(upbeat music)
- I'm delighted to say that I'm joined by
Tim Reed and his bike. So Tim, just tell me,
when did you start riding this bike?
- So I got this bike before Ironman Australia in May.
It was the same bike that I've been riding
for the last two years. It's just
a bit more of a flash paint job.
- Okay. And what's you best result on this?
- I had a three or four podium finishes on it
and then my last race at Ironman 70.3 Philippines,
one of my favourite events, I managed to do
the fastest bike speed and win that race.
- Wow that's a pretty speedy bike.
Do you want to just talk us through it
like some of your favourite parts of it?
And just start wherever you like
but go into a little bit of detail.
- Okay so I'll go from the front to the back.
I run a aeolus 7 tubeless ready clincher wheel
for pretty much 90% of my races.
I love that it's fairly deep but it still
handles fairly well in cross winds.
You can set it up tubeless
which I have done for a few races.
And it's aerodynamic as a lot of the ...
well about as anything else out there
so really happy with the front wheel.
As you can see, I've got the upward tilt.
The great thing about the Trek Speed Concept
is you can really adjust
the front end a thousand different ways,
and I really like an upward tilt so that
I'm not slipping forward on my pads.
As you can see quite a high hand position here.
- Have you always had this set up
or is it something you've changed recently?
- No actually this is something that's evolved
over the last six months. I was having
a lot of back issues and essentially
I've brought my position forward
and came into an actual more aerodynamic position
by bringing it forward. And it's more stable
by having those bars tilted upward.
Running the Dura-Ace 9100.
Ever since I went to the Dura-Ace electronic shifting ...
I actually held off for quite a while.
I was just had a little bit of a thing with it
like I don't know how to fix it
if something goes wrong but once I went to it,
I was almost slapping myself for not doing it years earlier.
- And what were you using before?
- I was just using Shimano the ... not electronic.
- Oh really? Okay.
- The mechanical so ...
- I bet quite a few people would be surprised at that.
- Yeah. I did that until 2014. So took me a while.
- And do you ride with your power?
What do you have on your screen when you're racing?
- So I've got a Garmin 510 I think it is.
And I have power, cadence, speed, and heart rate.
But I probably won't use heart rate for this race.
Typically for Ironman events
I will really follow my heart rate.
I'm actually thinking of not running it
at all for this race.
I've had my best races
when I don't look at it and I just race by feel.
- Do you still record it?
- And that's why I would probably have it.
If I was going to take it it would be
not really to look at it that much.
Maybe at a training race where I really need
some motivation to watch the numbers
and rev the engine, then I would use it a lot,
but at World Championship the motivation's there.
I know when I'm going hard.
I don't really feel like I need to see
what the watts are telling me.
So I'm running a 55 outer chain ring
and a 42 inner chain ring.
Actually run 162 and a half sized crank
so quite a small crank which allows me to
have that bigger chain ring. I think if you ...
- Have you experimented with that?
Is that something you've recently changed?
- No I've had that for the last two years.
It's something that I find in a time trial position
makes me a lot more comfortable,
particularly over 180 kilometres.
I think the industry's been very slow to adapt
to a range of crank lengths. Given that
we're all very different sizes, it's bizarre to me
that there's three major crank lengths sizes.
So I think in the future we'll see a wider range
and more people going both ends of the spectrum.
Simano Dura-Ace pedals.
- And what do you have going on here?
- That's just a little aero cover that I made up.
- Okay.
Yeah you can buy the carbon piece
and you just essentially cut it
and tape it onto the crank set.
- Have you had it tested? Does it make ...
- Haven't done any testing on it.
Most of the things I add on like that
are just to intimidate competitors.
(laughter)
I'm not sure.
(laughter)
- So working our way back, I've got
a 25/11 cassette on the back.
I've found on this climb that's about
as small a gear as I need to climb at race pace.
So that's essentially most of the bike covered.
I'll be running a disc ...
- What tyre have you got on the back? What width?
- I'm running a 25mm on the back
and a 23mm tyre on the front.
- And what pressure do you run?
- This course is actually pretty rough
so I'll probably run ninety in the back
and ninety in the front.
- What's your favourite sound on the bike?
- My favourite sound is silence.
If it's silent it means that the bike is ...
there's not much friction, the bike's flowing smoothly.
I can't handle little ticks or ...
And that's been the great thing about this bike,
one of the great things is that it just all works.
There are some really aero fast time trial bikes out there
but the brakes seize, they're a nightmare to pull apart.
The practicality of this bike combined with the fact
that it's as fast as anything out there
is what I love about it.
- Cool. And finally, just because a lot of our viewers
want to see this or hear it more importantly,
can you give us the free hub sound?
- Sure.
(wheel spinning)
- Well there you go.
Great, Tim. Thanks so much for your time.
Really interesting insight into your bike.
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- Great.