The worrying thing for a cyclist is being stuck without a bike. In the event that something becomes damaged on my Burls road bike, I would be stuck without a bike and be at the mercy of the bike shop to get the machine back on the road. In addition, it’s a good idea to have a Winter bike and a Summer bike - even if you don’t strictly stick to the seasons. The Burls, with it’s titanium frame (which won’t rust) and relaxed geometry, is the perfect high end winter bike.
For a Summer bike, I knew I wanted something carbon. I considered every option open to me and looked at every major brand. My choice was based on 5 things.
The first was to try and ignore all my previous preconceptions. It’s easy to build an opinion of a brand based on something as trivial as not liking someone you know with one.
The second was to look to friends for their advice. What do they ride, and how happy are they?
The third was to scour the user review websites to whittle out the bad choices. By this I don’t mean websites owned by magazines, I mean independent reviewer sites where people review their own personal kit. What you tend to find is most people praise their own bikes, as they are advocating their own choices, so you can’t pick what you DO want like this. However, bad reviews are very telling, especially if there is a trend. If a certain bike or brand is getting many bad reviews, there’s something to be said for taking note of this.
The fourth was my own desire to not just pick something just because it’s popular. There’s a common misconception that because something is popular it must be good, which anyone with half a brain will realise just isn’t true.
The fifth was to look at how much bike you are getting for the money, rather than plumping for the bike with the most marketing or most buzzwords.
What I didn’t do was look to magazine reviews. Magazines are heavily influenced by who advertises with them. There have been many occasions where I’ve read a magazine review and found it to be the complete opposite of what I’ve found to be true. Don’t believe their hype.
One thing you do find at my price point was most bikes have Taiwan sourced carbon frames with Shimano 105 and budget wheelsets. One bike shop actually said “at this price, pick what looks nicest”.
Based on this, I narrowed it down to 3 bikes - a Specialized Tarmac Comp, a Cannondale Six 105, and a Giant TCR Advanced 3.
Those who know me well will be questioning why the Trek Madone didn’t make the shortlist. I’ve said on many times before that I am a Trek man. My time trial bike is a Trek Equinox, and Suzy has a Trek mountain bike. I’ve always said I’d get a Trek Madone as my summer bike. However, applying the above thinking, the Madone didn’t make much sense. Sure, if I had £4k, there would be only one choice, and the Madone 6.9 Red still remains my dream bike (that and a Cervelo S2). But at this price point, the Madone wasn’t making much of a case for itself. Most of what makes a Madone a Madone is not included in the Madone 4 series bike. The frame is made from cheaper, unspecified, low modulus “TCT” carbon in Taiwan, rather than the intermediate or high modulus OCLV carbon frames (apparently) hand made in the USA. It lacks the press fit style bottom bracket and integrated seatpost of the pricier Madones. The fork has an aluminum steerer. As expected, the bike is specced with Shimano 105 kit and own brand Bontrager components, and weighs around 19lbs. Even a 2010, Shimano Ultegra version of the same bike would be £2500! So unfortunately, the Madone wasn’t in the running.
In the end, stock became the decider. It’s July, the time of year that model year bikes are out of stock ready for next year’s bikes. I knew from the pricing of bikes that had already been announced and from the bike shops themselves that 2010 bikes are all going to be £200-£300 more expensive, so I wanted a 2009 spec bike. The 2009 Cannondale Six was all but out of stock, and a single Giant TCR Advanced in my size made the choice slightly more easy.
For reasons which are slightly political, I can’t really discuss the bike shop, but in the end I got a full carbon framed Giant TCR Advanced 1, down-speeced to the price of a TCR Advanced 3. It came with a SRAM Force / Rvial mix, with Race Face bars, FSA stem, Flite saddle, and Schwalbe tyres. The only major downgrade to fit within my budget was a set of Fulcrum Racing 7 wheels - wheels I know are built strong from riding a set on my Burls.
The Giant TCR Advanced frameset is made from Toray T700 carbon, a well used and highly regarded raw material. It features a BB85 press fit bottom bracket (similar to the BB90 used by Trek and BB30 used by Cannondale) which reduces weight slightly by eliminating the need for external bottom bracket cups and reduces the Q factor (the width between pedals due to bottom bracket and crank spindle width). It also has a massively oversized bottom bracket area and headtube area designed to increase stiffness. It doesn’t have an integrated seatpost like the proper Madones (that is reserved for the Giant TCR Advanced SL) but it does have a unique, proprietary Giant carbon seatpost. What interested me was that Giant made it’s name making frames for other people. It has built up a tremendous reputation for making solid, reliable bikes, and reportedly has one of the lowest carbon frame failure rates in the world. It also has it’s own factory, and designs and makes it’s own frames.
Essentially, the TCR Advanced is the baby brother to the TCR Advanced SL, the bike Rabobank’s Denis Menchov won the 2009 Giro d’Italia on. They have similar DNA, with the Advanced SL receiving the higher modulus Toray T800 carbon, an integrated seat post and a slightly different construction method. So, if it’s good enough for Denis Menchov, it’s good enough for me!
But all of this means nothing, if I don’t like how the bike rides. I’ve ridden the bike twice now - once on a 12 mile commute from Elsdon to Rothbury in the week where my first impressions were good, and again on the 67 mile club ride where I fell in love with the bike. The one thing I am struggling to get used to is the SRAM Doubletap system.
Doubletap or Double-pap?
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the differences between Shimano, Campagnolo and SRAM - here’s a quick lesson. If you’re a cyclist or you’re not interested, you can skip this bit!
With Shimano STI shifters, up-shifting on the rear mech is achieved using a small lever behind the right hand side brake lever, and down-shifting is achieved by pushing the actual brake lever towards the centre of the bike. Up-shifting on the front mech uses the left hand brake lever, and down-shifting uses the lever behind the brake lever. The Campagnolo Ergopower system is slightly different. Up-shifting the rear mech is achieved via the small lever behind the right brake lever (the opposite function to a Shimano STI unit) and down-shifting via a thumb lever on the inside of the brake hood. Up-shifting the front mech is achieved via the small lever behind the left hand side brake lever (again the opposite function to a Shimano STI unit) and downshifting via the thumb lever on the inside of the hoods.
For me, using the brake lever to shift gears never felt natural, and is the major reason why I don’t like Shimano groupsets. My Orbea had Shimano STI levers, and even just sat on the turbo trainer I didn’t like using them. So, when I built my Burls, I opted for Campagnolo, as their shifter design makes more sense. With Campag, you don’t need to make the larger, less natural movement required by the Shimano brake lever shifters, plus your brake levers don’t move at all leading to far more confidence in the braking set up. The downside with Campy is that the thumb levers aren’t always accessible, especially when on the drops.
With SRAM Doubetap, the shifting system is taken a step further. Rather than having 2 levers, 1 lever sat just behind the brake lever (which is used on both Shimano and Campagnolo systems albeit for different tasks) undertakes all shifting duties. For the rear mech, click the right hand lever in once, it up-shifts. Click and hold, it downshifts. Similarly for the front mech, click the left lever once for a down-shift, click and hold for an up-shift. In theory, it’s a better way of doing things.
On my 12 mile commute, there isn’t much flat. It’s pretty lumpy all the way - facilitating the need to constantly shift up and down - the perfect test for the SRAM drivetrain. I’d also geared the bike differently to my Burls, as I’ve found I’ve run out of gears on hills ( I like to spin at a higher cadence in a lower gear rather than pushing bigger gears). The Burls has an 11-25 rear cassette, but the Giant has a 12-28 (which I’ve been ribbed for already I might add).
I must admit, I found the SRAM system difficult to get used to. By the time the 12 miles had ended, I was still looking for a Campagnolo thumb lever and still getting myself confused with the front mech. It won’t help having Campagnolo on one bike and SRAM on the other, so some decisions may be needed to align the bikes.
However, on the longer club ride, the SRAM system started to make sense. In the drops, I could change gears. On the hills, I could change down under pressure. From what I can tell, Doubletap is clearly the better system of the 3.
On the road
Despite the admiring glances that the understated frame received all day, the one thing I noticed was how this bike climbs. Every pedal stroke transfers power to the rear wheel, and on climbs where I’d feel quite sluggish, I was bouncing around on the pedals and accelerating like never before. Don’t get me wrong - I’m still no Alberto Contador, but I certainly felt more sprightly on the climbs. Downhill and through the bends, the bike is twitchy and nervous, a common trait of carbon bikes. This is apparently something I just need to get used to.
All in all, I’m very happy with my purchase. It may not have 9 Tour de France wins under it’s belt - but then again I’m not likely to ride in Le Tour anyway! Courtesy of some of the nicest friends a guy could have the bike already has a set of FSA K-Force carbon bars to go on and an Elite carbon fibre bottle cage.