1X triathlon bike for age groupers, amateur triathlete, etc

Does 1x road setup work for a triathlon or 70.3

Does 1X work in the real world for Joe Blogs on the street trying to get through a Triathlon, Ironman or a time trial?

Ready for just one shifter in your next event? You should be - read on to see why I feel so from my experience

First of all, getting a Tri bike fitted is not just like any other bike - you need a fit, and that fit takes into account many things, all of them static in a room, not out there in a field, in an amateur's case with many people who have never raced in a group before, or have too much testosterone ... and that all adds up to having to just worry about one hand focussed on shifting being a good thing, especially if you are mechanical shifting! 

But that is all subjective, what about in a race as the results, well it just so happened I went 1X on my first middle distance event to throw myself in the deep end and find out :)

If you can manage a smile on a 19% hill too many; you know 1X was the right choice!

Well the short answer is yes, it does, and the data I use as proof of that is that using a 1x set-up I not only:

1.  Managed one of the steepest 70.3 courses on a 48t 11-36 set-up, with 19% and 1400m of ascent, many propose the gearing either has to be too tall or too short which is Weymouth 70.30 bike course, but 
2. Also managed the same top speed, over 76km/h, as my colleague who did the whole event two hours quicker than my and qualified for the 70.3 World Champs, so again, enough gearing to keep up on the downs.
3. It was also one of the bumpiest courses I have ever been on, with some sections seeing competitors dropping chains, and hearing the awful sound of steel chain smacking against carbon chainstays all around me, but not my chain or chainstasy, and that is even without a clutch derailleur.

17% gradient 61.9km into the bike leg of an IM 70.3 and 76km/h max show that 1X has the range even for an amateur

So headline facts of why I consider the experiment a success dealt with, let's get on with the more subjective stuff of feel, and confidence going into my first 70.3 distance event with a 1x I had only tested in Richmond park beforehand... as well as the other benefits, especially for a triathlon bike set-up, and two other key factors of why I am never going back to 2X...

Sram XX 11-36t Cassette and a 48T got me up 19% gradients and a 76.8km/h top speed - who says 1x lacks range!

I normally ride a 50t or a 52t with a wider 11-42t cassette range, and yes, the extra top-end flexibility is nice, but if you look at the stats you can easily extract out of a di2 groupset - you will see you only ever use your top gear in anger for very short period of time, and if you cannot get the RPM, I suggest getting a singlespeed and working on your range, there really is nothing easier to maintain in winter either (other than couping yourself up on a turbo / rollers...).

Having only tested in Richmond park did not prepare me for the long, rough IM 70.3 Weymouth Course

One problem I did have was not finding the time to take the bike to anywhere like the hills I would face in Weymouth. It turns out however, no matter how bad you may think some of the surrey roads are / can be, it was nothing compared to the Weymouth IM 70.3 course, where in one part I even heard someone in a Yorkshire accent say "should have brought me gravel bike"... Now for those of you not familiar with UK regional nuances; if a "true grit" Yorkshireman says a road is rough... its probably quite rough :). 

Other reasons I choose 1x for triathlons: no dropped chains

Anecdotes aside, even gravel bike rough roads did not unsettle the chain, which in races costs you time, can seriously damage your frame, usually damages it cosmetically (costing you resale money / potential warranty issues) and can be downright dangerous. For me, aside from the bullets above

the XX 11-36t was a game changer when it came out, and is still a superlight, superbike-worthy piece of kit

Other reasons I chose 1x Tri / TT setup: simplicity, safety and weight

So let's get to the meat. I bought a reduced low-end Shiv and seriously upgraded the wheels and crank; two areas of rotating weight, and for me two key contact areas; one with the road, the other with yourself!

Let's be clear, while fast on the flat, and surprisingly so also a good handler when pointing down, anything other than top-end Shivs come with a very heavy alloy cock-pit and fairly basic shifting. While the Sram Rival rear to me is not a problem, the non indexed front at probably even a lower level in the Sram range was a serious "you have to be joking me" moment the first time I rode it. This is not a Sram or Specialized choice of kit issue, this is a Tri / TT issue that means you have fiddle around changing front gears while not having access (in a UK set-up at least) to your all important rear brake. This is a major safety issue, not just the time and physical hand coordination, but also concentration: only having to think about gears with one hand makes one less thing to worry about.

Then their is the weight, while going 1X I also swapped the alloy bar for a Zipp 40mm drop (more on that another time) and used some deda extensions that are the only comfortable extensions I have ever used and really meant for putting on the front of a road bike, again something I find really unsafe when matched with roadbike geometry, but on the TT geometry I can ride all day. In short, dropping the front der. cables, dreadful basic heavy cassette, and extra front ring, I dropped about half a kilo, take the 1kg plus from bars and we are talking night and day in the way the Shiv now climbs... All I need to do now is the same to my waist line (work in progress).

1X Specialized Shiv making light work of Box Hill with the extra weight shed converting to 1X

Other points to think about are the aero gains which I first got to thinking about when looking at the Strada 3T website. I honestly cannot say I can feel that difference, but then I think anybody who says they can, well, I am sceptical of...

One final added safety point is the issue of chainrings in an accident: I was once unlucky enough to see a bad case of what they call "chainring kiss". Do yourself a favour and do not look it up on google images, as it is rare but when it happens it can be nasty, and only really happens with the sharper profile of chainrings made for shifting, and usually only when in the smaller gear, however I have seen chains come off in accidents on geared bikes... This is not a deciding factor at all but an added bonus that makes me happy of my decision. 

Final thoughts: I was more worried about my choice of wheels if it had rained that riding 1X in my first Im 70.3

Would I ride 1X again in a 70.3: absolutely. My only concern going into the race was really the fact that rain had been forecast and carbon wheels with rim brakes in a race are like torture; not only for you not knowing how your brakes will perform, but also seeing so many inexperienced riders hit the floor and the sound of grit destroying carbon...

What next? I may try Di2, which again would make the right hand gear changes safer / easier still, and no I would not go back to 2X, but would plump for an XT/ XTR rear and get a 42T or bigger on the rear so as to put a 50 or 52t on the front. I may also add a Sram Force 1X to the rear as I have done with the road bike, however the Wolftooth Roadlink is doing better with this 11-36 set-up than it did with the sram red 11-40 set-up I had on my road bike.

From there its going to probably be a disc specific 1x aero bike, but for now, the Shiv is still a formidable aero bike, and with the Omega X front brake has quite a lot of stopping power

Real IoT 2016: Smart Bicycle

Real World #IoT 2016 Smartbikes #IoT Internet of things

Let's get this over with: Real IoT smashes Kickstarter goals. And the speed-x smart aero bike is at over $2M when its goal was $50k....

What separates the Speed-X out is how it integrates technology: lights, cables, diagnostics

Now the bike, as you can see is handsome, however it has not yet taken me from my present road rides for two reasons:

1. I just bought 2 road bikes and completely overhauled a 3rd in the space of just over a year
2. It still does not have a SIM in it, more on this below.

But I still have time :)

So what is the attraction? Well bike owners hate being like my friend, let's call him X. X has everything on his bike, saddle bags, day and night lights even in the day, a cycle computer mounted off to one side, the original bell and reflectors that came with the bike: you name it, the bike looks like a shop accessory demo. At the other end you have cyclists, especially roadies (I am both road and mountain, well actually anything with pedals) even think its important to have the tyre logos and wheel logos match up, and don't even get me started on matching zip-up overshoes...

So to have all this in one integration is good. And then there is the cabling and the data. Power meters go some way to help, as they have cadence built in, but even Shimano Di2 needs a separate connector to tell you what gear you were in. this would be OK if the industry had not made us all buy new frames and electronic gears to get rid of cables in the first place. Its a bit like trying to console a child that winning is not important when they have lost 10-2: well, if you teach them how to count, they are gonna know they lost and it sucks.

Having one integrated device measure everything is a key part to bike IoT, but its missing a second ingredient still...

So on to why I did not pledge one of these yesterday (but still can tomorrow lol). Well here she is:

You cannot beat a custom build, in my case a custom s-works; but its not electronics are not integrated; and that's a problem.

For those of you who are not cyclists, here are 5 important electronics, integrated as best I can:

1. A power metre in the crank, from Rotor, which talks to my Garmin cycle computer via ant+
2. Electronic gears, Shimano Di2, which could talk to my Garmin via ant+ if I buy an extra dongle and cable and attach it to the very frame that I was sold as an upgrade to my old top of the range, even lighter Tarmac, due to integrated cabling...
3. the Garmin computer mentioned above, note I have splashed out on a Garmin mount to have it more aero because, as per point 2: #aeroiseverything.
4. An Exposure Use Flash rear light with saddle mount, to be as tucked away as possible, but is essential even in the daytime, as we still have people on the roads in the Uk who think its ok to be in charge of a 2 tonne plus vehicle distracted by phones, cigarettes and more with the "sorry guv, I dinna see you there" excuse.... 
5. two GSM trackers you cannot see in the picture as they are inside the frame.

So while Ant+ and Bluetooth here gives me all the big data I need, there is still the little data IoT I am missing. Just like the trakdot, I would happily pay $20+ dollars per year to Rotor to have a SIM in the crank, that with the 300 hour battery, which I am ok with now being 200 hours, will sit there unconnected, with no battery drain until one of three things happen: 1) my battery is low, I do not want to do my most epic ride with no data, 2) I do not come back from a ride and am lying in a ditch somewhere, 3) some little toe rag takes my bike.

I would also happily pay those same $20+ per year to Shimano to have a SIM in the Di2 that makes sure my battery is never down when I do my epic ride and, yes, as a back-up to the unsavory points above of distress or theft.

This is where people get confused with Big Data and little data and say: well we could have ant+ do that, and the answer is: yes to battery alert, but it will most likely be just as I get on the bike for the big ride and there is not much I can do, and it still does not solve the huge issue of stolen bikes and being trackable way after the Garmin has run out of batteries or bluetooth has disconnected, or it went flying into the rod in my fall and was run over by 50 cars by now...

Just some of the tracking devices I use on my bikes, but these should be integrated into the other electronics for real IoT

Then finally there is the issue of the fact that thieves get wise to trackers, and they can go in the nearest river / bin / etc. Try pulling a crankset and gear wiring off of a bike in a getaway and still have a saleable swag :)

I am confident, from the conversations I am having both via my IoT Consultancy Virtuser and the IoT enabler Conecto that I co-founded, where we are having conversations about embedding SIMs in luggage, bikes, skis and more, from 1 SIM to millions of SIMs that this is the year of embedded bikes.

The SIM comes into its own in that you can use location APIs and 2G to get months of battery where GPRS and GPS give you weeks, or weeks where the latter gives only days or hours of connectivity, and this is important, not only for the points made above, but also for the revenue stream of $20+ per year per millions of subs by adding a chip to an existing device hat costs much less.