Race Bike

 My main race bike for the 2012 season will be a Specialized Expert Carbon Epic 29er. It isn’t top of the line but is still made up of quality stuff but trades price for weight unfortunately; as Gary Fisher once said, “strength, price and weight, pick two”.

It weighs 11.78kg (26lbs) to be exact, the one up side is that it costs half as much as an S-Works and considering that I’m a poor student, that's no bad thing!

One of the first upgrades I will make to the bike will be to change the wheels, swapping the Roval control wheels to a personal favourite of mine (at least in the 26” version) Hope pro 2 hubs with Stan’s Crest rims.

The reason I am such a big fan of the Hope Hoops is because they have somehow been able to find a way of building a wheel set that (in proportion) is strong, cheap and light. I have a pair of them on my Specialized S-Works Stumpy HT and have literally hammered them for two years and granted they have a few tweaks in them but nothing to the degree that physics dictates they should!!

One of the reasons I’m picking a 29er full-suss bike is that as I mention above, I still have a 26” hardtail so I don’t see the point in getting another hardtail. I want to try and mount a serious podium challenge at some endurance races this year and I know from experience that a 26” hardtail with 90mm of travel on the front is not the most comfortable! You could argue at a 29” hardtail would be as comfortable as a full suspension bike whilst being more efficient but quite frankly, a full suspension 29er provides the most fun you can have on a race bike!!

This years steed

As well as the wheel upgrade, I will increase the small ring size by a few teeth on the crank set as I found that last year was that my performance up the hills wasn’t what it was in the previous year and I think that I could quite easily cope with an increased gear ratio despite the bigger wheels to get me up there quicker. Also, I will change the stem to a 80mm stem for comfort purposes and will possibly change the handlebars for some titanium ones. I have a KCNC titanium seat post as well that I will sub in for the stock seat post to save a few more grams.

Hopefully my modifications will bring the weight down by at least a kilo and give me a bike that is competitive in races. I do plan to race my hardtail more this year as the only time I raced it last year was at the National Champs when my full suss 29er would probably have been better! I would have raced it at Margham, the perfect course for it but due to my injury I wasn’t able to, my team mate Jay Horton raced it after his bike was stolen during the night and he finished sixth on it!!

I’m pretty excited to use the Formula brakes, I have a set of Formula The One’s on my Cube Fritzz and I actually had to change the front rotor from 203mm to 185mm as they were just way too powerful and I had a tendency to come close to going over the bars every time I twitched my fingers!

Component	Description
Frame	FACT 9m Carbon front triangle. 29” Geometry M5 Aluminium chainstays & seatstays
Rear Shock	Fox/Specialized remote Mini-Brain, new 2012 tune
Fork	Custom RockShox SID 29er Brain
Stem	Specialized XC 90mm
Handlebars	Specialized XC flat 680mm
Grips	Specialized lock-on
Brakes	Formula R1 160mm F+R
Front Mech	SRAM X-7
Rear Mech	SRAM X-0
Shifters	SRAM X-9
Cassette	SRAM PG-1050
Crankset	Custom SRAM carbon S-2200
Chainrings	38/24
Wheelset	Roval Control 29 Alloy w/DT Swiss super comp spokes
Front Tire	S-Works Fast Trak 2Bliss
Rear Tire	Specialized Renegade Control 2Bliss
Saddle	Specialized Phenom Comp
Seatpost	2014 Butted alloy

The items that are in bold in the above spec are the items that I will be changing and the ones in italics I will think about changing.

Once I have given it a good thorough test I will write another post giving my review of the bike!

Keep your eyes peeled!

Rich