About bikes, cycling and cycle to work - Tredz Blog

Specialized for women new website

Specialized makes the most accessible, most thoughtful and best value womens bikes (mountain and road), in the world. 

Contentious?

Who am I to argue. Personally I've never ridden one (although I've had my fair share of Y-chromosomed Spesh bikes), so what do I know about riding a Specialized womens bike?

I've got three arguments here.

1. The mens bikes are consistently damn good. If they make separate bikes designed from the ground up for women to the same high standards, I'm willing to bet they ride as good.

2. We've sold many many Spesh women's bikes. We get so few complaints it's unreal. What we do get are women incredibly happy (a rarity for me!) on a bike that seems made for them. Seems to me, unlike some major manufacturers, they are. They make women's bikes for women, not mens bikes adjusted to fit womens (superior in every respect except average top tube reach) bodies.

3. The womens range at Specialized is actually headed by women. The marketing, design and yup, the funky websites are built for and by their intended users. Now that sounds to me like a pretty good idea. 

Oh, and while we're at it.

4. For some unknown and intensely irritating reason Specialized womens bikes just look better. Why won't you make me a bike that looks this good? 

Core bike show

Core bike show is one of the 'biggies' for the cycling industry. A chance for the suppliers and sellers to get together, schmooze, drink and generally just mess around on new bikes.

We wish... A five hour drive either side for us means little chance for hanging around. Our trade shows are planned with military precision, meaning the photos we snap at the events take on even more importance, giving us the chance to be bike geeks at a more leisurely pace when we get back.

Here's some of our Core Bike Show 2010 highlights...

IMB issue three

It's free, it's better than many of it's real paper counterparts, it's got flashy adverts - yup, IMB is back for it's third issue.

We genuinely hope this mag gets the readers it deserves. Well produced with some great content every month.

It's really providing a viable alternative to just copying and pasting content onto a site. Naming no names...

Sram XX cassettes in stock!

Despite its massive increase in popularity, cycling still often suffers from an image problem; well we don’t have any suggestions of how to remedy this and we’re pretty sure things like this aren’t going to help; ah well.

The much hyped, long awaited, fantastically desirable and insanely ‘credit crunch’ busting Sram XX cassette is finally in stock and available for somebody outside of the drooling and over-indulged cycling press to get their hands on.

What can we say that hasn’t already been said about this cassette; not a lot really.
A staggering 9 hours of machining time goes into producing what is probably the greatest piece of CNC machining ever seen on a bicycle; close on £300 worth of engineering prowess (less on Tredz!!!!).

And where will this work of art reside; in pride of place, in a glass cabinet? No, this is cycling, so it will be covered in grease, oil and mud and slowly worn away by thousands of miles of enthusiastic pedalling.

But that’s the point, it’s not a piece of art, it’s the gears for a bicycle, it just happens to be the best available. Hey, at least it’ll be on display for all to see and most to not notice (except by us real geeks!): if you bought a Ferrari nobody would ever get to see how meticulously crafted the gearbox was!!

Lapierre Spicy 916 available

The 2010 Lapierre Spicy 916 has just arrived as the first of the 'top end' Lapierres, in the trickle of available 2010 range bikes. It's caused an unheard-of (in our 'nothing gets to us' bike-die-hards team) reaction of mass excitement from pretty much everyone!

The Spicy boasts the highest spec of the range (sram X.0 rear mech, Fox 36 Talas 160mm forks, truvative noir 3.3 crankset to list but a few parts) and weighing only 12.5kg makes it one of the lightest all-mountain bikes on the market.

Full Spec:

Team Sky - Team bike pics

Team Sky are launching officially on 4th January, they've released a video (minimalist being the best description) and a few images of their new Pinarello Dogma 60.1 team bike.

The aim of the team is to create a British Tour de France winner by 2014. With involvement of British Olympic Champions such as Bradley Wiggins and Geraint Thomas as well as this year's Tour of Britain winner Edvald Boasson Hagen, this looks rather promising!

Cannondale On Bike

It's been talked about as a concept bike for a while, now Cannodale have seen fit to release the first run of the 'On Bike'.

Wow. 

Pretty much sums it up. Aside from the unique styling (which you'll either love or hate), this bike is revolutionary. Here's the blurb:

"The ON makes use of the “System Integrated Chain

Case Technology”, where the chain case is a single sided, fully enclosed,

structural part of the bike frame. This results in a maintenance free, clean

and efficient drive system with 9 speed internal gears and disc brakes.

The chain case structure is machined from billet, making the structure

extremely stiff yet light at the same time. Cables are internal in the frame

and the tube shaping is edgy and aggressive..."

Forget 'edgy and aggressive' tube shaping or even the stupidly high On Bike Spec, if this thing's drive system is really no maintenance, say hello to the future of hybrid bikes.

The futures not cheap at £3999, nor very available as they're only making 99 in medium and large sizes. If you are the right size, have the money and would like to own a piece of history, let us know very quickly.

Winter clothing guide

In their quest for world domination (or at least to be the very best cycle supplier out there), Madison's clothing range continues to grow apace. Hardly suprising. Their kit is generally very well made and very well priced. 

What really impresses us with Madison though is the presentation. Not just of their clothing (which certainly looks fantastic), but the way they've jumped into an already pretty busy market and used great communication to explain why we should ditch our old favourites and take their stuff with us on the trail/tarmac/commute.

This brand new guide to choosing cycling clothing is a case in point. A great product very well presented. 

And yes, we are suckers for the flashy 3D visuals too.

London Cycle Hire

The bikes were recently unveiled in the London Cycleshow, by next summer 6000 will be rolled out (their first test?), across the city.

Will it work? What will it cost? Will they end up disappearing as rapidly as the Parisian fleet (where over half of the original 15,000 went walkabout - sometimes literally with some travelling as far as Australia)? 

We don't know and can't wait to find out. We do really, really hope this has a similar effect as it has elsewhere, where cycling has become the norm rather than the exception.

"Sorry mate, I didn't see you."

Or, SMIDSY. A type of accident so common it's got it's own acronym.

 It's only happened once to me personally, and since my orange clothes, hi viz strips and multitude of safety lights made me look like a Christmas tree decorated by someone heavily influenced by acid-rave culture - I found it hard to believe that the taxi driver who hit me didn't see me...

Like happened to me and the majority of the time this well worn phrase is thrown out, the driver doesn't appear to be a) very sorry or b) telling the truth. As the new campaign from the CTC states, sometimes sorry just isn't enough.

If something is worth getting behind, as cyclists, protecting our right to be on the road and not be intimidated is one of the most important. The CTC is launching the campaign to see start accruing evidence with which it can lobby institutions on our behalf. If it's happened to you, please let them know.