underneath the bottle cage so through the same bolt.
Ingenious.
(techno music)
Well you guys certainly didn't disappoint there,
we had loads of fantastic stuff and if I did mention you
today in your video or featured your bike,
please do give us a shout in the comments section below
and let us know about your bike
or a bit more detail on it.
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And if you'd like to see our previous
age group transition tour from Challenge Roth
then you can see that by clicking just down here.