I am so excited about my new road bike that I cannot keep it to myself- I think this is the future of road bikes [certainly for training] in SA. I have been racing road bikes since 1984 and stopped racing competitively in 2005 [family responsibilities]. I however continued to commute to work [on my old Colnago C40] and more recently started mountain biking. My MTB is now such a competent off-road bike [1x11; carbon full sus 29er, etc.] that it has become a very incompetent bike on the road – I still commute. so when looking for a replacement for my old Colnago [still perfect, but you know sometimes you itch]. My list of frustrations/requirements were the following: I ride it on the road but there are certain sections I have to ride that is downright suicidal with traffic and if I could safely skip these by riding off-road, it would make my commute much safer. Furthermore, you are bound to hit potholes etc when riding in the dark and wheels that does not disintegrate when you do so would be a plus.The gearing had to allow road and some limited off road riding [with the 1x11 MTB gearing, you are always out of gears on the road] If you ride off-road, the tyres MUST be tubeless [very hard to find for road bikes], otherwise you’d end up fixing punctures the whole time I do train with my roadie friends on occasion [and may even do some road races ] and therefore a hard tail MTB with narrow tyres will probably not be the answer. The reality is that on a good surface, road bikes are vastly more efficient My Colnago can take 25mm tyres but no wider and the same goes for most road bikes- wider tyres on my road bike is therefore not an option Disc brakes are the future [i think] but finding disc brakes for a tubeless road wheel is almost not possible I got incredible mileage out of my Campagnolo components over the years [20 000km out of my last cassette!] and am fed up with the poor durability of MTB parts. When I bought the Colnago from Willie Engelbrecht in 2004, he told me that eventually, everybody who can, will end up on a Colnago. Now I have to admit, this bike has made me a bit of a snob but settling for some mass produced bike would be like swapping my Lamborghini for a very fast new BMW….just not the same [i wanted a power meter on the bike that did not cost a forture] The only solution to all these questions was therefore a Colnago Prestige cyclocross bike with Campag components. Other specifics I considered include: Compact crankset [50/34T] with 11-29 cassette. shifting is super smooth and i can get up the gravel hills near my house Wheels: very difficult one. i could have gone for a standard 29er wheelset [they are 28" and therefore 700c] but was not sure i would be able to run the higher pressures required for the road. Reality is that i end up riding tyres at 40psi only. In the end i opted for Stan's Grail X rims and rear hub is Powetap [cheapest powermeter i could find]. setting these rims up tubeless was super easy- even with non tubeless tyres. i have the option of buying a spare set of proper road racing wheels in future [should be almost 1kg lighter] Tyres: work in progress as i have still not got ideal set-up [Vittoria CX 31mm]. i will swap these for wider ones. UCI rules limit racing wider than 33mm so not many manufacturers make 35-40mm tyres which i think will be better Disc brakes: currently my only option for Campag was to have cabled calipers and although its better than rim brakes in the wet, i suspect i will upgrade these in 2 years or so when hydrolic ones become availablethe handling of the bike has astounded me. It's not a MTB but i can ride single track and reasonable surfaces and the narrow tyres grips loose surfaces better than i could ever imagined. have only been out on the MTB once since i got this bike a month ago
