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Okay, enough about puking and being sick and lame. Lets get down to business and talk tri.
While I love my Fuji Ace road bike and I can’t imagine ever parting with it, it wasn’t eactly built for racing, let alone triathlon. Fully loaded with saddle bag and bento box, I think it comes in at around 28 pounds. It isn’t exactly built for speed, but the thing is a tank and I love it. It is the first real bike that I ever owned since my little bmx bike I had when I was 14 and it holds a special place in my heart.
That being said, I still think I need to upgrade between now and next season now that I’ve upped my game, gotten totally hooked on training and racing and have started taking things a lot more seriously. After doing some drooling over the gallery of beautiful carbon bikes at the multisport expo earlier this year, I totally fell in love with the Cervelo P2C, an all carbon beauty of a triathlon bike that has been calling my name ever since.
Lucky enough for me, one of my teammates works at Cervelo and stopped by the shop with a truck full of bikes this week as a part of a Cervelo demo tour. It was perfect. Show up, sign out a bike, take it for a ride, and make it your bitch. That was all the convincing I needed. I finally had that chance to stop dreaming about a new ride, get some smooth carbon between my legs and take her for a ride.
I felt like a spoiled kid and just crying out “Mommy I want it NOW! Give it to me!”
I suited up, had fellow teammate and Wheelworks employee Jared hook me up with some pedals, and off I went with a few other Wheelworks Mutisport teammates.
Okay, so here is my half assed attempt at a review.
Full disclaimer: I feel totally unqualified to provide any real review of any high-end bike of any kind. I have not even ridden that many different bikes, and this is my first ride ever on a tri bike, so take that all into consideration with whatever else I have to say from here on out.
First impressions:
This is a gorgeous looking bike. You can see all the attention to detail that was put into this bike. From the carbon aero tubing, to the seat tube cutout, to all the internal cable routing, this thing is sex on wheels.
Weight? Just pulling this thing off the rack, rolling it down from the sidewalk and onto the street I was amazed at how light it was. It made me fully realize how much extra weight I’ve been dragging around with my Fuji. But hey, no one ever said anything bad about resistance training, right?
Out on the road:
Once out riding, I started to really get what everyone talks about when they talk about the smooth ride quality of a carbon frame. It totally makes sense now. Granted it probably isnt’ fair that I can only only compare it to my aluminum road bike that costs 1/4 of the price, but hey, it is all I can do. Deal with it.
This was also the first time I was able to play with aero bars. It was a really weird experience and totally uncomfortable at first, but after a few miles I started to feel a little more in control and was able to enjoy the added speed and started really pushing it on downhills. It even felt like I was using my leg muscles differently to turn the pedals around. Good stuff.
The one thing that I totally fell in love with was how it felt going fast downhill, cruising along in the big chain ring in the aero bars. Sure, going fast down hill is always fun, but it was a totally different experience. I didn’t feel like I was really doing 35 mph, or that there was that much much wind blowing past me. No huge rushing noise past my ears or skipping along across the cracks in the pavement, just a quiet smooth dart cruising along (what at least felt like) fresh and smooth asphalt. It was a blast.
Overall:
I’m not going to try and make typical bike technical comparisons about crap that I just don’t know about like aerodynamics or geometry or flex in the bottom bracket or stuff that, so I’m not even going to bother trying to use some rating system.
Lets just say I had pretty high expectations coming in, but had way more fun and was more impressed than I even expected and was all smiles on the ride home.
Now, I just have to figure out how I can justify making a P2C sized dent in my bank account. 🙂
I’ll definitely have to play around and test out some other tri bikes this summer. More reviews to come, I hope. Because this was fun!
SBR TV 