About bikes, cycling and cycle to work - Tredz Blog

Core Bike Show part 2

Continuing on from yesterdays Core Bike Show pictures, here's a few more highlights.  

John Tomac's Yeti C-26, XC AND downhill bike! Well it was the 80's. Sign reads, "C-26 JT Team Race Bike... Price: Priceless". 

 

This is E thirteens latest pedal. Not the thinnest in the world but thin enough. The gold dial on the end of the axle, dubbed 'spin control allows adjustment of the buttery smooth bearings. Turn up the resistance and the pedal hardly spins meaning if you are coming off the pedal for any reason (corner, trick) they are easier to find when you need to get your foot back on. 

 

Since the UCI relaxed regulations on Cyclocross bikes using disk brakes, hydraulic options have been popping up everywhere. The Parabox is one such system - this one is connected to a bike with Campag brakes.  The modulation can be altered between the front and rear independently and the feel is surprisingly good. 

 

Hope also had their Cyclocross brake on display - with the usual Hope styling, the CX brake resembles a V8 engine. The lever feel was pretty close to a normal Hope hydraulic brake. 

 

POC had the usual colourful selection on display. They are now offering a D30 pad that looks great and fits perfectly. 

 

ODI Flight Control bras with 'Wingtips' so you can customise the length of your bars by adding a screw in bar-end. Available in 700mm and 750mm options. 

Core Bike Show 2012

We took a trip down to Core Bike Show this week. Core is a trade only affair but we took some pictures for your viewing pleasure. 

 

Danny Harts UCI World Cup winning Giant Glory. We looked closely, and it is pretty much standard (name on side-walls aside). Our verdict... he is 'that' fast. He was around the show but was far too quick to catch a picture of. 

 

Birzman were in the Merida room with this great looking pro toolkit/work stand. A Must have for any team. 

 

Ever wondered what fi'zi:k shoe would look like if they took some kangaroo leather, hand stitched it in Italy, used sails for the straps, stainless steel for the buckles and carbon fibre for the sole? Well now you know! They'll set you back £299.99.

 

Nectar is a new energy product form For Goodness Shakes. Tasted great - more info on these soon. 

 

Brooks saddles... in colour. Beautiful. 

 

Really excited about the NEW Endura Urban range. More info and a full write up coming soon. 

 

More tomorrow...

Core Bike Show 2012

You may be aware of Core Bike show. Unfortunately if you don’t work in the cycle industry you won’t have had the chance to go. Core is an industry only bike show based near the Silverstone racing circuit and is a chance for a manufactures and distributions to show their 2012 lines and hint at their upcoming releases.

We are going to be taking our regular yearly trip to Core on Monday so expect to see full coverage here on our blog, on facebook and our twitter feed. If you have any question we can pass on to our reps or feedback about the products, let us know and we’ll pass it on.

2012 Tour Down Under

Road cycling fans will be aware that the first big UCI road tour of the year, the Tour Down Under was held last week 15-23^rd of January.

The race now in its 14th year saw huge crowds turning out to cheer on their favourite riders in the Australian January summer. This season, the race featured a long awaited cat. 1 climb – in fact it featured two, on the Menglers Hillstages (stage 4) and Old Willunga Hill (Stage 5). Willunga Hill also features a mountain finish which was warmly welcomed.

The win was taken buy Austrailian rider Simon Gerrans riding for newly formed, all Australian team, Green EDGE. Team owner Gerry Ryan branded the success as a “win for the people”.

Green Edge are off to a pretty strong season start and it will be interesting to see how they fare against some of the more established European teams on this year’s UCI pro tour – but the theme looks set to be more exciting racing. 

Photos:adelaidenow.com

 

Mountain bike dates for you diary 2012

2012 is looking like it’s going to be a packed year for mountain bike racing. The Gravity Enduro series is back and as strong as ever, we have a race in Essex that some people like to call the Olympics and either Freecaster or Red Bull are going to be running a worldwide downhill series.

So, if you have an empty diary for 2012, here’s some dates that might help you fill it:

Gravity Enduro series

Gravity Enduro, if you don’t know, is the newest kid on the block in the MTB race calendar. Based around trail centres, Gravity Enduro sees riders climb up the hill at their own pace and race back down, making it the ultimate ride and race your mates kind of event.

Mountain Mayhem

One of the original and best 24hr races, Mountain Mayhem is up there with the must-do races for any mountain biker. We visited last year and really enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere.

22nd, 23rd, 24th June

WDMBA

Originally founded by a Tredz staff member, the WDMBA continues to run the South Wales’ premiere DH series after Dragon downhill’s reign ended.

28/29 Apr, 16/17 jun and 8/9 Sep

Halo British Downhill Series (BDS)

The Uk’s number one Dh race series. You’ll go head to head with the likes of Gee Atherton, Steve Peat, Brendon Faiclough and the best of British race talent.

14/15th April Combe Sydenham
12/13th May Fort William
7/8th July Glencoe
Nat Champs 21/22nd July Moelfre
4/5th August Caersws
25/26th August Bringewood
22/23rd September Llangollen

Megavalanche

The 2600m downhill/endure race is an annual pilgrimage for hundreds of Brits. This year three Tredz team members will be racing it. Watch this space.

16-22 July

DH UCI world Cup

The Crème de la crème of DH talent – you’ll need UCI points from the BDS series to even dream about entering, but it’s a great event to watch in the flesh or on Freecaster.tv.

17/18 March

02/03 June

09/10 June

23/24 June

30/01 July

28/29 July

14/15 September

Kokanee Crankworx

Big Air and style is the theme at Crankworks. If you are one of the lucky few who gets to ride in Whistler then you might be in town for the Crankworx event. If you want to enter, you are going to need A LOT of practise and an invite. 

28/29 July

Olymipcs - Cycling, MTB

With the worlds oldest sporting event coming to the shores of the UK this year, the Olympic mountain biking held at Hadleigh farm in Essex has to be on the list of things to watch. Sadly, us mere mortals wont get to enter but I'm sure it will be all over your TV. 

11/12 August

Tour de France coverage stays free

Great news for Tour de France fans, broadcasting network ITV have secured the rights to show live coverage of the race until 2015.

In 2011 the tour proved a ratings winner for the channel, pulling in a peak audience of 878,000 viewers. In the same weekend Sky Sports reported just 248,000 viewers for its cricket coverage. Spectator or participatory, cycling is big and getting bigger.

The news comes after Tour of Britain also reported its largest ever TV audience in 2011, with 592,000 watching Lars Boom take the victory in the final stage in Stoke-on-Trent. The Tour was also broadcast world-wide via local channels and the internet, reaching an even larger audience.

ITV’s new agreement secures daily live coverage of the tour and evening highlights, but the channel will also extend its online coverage.

The interest in road cycling has continued to grow exponentially since the 2008 Beijing Olympics and with London 2012 this year and continued coverage of the Tours, cycling isn’t going away anytime soon – which, provided it doesn't get eaten up whole by any pay-per-view channels, is great news.

 

Why Cavendish should win SPOTY

The BBC Sports Personality of the Year is on tomorrow (8.00 on BBC1). Fans of male only shortlists, backslapping and staged bonhomie rejoice.

There is only one winner this year. None of the others on the list have won at such a high level and so consistently as Cav. Just in case you're undecided though...

• He is already one of the best sprinters ever and is still only 26.
• The only one on the list who is practically always favourite in his discipline in his sport. If it's a sprint finish and he's there he is odds on.
• He's a bit gobby, outspoken and wears his heart on his sleeve at all times. In this world of bland sportsmen, made grey by corporate sponsors and media training he is always worth listening to.
• He is constantly surprising us. No one thought he'd be able to win Milan-San Remo. Or last through the Tour to win the Green Jersey. Or win the World Championship. We're running out of events we don't think he can win: ever tried boxing or golf Mark?
  
  
  CAV FOR SPOTY!

 

Top 5 posts

Well it’s that time of year, mistletoe and wine, Christmas parties and hangovers, lights, snow (here’s hoping) and a bit too much food. It’s been a fairly good year – a cold winter followed another crappy summer, an economic downturn and the usual ups and downs. But at the end of it all we are still spinning the wheels as much as ever – if not more, with a lot of people switching from cars to save the pennies.

We just wanted to say thanks to everyone for reading our blog this year – and to all our highly valued customers… and also to the staff who help with the input into this blog and pick up on my spelling mistakes – sorry about those too.

Next year we have lots of plans in the pipeline at Tredz towers – our youtube video channel is going to see a lot more videos and loads more informative content for you, the blog is moving over to a new system to make it look better and more readable for you and we will be doing loads more testing. We are really hoping to up our game, and we’d like to welcome any feedback or suggestions from you.

We will also have lots of competitions so keep an eye on Tredz Talk and our facebook and twitter pages for more info.

 

Here are a few of our most popular posts from 2011:

 

Specialized 2012 mountain bikes

Specialized bikes always get a fair amount of attention and this year’s introduction to the 2012 range went down pretty well.

Giant Bikes 2012

Giant aren’t usually far behind Specialized although they usually let the bikes do the talking so the marketing isn’t as shouty, but still of high interest.

Specialized Road

Unsurprisingly, Specialized’s road bikes comes in at third – a great 2012 range and well deserved rank of 3. 

Winter cycling gloves

It’s clear that lots of people out there have cold hands. Our best winter gloves post was 4^th most popular this year, and it’s only been online a few weeks.

Winter training tips

Our Elite Athlete Dave gave us some winter training tips and looks like some of you must have been interested. IT’s great advice – check it out if you missed it. 

 

Red Bull Downforce

Downhill mountain biking is an epic sport to get involved in, whether you are watching or taking part. Last weekend Red Bull brought an exhibition event, the Red Bull Downforce to the streets of Swansea. 

 

Hundreds of spectators, ranging from folk doing their Christmas shopping to dedicated fans turned out to watch the 32 chosen riders tear up the streets from Nicander Parade in the uplands down to the Kingsway in the centre of the city. 

 

The conditions were unusual for even the most seasoned DH rider. A mixture of wet tarmac, to cobbles (which were VERY slippery), to mud and grass faced the riders in the two and a half minutes on track. 

Unusually (pictured above), you see see a Maxxis Crossmark on a downhill bike - the Crossmark is more of a summer trail/XC tyre. The bike pictured is that of UCI world junior female champion, Manon Carpenter who rides for Madison Saracen. 

 

Gee, Rachel and Dan Atherton were there to promote the sport after Gee who is sponsored by organisers Red Bull discovered the route of the track last year. Although they didn't actually race, Gee and Dan did an early run of the track to commentate on the route prior to the practise runs. 

 

Newport's RowanSorrell took the win on the Orange 322 prototype beating Michael Thickens by a whole five seconds, Nikki Whiles came in third just half a second slower, possibly after pulling off a massive no-footer over the table top at the bottom. 

Thanks to JT and Phil from the Swansea store for standing in the cold for about 8 hours and getting some pictures. 

Winter riding tips

Riding the winter can be a hard task, so we caught up with our Elite Triathlete Dave, to find out how he deals with the winter months: 

Winter riding in the UK, and especially in South wales, usually means one thing above all else – rain! Whilst turbo trainers are a great way to get in your high intensity rides, the need to maintain good riding technique, handling skills and frankly your sanity means you need to find ways to manage in the rain whilst out on the road. Here are our top 5 tips for rainy day roadies:

 

1. Tyres. Grip is compromised when there’s water between your tyres and the tarmac, so if its raining or your riding through puddles you’ll need to take care. Together with leaf litter, hedge trimmings and road grit tyres get a lot of stick at this time of year. Look for options with winter specific compounds and strong puncture protection like Continental’s Gatorskin or Specialized All Conditions.
2. Layers. Its definitely time to wrap up warm! But don’t be tempted to just wrap on that scarf granny knitted last Christmas – if you sweat too much then you’re going to get damp from the inside out and end up just as wet. So, a good baselayer is the key, followed by an appropriate number of layers for that day. Our favourite base layers are the Transmission and Baa Baa from Endura.
3. Eyewear. You might not feel the need for Aviators in November, but dirty wet roads mean there’s a load range of grit, salt, hail and rain just waiting to get blown into your eyes at the wrong moment. On top of the need for protection, yellow lenses actually improve visibility in poor conditions too.
4. Caps. Headwear is really important, and something with a peak can help keep driving rain out of your face. Sealskinz peaked caps provide great insulation too.
5. Rain capes. Winter jackets are a must have, but sometimes the temperature really isn’t that cold but the rain is still coming down! A thin rain cape makes all the difference, and  Endura’s Pakajak is not only great value and  exceptionally well made but folds right down to fit in a gilet or jersey pocket too.