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Meet My Ride

As ever we are trying our best to make the wonderful world of multisport accessible to the masses.  As such I’ve decided to open myself up to scrutiny and talk you all through the kit I use regularly so you can see that having the most expensive kit out there to get the most out of the beautiful sport isn’t always necessary.

I hope you enjoy the video but if you would rather read instead of watch I’ve even gone to the trouble of transcribing my ramblings for you below.

Triathlons and gym as well but I am by no means an elite athlete (I do try) but I’m certainly not at the pointy end so that is obviously how we encourage people to come and take part as my events are far and  away suitable for absolutely everybody.  

So what I wanted to do was demonstrate what my bike setup is so that you’ve got an idea of what you might need and maybe how we can adapt what you’ve got to make sure what you’ve got is suitable for an event.   

That said there isn’t an unsuitable bike as we had somebody this morning take part on a fat bike which was fantastic and he actually did really well considering so let’s run through my bike.

To start off, it’s a 2014 specialised alloy that I got second-hand from a friend. It is in good condition. It’s an aluminium frame with aluminium forks as well so it’s not the lightest bike in the world but it does the job for me.   Brand new you are talking about £800 I think for the specs that this is. 

Like I said I got this second-hand so it’s not top of the range at all. It’s a nice entry-level bike that comes as standard with Shimano claris which has 1,2,3,4,5 8-speed on the back to 2 speed on the front.

Now I’ve done a few upgrades to it to suit my riding style because generally I ride for triathlons rather than standard rides.   I don’t do 100-mile rides, I don’t do a great deal of Hills so I’ve changed mine a little bit.

So what have I done to it? 

The first thing I did as was a few years old was change the bottom bracket and put a fresh, bottom bracket on so the bearings are a bit smoother. It now rides really nice and smooth. 

Whilst we did that what we did here was change it to a one by set up.   I’ve got rid of the two change rings and I’ve now just got the one.  I’ve increased the size of it which means I can go a little bit faster erm when I’m riding well in any of my gears.  So it’s now a 50 tooth  single tooth change ring.

I haven’t done anything to the back yet but over time my plan is to upgrade that to an eleven speed from an eight so that just gives me a few more gears to play with when I’m out on the road.

What else have I done to it? 

I’ve got these brand new wheels (Brand new to me). I picked them up from my friend James Roberts, James, from Roberts coaching and James Roberts race team.   They are second hand Bontrager aeolus comp 5s.   Slightly deeper rims and again the hub in the bearings are much better and much smoother.  It does feel really nice for me to ride now and just feels a little bit lighter. The rolling weights are a little bit better to give me that extra consistency on the bike.

I’ve also upgraded the wheels from the standard (sorry tyres) ones.  I’ve now got Continental Grand Prix 5000 in a tanned wall because it looks cool.   It’s not as much about going fast as it is looking cool. 

That’s pretty much it with what I’ve done with the bike, a few entry-level upgrades that have not cost me the Earth to do. I’ve not bought it brand new as would have cost me significantly more if I had and can upgrade from here myself.  

You might have a mountain bike which is absolutely adequate for an event.   if you want to ride it on the road you just switch out your knobbly fat tyres to fine more hybrid tyres.

You don’t need to change your tyres though as any safe bike is suitable just get down and take part. 

If you have any questions about bikes give us a shout we usually have Jack from bespoke cycling here so he’s always around to to offer advice and we will always point you in his direction as well for for any bike bike mechanics or upgrades