A collection of random bursts and noises
great post from Cycling Tips Blog covering off all the points about luft, backwards, straightness, when to wear and bandannas...
Well worth the read.
Cycling Plus's Bike of the Year 2012, the Focus Izalco, has been around for a couple of seasons and has seen action at the highest levels of road racing, with the top-end Team model being ridden by Katusha and now Acqua & Sapone. Impressively, the Pro shares the same frame, with a weight that hits the magical 1kg mark and has all the features you’d expect of a pro-level chassis.
Up front a tapered head tube flows into a trapezoid shaped down tube. This has structural spines at the edges which cleverly double up as channels for the internal cable routing. The hugely oversized bottom bracket shell flows into beefy chainstays. The dropouts are full-carbon and angle backwards, meeting the super-skinny seatstays behind the rear axle. This additional length allows for more flex to aid comfort without affecting the stiffness of the chainstays.
The major difference between the Team and Pro framesets is the fork: the Pro’s equipped with a 3T Rigida while the Team gets a lighter 3T Funda. Brakes and gears are SRAM Force, the equivalent of Shimano’s Ultegra (as found on the lower spec Pro 4.0). Force is lighter than Ultegra and performs arguably just as well – it certainly has better brakes.
Focus izalco pro 3.0: focus izalco pro 3.0
Rounding off the 3.0 package is a quality DT Swiss wheelset in the form of the RR 1850s. You can buy lighter for the same money but you’d be pushed to find anything put together significantly better. It’s good to see that Focus haven’t skimped on the tyres either: Continental Grand Prix offer reasonably low weight but a great feel, with plenty of comfort from the 24mm width.
On paper the Izalco certainly looks impressive, as it does on the scales too, at 7.78kg (17.2lb) for a 58cm size. But it’s the performance out on the road that counts and thankfully the Pro 3.0 doesn’t disappoint. With a compact drivetrain and wide cassette married to the bike’s overall lightness, the Izalco is truly exceptional for long hilly rides. That’s not to say that when you want to stomp on the pedals and thrash, it doesn’t follow suit – if anything the Pro 3.0 is at its best when you’re going as hard as you can.
The Izalco’s not just composed and rigid under power but it handles with a confident swiftness too. It’s absolutely among the very best around. Cannondale’s SuperSix Apex may have the edge in the handling stakes and the Trek 3.5 Madone sneaks it for comfort, while Canyon’s Ultimate offers unparalleled equipment, but the Izalco is quite simply the best jack of all trades. That's why it's our Bike of the Year.
I appreciate my helmet. I treat it with respect. I never leave for a ride without it. I replace it after a crash or even after helplessly watching it bound down the stairwell like some kind of deformed styrofoam slinky-dink after allowing it to slip from my grasp. (This activity also typically involves some assertions questioning what it does in its spare time, its origins of birth, and things of that nature.) Community member @chaz also recently suggested that, in accordance with motorcycle tradition, we ceremoniously cut the strap on the helmet and hang it in the VVorkshop in deference to the purpose it served us.
Suffice to say, I’m grateful for the advances technology offers us when it comes to protective headgear, because staying alive is in alignment with my strategy. But progress is the slayer of ritual and tradition, and I can’t help but look back longingly to the days when helmets were rarely worn and if they were, they consisted of thin strips of leather that, assuming it stayed on, would do little more than keep your cranium from coming apart after cracking it to bits on a cobblestone or some such object.
The hairnet was the coolest cranial accouterment ever designed, with the insulated cycling cap that fit over it being a close second. The cycling cap on its own was, of course, also a class piece of kit to be worn forwards, sideways, or backwards – made cooler only by perching a set of cycling-specific shades on top of it. A helmetless head saw hair slicked back by the wind as a byproduct of The V as riders raised their arms in triumph over the finish line. The bare noggin on the high mountain passes was a beacon of Purified Awesome, allowing us to see in all their glory the suffering faces of the riders as they moved Sur La Plaque over the summit.
Take a moment, fellow Velominati, to honor the Useless Headgear of our past.
I've not got a lot else going for me when it comes to cycling talent except looking pro. I liked this quote:
The preference for knee warmers over tights distills down to one elemental fact: no matter how one might try to disguise them, tights are simply not an attractive garment. Not on cyclists. Not on skiers. Not on overweight women at the market. Not on fit women at the Yoga studio. Not on runners, not on swimmers. Not in a box, not on a fox.
Great annual wrap up of what to read if you love cycling.
Here’s a rundown of the books discussed in this week’s show. If you buy any of the books listed (or anything else) via the Amazon links below, a little something will go towards keeping The Bike Show rolling on in 2012, and it won’t cost you a penny.
Bicycle Technology – Rob Van Der Plas
Bicycle Design – Mike Burrows
Cyclepedia – Michael Embacher
Tomorrow, We Ride – Jean Bobet
Slaying the Badger – Richard Moore
On Bicycles – Amy Walker
Bike Snob – Eben Weiss
Pedalare! Pedalare! – John Foot
The Little Black Bottle – Gerry Moore
The Death of Marco Pantani – Matt Rendell
The Boy Who Biked the World – Alistair Humphreys
Two great books that were not mentioned but were featured on the show earlier in the year are Racing Through the Dark by David Millar and It’s All About the Bike by Rob Penn.
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