Shiv: Further Thoughts

I probably spent too much time talking about the hydration system on the new Shiv in my earlier post on the bike, when there are many other noteworthy items about the bike.  More important to triathlets is how usable and fittable the bike is (in addition to being fast), and from what I’ve seen the Shiv is going to be easy for triathletes to use (particularly for shipping) and offer a lot of options for fitting (without sacrificing aerodynamics).

TriRig.com posted a very thorough and thoughtful review of there initial impressions of the new Shiv.

TriRig.com also had an article on the Shiv Craig Alexander used to win Ironman Hawii

If you’ve never been to TriRig.com I would definitely check it out, I had never heard of it until I started searching for info on the new Shiv.  Since then I’ve been impressed with the articles, reviews, and pro bike setups. 

Treeshaker Team Recap

Recap of BikeSource Mountain bike team from the Treeshaker 6 and 12 Hour Challenge:

2^nd Place 12 hour Male Duo:  Donald Butler and Daniel Lenis

3^rd Place 6 hour Female Solo:  Rebecca Bubp

1^st Place 6 hour Male Solo:  Chris Rouisse

1^st Place 12 hour Three Person Male:  Tim Anderson, Bobby Bryson, and Matt Moosa

Podium Picture

On the podium at Treeshaker

Race Report: Treeshaker 6 Hour MTB

The Plan: The plan was to go out relatively hard for the first five minutes to get in front of poor bike handlers (myself circa 2009 and earlier), then to back way off, get my heartrate down to the low 130’s and ride smooth and even for the rest of the race, you can always go faster at the end of the race if you still feel good.

The Race:  I got to the race later than I was hoping to (nothing new there for me).  Matt and Tim (guys from the shop that also were racing), helped me set up my new Garmin 500,  all I was going to have it display was time, so I’d know when to drink and heartrate, so I’d ride easy enough for the first 4 hours of the race.  I didn’t want to know how fast I was going, because that might have made me want to speed up, which wouldn’t help things during hours 4, 5, and 6.  Warmed up very briefly and got ready for the start.

Got a good start, was surprised how many people went out really hard in the first couple minutes, I knew most of them were part of teams and wouldn’t be racing continuously, the rest I knew would either slow down or were going to be much faster than me and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.  I backed my pace way back after getting into the woods, but my heart rate stayed high (in the 150’s) for quite a while, I knew that if I just kept going smooth eventually it would come down, and by 30 minutes into the race it had. 

First two laps (each about 48 minutes) went by pretty smoothly, there were some riders around, but by that time everyone had spread out pretty well.  The start of the third lap I started to check out mentally, had been riding for almost two hours and had four hours still to go, I was still riding pretty well, but wasn’t as focused and motivated as would have been best.  I had no idea where I was compared to the other guys riding in my class, I could have been anywhere from 1^st to10th I just had no idea.  Midway through the third lap I caught up to someone that was in my class, I stayed on his wheel for a couple minutes and relaxed, when I passed him I continued to push for a couple minutes (I wanted to open up a big enough gap that he wouldn’t try to follow).  Catching and passing him helped me tremendously in staying focused and motivated, I knew I had to pull away from him without going to hard. 

Everything continued to go smoothly, every two laps I was swapping Camelbaks and getting a new water bottle with nutrition.  I finished lap 5 right about the 4 hour mark, and was still feeling strong, better in fact that I had felt on my longer mountain bike training rides.  The cut off for going out on another lap was 5:30, so I would have to do two 45 minute laps (a couple minutes faster than I was going) to do another, or I would just be doing two laps.  Knowing this I pushed the 6^th lap really hard, it wasn’t fast enough that I’d end up doing two laps (which was probably a good thing).  On the 7^th lap I was feeling pretty tired, but I was keeping things together pretty well.  About ten minutes from the finish the front end of the bike washed out and down I went (my first crash of the day, not bad for me, but it would have felt good if I hadn’t).  I got back up without any issues, or blood for that matter and finished up.  When I was done the guys from the team said they had thought I had won but weren’t sure.  It took about 15 minutes for me to know for sure that I had in fact won.  This was the first time I had felt like I’d won a race overall, since track in high school (I’ve won my age group or category, but there have always been faster people doing the same event), and it was pretty funny that I didn’t know what place I was for the whole race.  I had ended up winning by about a minute and twenty seconds, not because I was faster (he had two laps that were faster than any of mine), but because I kept my lap times even and didn’t slow down as the race went along.

Neil Boyd and his guys from Charlotte Sports Cycling did a great job putting on the race, and I was extremely impressed with the prizes I received for winning, including a couple gift cards and some merchandise that was actually usable (at so many races you end up with stuff that you’ll never be able to use), in addition to a nice plaque that will stay in the triathlon room (where my trainer and all my triathlon gear goes) for motivation this winter while I’m on the trainer.  Results were also posted very quicky and since he used timing chips we know each of our lap splits.

You can view results, by going to the Charlotte Mountain Bike page clicking on the Treeshaker link and then going to the results.

Fun time of year at a bike shop

This time of year is one of the coolest times to work in a bike shop.  You start getting in the really cool stuff for the next model year.  Now is a great time to go into a bike shop and ask what cool stuff have you gotten in for next year.  Any shop employee is going to be really excited to talk about the stuff that’s come in for next year.  In the last couple weeks we’ve gotten a S-works Epic 29er XTR (which is absolutely gorgeous in person, the pictures on the Specialized website don’t do it justice), one of the new Venge Pro bikes, and what I think is the most exciting development for the bike industry for 2012:  the electronic Ultegra (UI2) bikes.  We just received one of the Tarmac SL4 Pro with UI2.  The UI2 bikes are going to be a great value if you are interested in electronic shifting (about the price of a mechanical Dura-Ace bikes, and weighing similarly).

New Shiv Tri

It's pretty cool that the day I started creating this blog that Specialized has released information on their new triathlon bike, the Shiv, which for a quite a while is going to get confused with the Shiv TT (which used to be called just "Shiv").  To me what's the most exciting about it isn't that it's a super fast time trial/triathlon bike (there are quite a number of them on the market), but this is a strictly designed as a triathlon bike and takes an aspect of completing a triathlon that has largely been ignored, or disregarded in bicycle design . . . HYDRATION.

For many if not most triathletes that are going to $3000 or more on a bike they are looking to at some point do a half ironman race or a full ironman race.  This means at a minimum of two and a half hours of riding, one waterbottle mounted to the downtube just isn't going to cut it.  The new Shiv will store water in bladder (similar to a Camelbak) in the down tube of the frame.  A hose extends from the bladder up to the handlebars, near the end of the hose is a magnet which attaches the hose to the extentions when not in use, keeping it out of the wind and improving wind resistance.  Keeping the hose out of the air might not seem like a big deal, but the straws that extend out of front mounted waterbottles are terrible for aerodynamics.  They have also set it up so that you can refill the bladder from a waterbottle during the bike.  This may seem trivial but if you looking to get a really fast bike and them you have to throw 2, 3, or more water bottles on the bike, it's certainly not going to be as aero as you'd like.