- Morning, Trainings.
If you've tried to buy a bike in 2020 or 2021,
you know that stock is really, really limited.
So being able to access some of the bikes that are in stock
and understanding which ones are actually good bikes
has become a major problem.
Specifically with Canyon, they haven't been immune
to the worldwide shortage of bicycle parts,
but something that they do have a lot of
is the older original model
of the Canyon Triathlon Speedmax bike.
Now a lot of people have started asking me,
how does that compare to the new model
of the Canyon Speedmax?
Canyon themselves have noticed that they have a huge
amount of stock in the older model of the Canyon Speedmax,
because a lot of people just think
that because there's a newer model out
that the old model is inferior.
So, they ended up sending me a couple of bikes here
to try out, because they feel
that this bike is still a really good bike
and people need to know that.
I've spent the last couple of days testing
each of these in really similar situations
to see if there is a major difference.
Because if you are thinking about saving a little bit
of money and actually getting access
to a bike that is easily available,
wondering if it is still a good bike
going with the older model, or should you hold off,
wait for the newer model?
Fortunately, I'm here to tell you
that there is no wrong decision.
The first thing that I want to discuss,
because it's what a lot of the bike companies talk about
is the speed.
Every new model, the bike companies come out and say,
well, the new model saves X watt.
So what I did was I went and I put
the same Rally pedals from Garmin onto these bikes.
I calibrated them before I went out for each ride.
So that the power that I was getting was accurate,
I went out and did the exact same ride,
trying to hit basically the exact same power
and doing the intervals at the exact same places.
Looking at my Garmin Connect data here,
the first ride that I did was on the old model
of the Canyon Speedmax.
And you can see that my average moving speed
was 30.1 kilometers per hour.
For the Americans out there,
this is roughly around 18.3 miles per hour,
it's just a cruisy ride.
I didn't want it to be all about high power.
My normalized power for this was 152 Watts.
So remember, at 152 watt average,
I'm roughly around 30.1 kilometer per hour, average speed.
Then, going over to the second ride
that I did on the newer model,
what I ended up pulling off was an average moving time
of 29.1 kilometers per hour.
Little bit slower, and a normalized power of 159 watts.
So you might be saying, holy smokes,
well, the bike actually got slower.
I would 100% say that that's not the case.
Engineers at Canyon know that the very best thing
that they can do from a marketing standpoint
at Canyon is they make bikes that are faster
than the previous model.
If they make a bike that's slower
and all of a sudden all their pro athletes
aren't winning races,
a lot of people are going to start questioning
if the bikes are actually as fast as they were.
Now, I've actually heard murmurs online
of some people saying,
well, this new bike is actually slower.
I think I have a reason why that is.
And I think it's actually potentially a good thing.
Take a look at how low the base bar
is on the older Canyon model versus
how much higher it is on the new Canyon model.
So we're talking like three, four inches actually
lower for the base bar.
Now, when I was out doing my ride,
because it's just a casual ride, I'm spending probably about
90, 95% of my time in the base bar here.
On the new model of Canyon,
because I'm up three or four inches,
my entire frontal plane, the aerodynamic drag
that I have to push through the air
is that three or four inches larger.
So I'm going to be that much less aerodynamic.
What I ended up finding though,
is that this lower base bar was actually
a lot less comfortable because it's so much lower.
So much more of my upper body weight was on this base bar.
So my hands ended up getting numb.
My arms got numb, my upper body got tired.
Whereas on here, it was a lot more like a road bike.
It was a lot more comfortable.
Now when I went into the aero position
and I got into that time trial position
that I'd be racing in, in both bikes,
this bike actually in my opinion, felt a little bit faster
and easier to put out power.
So, I think that difference in speed
between the two rides is really just a difference
in position because that difference in speed
essentially went away when I ended up going
from one bike to the next, in the tri position.
And that is actually a major point of difference
between the old model and the new model.
With the old model, the tri position that you can get to
into that cockpit area is really quite limited.
The elbow pads don't really have a ton of adjustability.
The aero bars don't have a ton of adjustability.
So in a lot of cases,
people were having to buy aftermarket cockpits
for the old Speedmax.
With the new Speedmax, that's some of the new engineering
that they've done is they have built in massive amounts
of adjustability into the new Speedmax.
I think that that difference in understanding
how people ended up building up bikes practically
is what has changed between the old and the new model.
Triathlon bikes of this older era.
The one model ago kind of era, they were very, very fast,
but a lot of the integrations were a little bit janky.
They were hard to work on.
People ended up having to buy parts,
aftermarket to make them work for their unique situations.
I think this era and why I said that,
I think this new model of speed bikes actually changes
the game a fair bit is because people aren't forced
to make those compromises where they buy a bike
and then all of a sudden,
still have a ton of work to do to set it up,
to be as aero as possible,
to have all the storage that they need, to have
all the hydration and nutrition storage that they need.
Now, does that mean that you should definitely
get the new Speedmax over the old Speedmax?
No, what I would say is if you wanna save
a little bit of money,
you can get a better build quality old Speedmax
for a thousand dollars less than this new Speedmax.
So this exact build that I've got here,
the Speedmax CF 8 Disc eTap, $6,500 US.
This exact build that I've got over here, Speedmax CFSLX.
That's a better frame quality, SL that is $5,500.
So you're gonna save a thousand dollars.
And then if you want to add on all of that customization
into the cockpit after,
you can get a Sync Ergonomics build kit for $360 Australian,
which right now works out
to about 270 additional US dollars.
So your net saving roughly around 730 bucks
while still getting a bike that is technically
a higher build quality.
In addition to that, with the older model Speedmax,
you get the integrated hydration system up at the front
of the bike.
You don't get that integrated hydration system
at the front of this bike.
You get that when you start going up
into the super duper high-end models of the Speedmax.
Which essentially this is.
That said, that hydration system
over here and the older model Speedmax is one of the areas
where I see there's a little bit of kind
of engineering junkiness that you have to work around.
The way that the Di2 cables are routed
through this older model Speedmax can actually lead
to pinching those Di2 cables.
When you end up putting this hydration system together,
and if you've ever pinched a Di2 cable
and had to buy a single replacement Di2 cable,
you know that they can cost up to about 80 bucks.
So like I say, you are still getting a really good bike.
It's just some of the engineering and the way that things
are thought through are thought through a lot better
with newer models.
Related to that, the integration for your nutrition
with the bento box, you give up a little bit
with that older model.
In the older model,
it's that rubberized bento box that you have
to rip your fingers apart to jam your fingers in there.
And it's hard to actually access what's in there.
In the newer model, it's just a flap that you flip up
and you have constant access to it
without ripping up your finger.
Related to that, the storage for the flat repair kit
in the older model is integrated into the bike,
which you might think, all right, well, you know what,
that's actually quite nice.
Because I've got instant access
to the flat repair kit there, whereas in the newer model,
you actually have to flip up the bento box in here,
and then it's in the bottom underneath
a whole bunch of nutrition.
You might be thinking, oh, that's not ideal.
I'd agree with you.
But, 95, 99% of the time
you're using these bikes in training,
not in racing where you have a ton of nutrition in there,
and that flat repair section in the older model Speedmax
actually gets in the way
of taking your water bottles out,
which you're going to do 50, 60 times throughout a ride.
And it's constantly bumping into the frame here.
Newer model Speedmax, there's all the room
because that frame isn't tapered off
with that big bevel here,
that's taking up a bunch of space and making it difficult
to actually get those bottles in and out.
Another fairly significant difference, as I mentioned,
the older Speedmax has a Di2 build spect.
The newer Speedmax, you have access to the SRAM Force
and SRAM access, the eTap system.
I really, really prefer that system to the point
that in my contract with Canyon,
we specifically talked about, do I want Shimano or SRAM?
And because I travel so much,
I want as few wires as possible.
So there are as few failure points as possible.
Is that worth the additional thousand dollars to you?
If you're not traveling a ton,
most people probably don't care.
And Di2 is what's commonly used for electronic shifting.
Now, some people might say that the major difference
between these two bikes is the braking system.
On the old Speedmax, it's traditional caliper brakes.
On the new Speedmax it's disc brakes.
Now, I actually look at this as a complete non-factor
when it comes to deciding which bike you want.
It's actually kind of questionable
if it is a performance benefit to have disc brakes
versus caliper brakes, if anything,
it's probably an aerodynamic penalty.
It's a breaking quality benefit to have disc brakes,
but really how much do you break in a triathlon?
A lot of industry bike people that I've talked to
actually say that this real push towards disc brakes
on triathlon bikes is completely consumer driven,
not actually performance driven.
It's just everyone saying,
oh, disc brakes are the way of the future.
It's the way they have to be.
So we have to put disc brakes on a bike.
Whereas the bike people are like, well, A, triathletes,
aren't great at mechanical issues.
They're often traveling and if there's something
that's going to go wrong,
it's more often going to go wrong on a disc brake bike
than a caliper bike.
A caliper bike, much easier to work on, more robust.
So I would actually say that
that shouldn't be a deciding factor.
The build quality in the frame seems about similar.
I did some stand-ups sprints to try
to surge up to high power, to feel how the bike responded
if that power transfer from the pedals went into the bike,
or if it was more or less noodly on one or the other,
I really didn't notice any sort of difference.
They both handle like a triathlon bike, which is like a hog.
It takes a long time to get up to speed.
Beyond that, between the two bikes,
they're both triathlon bikes.
Now, if you want to save some money on an older Speedmax,
I don't think that you are going to experience
much of a performance detriment.
If you want the newest of the new,
I think that you're going to get a much more practical bike
an easier to work on bike,
a bike that suits you a little bit better
right out of the box.
But if you wanna spend a little bit of time
and maybe about $300,
you can get a lot of that with the older Speedmax.
So while I do agree that the new Speedmax
is a refinement on a really good bike
and it is a better bike.
The old bike is still a great bike.
And some of those tiny little experiential benefits
that you get with the new bike aren't that important to you,
then by all means go and grab an older Speedmax,
save some money and get yourself a great bike
and maybe save that money for a really nice helmet
or heck even a membership at www.app.mymottiv.com,
where you can get all of your training for your races
for 57 bucks a month after a 14 day free trial
to see if you even want it.
Either way Trainiacs, you're gonna get a really good bike.
It just depends, what's more important to you,
having the newest of the new or saving a little bit of money
while still getting a really good bike.
In either case you're making a great decision.
I'm a big fan of Canyon.
I think as far as entry level bikes go
in getting people onto triathlon bike,
there's really no other bike that has as good a feature set
at the price point that you're able to access it
because of their direct to consumer model.
And if you aren't already subscribed,
hit the subscribe button below and go check out
the training app at www.app.mymottiv.com.
Later, Trainiacs.