I wrote in my last blog that, amongst other things, it's not about the equipment.

Except sometimes it is ...

It is when the equipment is a limitation.

If you don't trust your equipment, especially in a sprint situation which demands 100% commitment, you cannot perform at your best, and then it is about the gear.  When your equipment is a significant limitation, change your equipment.

I have an FFWD 5 spoke front track wheel.  It is being returned to the local distributor for a refund. I don't trust it.  The first one I got about a month ago, Pete and I glued on a Tufo S3 lite tyre, I took it to DISC and jumped on after some quick photos for Ride magazine.  It immediately launched into a resonating tank-slapper as I got onto the bank.  I took it off, put on the old Bonty front and got back to training and coaching for the day.  Later, Nathan Larkin and I pulled it apart and found that the bearing/axle fit was fractionally loose, and there's no way to adjust it.  Ok, send it back to FRF (local distributor), they send me another one.  This one's still got a little bit of play, but it's better than the last one.  Glue it up, wind it up at Blackburn at round one of the aSSS for my flying 200, I'm 100% committed to this effort and am going absolutely as fast as I can in almost perfect conditions.

At full speed, it does the same thing the last one did, almost putting me over the fence.  I was very lucky not to crash.

We had a look at it afterwards and the bearing/axle interface has play, enough to allow a resonance it seems.  What a seriously brain-damaged design this is.  A ~$3,000 retail wheel which has no way to alter bearing tightness.  The Mavic iO has adjustable bearings, which means manufacturing tolerances (and wear!) can be adjusted out.  Not so this design. It's a POS.  Don't buy one unless and until they redesign the hub such that you can adjust the bearings.

Not that you probably need one anyway, I don't need it, I need something I can trust, which isn't this wheel. If you're thinking about it, think again.

I know I've banged on about this before, and I'm going to bore you again with it.  We debut'ed the new powertab wheel last night at DISC.  I'm no stranger to training with power, I've had a Powertap SL 2.4 in a road wheel for a couple of years now and it's a great tool there, but my emphasis these days is track and once you've trained with power, it's very frustrating to not have it.  

After a bit of show and tell as a few of the Sunday Roast diners had a look at it and asked me a bunch of questions I either didn't know the answer to (How much will it cost? How does it work? "same as all the other PT's!" Is there a Zipp 1080 option? How much is that doggy in the window etc) or wasn't at liberty to discuss (How much did I pay for it?!) or wasn't going to answer yes to ("Can I borrow it next Sunday?" No, but you can hire it!) Nath showed up with the valve extender and we put air in it and I slapped on a 17 tooth sprocket.

As with any new toy, I was a bit mesmerised by it, doing the warm up on a damp track (yes, DISC still leaks .... the irony of an indoor velodrome that gets water on it when it rains!) we had to dodge a wet spot (cue the jokes, now ..) at the end of the finishing straight and I had to pay attention to riding, not looking at the computer all the time. I wasn't going to be the first to test the hub in anger though, that was Emily's job.  After we warmed up she was set to do a 500m ITT and we popped the gate on the track and the wheel in her bike (and the computer up her sleeve!).  A 10 count, and she's away at full torque for 500m (two laps of DISC).  She rides a great time on it which would have won her last summer's JW15 state titles again, but by more (2 tenths faster than her Vics winning time last summer).  No worries. 

My turn.

Our sprint training for the day is low speed jumps.  This'll show if the guys over on FGF's fears about axle slip are real.  I'm matched up with Rob Tidey, on 91.8".  From 6km/h to 50km/h in 10 seconds, peak power 1501 watts, peak crank torque 199.6nm.  No movement.  No worries!

To be sure, we did this 4 times.  Still no movement.  I'm very far from the strongest track sprinter around, in fact I'm a 'never was' and a hack at best,  but that was a pretty good test and it passed with flying colours. Arr, it's nice to have power again!

The rest of the session went well, except we cut short the finish as the track was slippery and damp and we had a tumble during a practice sprint.  Everyone was toast anyway so no-one felt like they wanted more track time.

I took the laptop to Nandos and grabbed the data.  Here's what my 4 low speed jumps looks like

I can't show you Em's data, that's confidential, but I can say that the meter allows us to see where she's really strong and what we need to target to get her faster much more than we've been able to with simulated stuff on the road Powertap on an ergo.

The device isn't perfect though - rare indeed is it to have a version 1 of something that's 100% sorted.  It comes with bolts instead of the more standard axle and nuts and these can be a bit fiddly to do up when setting chain tension.  I spoke with Rich from Wheelbuilder today and he's going to address this with a set of studs and he tells me we'll have the first ones to test out. Also, and this is nothing to do with the track adaptor Rich made, Powertaps do tell you cadence, but in the same sort of 'random number generator' sort of way that Polar and iBike do power - ie: not reliable.  If you're interested in cadence and can't be bothered working it out from speed and gear, get the Cyclops cadence sender as well.

I'm not going to make a fuss about the rest of the wheel, it's an Edge Composites 68 carbon clincher laced with 32 Sapim CX-Ray spokes by Wheelbuilder as per our spec (build it strong, Rich, it's going under heavy sprinters!).  As I'd expect it was stiff and felt fast.  With a Veloflex Record at 140psi it felt just as good if not better than the tubulars I run on my regular indoor track wheels (Bontrager carbon track rims with Tufo S3 Pro's).  It may be faster, it certainly looks fast and feels as stiff as anything else I've ridden except the disk wheel. The White Industries sprockets look solid and feel reassuringly heavy.

So, overall, I'm very happy with this device.  At its first outing it's providing us with very valuable information which will help us all to go faster and that's what we want to do, and it's around half the cost of an SRM crank system here in Australia.  For us, this is a win, thankyou Rich Sawiris!

The wheelbuilder.com Powertap track wheel has arrived.  It's the only one in Australia at this time and one of the very first of this version in the world.  Wheelbuilder did a fixie adaptor for the first generation of Powertaps but they've been unavailable for quite a few years now.

Now we can swap wheels on track bikes and get power readings.  From now on, a laptop comes to every track training session and we're no longer guessing.  I need to work out a hire price structure for it.  It's a very nice wheel, Edge 68 clincher rim (60mm deep carbon clincher), Sapim CXray spokes (32), Powertap SL+ hub with Rich Sawris's fixed gear modification and White Industries sprockets and carrier.  We chose a clincher so that we can quickly and painlessly swap tyres for indoor and outdoor use, it'll have a Veloflex Record for DISC and probably a Bontrager Race-Lite for outdoor use.

For some time my Saturday racing has been even worse than I expected it to be.  I didn't think to check the bike, after all I keep getting faster during sprints.  But, on Saturdays I use my old wheels, for sprints I use the bling bits.  Adam needed to borrow a wheel on Sunday so I passed him my old back wheel, only to have him say "I'm not using this, it's seized!" or words to that effect.

Sure enough, it was.  I guess it had been like that for some time. It could be turned, but not by hand at the axle.  Very tight indeed.  Hrm.

I put new bearings in it today and set the locknuts correctly which might help a bit!  Look out Dino, I may get a km/h faster in our warmups now the bike hasn't got the brakes on.  Woohoo!

Not quite off-topic. I'm trying to work out how much energy gets burnt up doing strength training in the Powerhaus and the Mermet etc.

So, today, squats.

I did :

12 x 20kg (empty bar)

8 x 60kg

5 x 100kg

5 x 5 @ 145kg as my work sets. The prior sets were warmups.

Depth is I think ~0.8m, I'll take that as a good enough guess for now.

How much work is that.  in terms of tonnage it's really only worthwhile to look at the work sets, so I lifted 3,625kg as my working load.

That's one measure, but it's not all that useful really. My 1rm for these full squats is probably around 163kg if I use Brzycki's equation to extrapolate from my 5 rep sets, which isn't 100% accurate, but it'll do... So I'm lifting ~88% of 1RM 25 times.  Reasonably intense.  But still not what I'm interested in here.

Work is defined as force x distance

Force is mass x acceleration

Mass is easy! 145kg ... Acceleration is gravity, 9.8m/s^2 - we'll assume the weight is moved upwards slowly, it's too hard otherwise.

Distance is 0.8m

So our force is 145 x 9.8 : 1421 N, which gives work as 1421 x 0.8 : 1136.8 joules - roughly. Let's say 1100 as close enough (conservative estimate).  25 reps all up at that weight : 27,500 joules.  Roughly 27 Kilojoules. Is that much? Nope! The human body is around 25% efficient.  So to get 27 Kj the body will use around 4 times that, so roughly 100Kj. My BMR is around 11,000 kj per day. 100 kj isn't very much!

This lot of sums doesn't take into account the energy used to build muscle after the training session, the effect of extra muscle on RMR and BMR etc, it's purely a rough (very) estimate of how much energy gets used to do these lifts.  Have a look at wikipedia's brief summary of EPOC for more on post exercise energy use.

Power's another interesting measure.  If I assume I'm lifting the weight in ~1.5 seconds (pretty close, but I haven't timed it), let's see how many watts that is.

Power is work / time

So for a 145kg squat, lifting 0.8m in 1.5s, what's that in watts?

We already know work from above, each rep is about 1100 joules, divided by 1.5 seconds, that's about 733 watts.

Compare that to a 50kg clean, where the weight moves from the ground to the shoulders (in me, that's about 1.5 meters), in a second (a clean is very quick).  Work : (50kg x 9.8m/s^2) x 1.5 : ~735 joules - not much compared to the squat at 145kg, but it is a lot less weight (to get the same work, the clean would have to be ~75kg), power is, assuming 1 second for the lift : 735 watts. That's more than the squat at 145kg. It's no wonder that 5 reps at 50kg doing cleans feels as hard as 5 squats at 145kg!

It's so much easier to do these sums on a bike, Powertaps and SRMs make it a doddle ... They just tell you the numbers. For weights work, one of these does, but it's not cheap and it ties you to their website where they store your data - no thanks.

 We had a good night at DISC tonight, everyone did sprints! Fun!

My new disk wheel has arrived - a Shimano 'pro' track disk.  1185g with no tyre or sprocket (measured on digital scales by me just now!). It's a lenticular disk, and I'll be putting a Tufo S3 Pro tyre on it and making it availabe for hire.

Yesterday, the powerhaus and I rip out 4 sets of 5 @ 145kg deep squats, not bad.  Then some bench, 102.5kg, 3 sets; 4, 3 and 3 reps - that extra 2.5kg is a lot! I was doing 5,5,5,3 at 100kg last week.  Thursday is power day, squats in the morning then olympic lifts in the afternoon at the Mermet center in Hawthorn.

Then Nath takes me to spin and we run the session together as usual this year - 3 x 10s big gear sprints and then 3 x 30s sprints.  I manage a peak output of 1,375 watts. Ok, I wanted 1,400+ but was tired from the squats, that'll do, I've been consistantly improving over the last few weeks and am about to start focussing on more power than strength - the Powertap says around 180nm of crank torque which I'm happy with.  Nath swaps in and rips off a big PB on the watt-o-meter, top stuff Nath!  The bolla sauce was noticed to be a bit bland (I ran out of chilli) - so I promised the troops I'd double it up next week.  I think they thought I was joking ...

My clothing order's going to be delayed (again!) - Rowbust, who make them, get their printing done by Giramondo, and apparently there's a problem with the digital printer.  It's supposed to be being looked at today.  I hope it's a quick fix, one of the lads wants his skin suit for an ITT coming up soon and everyone wants them for the first round of the Bontrager Summer Sprint Series.  Speaking of which we're going to do a practice day the weekend before it, on the Saturday 27th Sept.  Details are at the website, as usual.  Free BBQ courtesy of aboc for all that come and have a go...

The Blackburn Summer of Track promo cards arrived yesterday too, so I started handing them out last night at Spin.  Congrats to Jamie Goddard for winning the Blackburn elite road championship out at Modella. Thankyou to Carnegie-Caulfield for running the event. CCCC really do set the standard for quality and number of road races in our combine.

Finally, I'm ordering a lenticular disc wheel, a Shimano 'Pro' wheel for track use - it'll be available to hire and borrow for selected events soon.

From Cyclingnews.com today, the good news is Saris are updating the Powertap SL 2.4's to use full ANT+Sport wireless (previously only ANT with their own propriatory protocol).  This means that you'll be able to use a PT hub with a Garmin 705, Qranium etc.  They'll be releasing an update to the older PT SL 2.4's to talk ANT+Sport 'soon'.

They've also seen some sense and got one with a steel freehub, so no more dig in.

Read about it here.

Looks like they're also throwing down the gauntet at Kurt Kinetic with an updated line of trainers.  Their older Fluid 2 is inferior to the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine, I wonder how the new one will go?  I'm keen to get my hands on one for a look and a play. They do say 'the PowerBeam Pro resistance unit offers sustained resistance of over 1300W', so reading between the lines it's not a sprinters toy (1300 watts? pah!), but for enduros, maybe it's competitive with the KKRM or some of the TACX mag trainers.

In other news, Nath and I will be at DISC tonight for our first races since last summer.  No promises of any sort of form, I expect to be flat and slow, especially as I have a strength session to do this afternoon before I head out to DISC.

FFWD (Fast Forward) track wheels.  They look pretty snazzy.  No-one seems to be bringing them into Australia (there's a Kiwi agent though .. go figure!).  Maybe good value competitors for Mavic's IO and Commete etc?

Black with red goes well with a Trek T1 ... hrm ... got a spare $toomuch for these babies?  drool ....

It has arrived at last!

Check this out :

http://www.badbean.com/cyclingstuff/spd_straps.htm

Now that's a neat solution!

In sadder news today, I learnt of the death of Sheldon Brown. I never met him in the flesh, but had a few email and newsgroup conversations with him, and he was a very good bloke.  Sheldon will be missed.

It's only taken 3 months ... but my new Truvativ Omnium track cranks have finally arrived.  Just in time for me to not be able to use them this w'end (injuries .. doh!).

I might fit them, and at the BBN track races this Saturday, start each race and pull out (the things we do for aggregate points ....).  I doubt I'll be able to ride much, but I can start each race.

Offtopic, I voted yesterday at the local AEC office.  It's always good to get that out of the way before the election. Last minute desperate political ads? Meh ... I've already voted ...

On the injury front, my skin is healing well under the Mefix, ribs are taking a while (it's only been 4 days I guess) - it feels like I've torn something soft, there's no pain except when I have to move or use the muscles on my left side.  Then, a very sharp pain.  If it was a break or bruising it would ache all the time as well.  A couple of weeks, I hope, and all will be well. 

The Fuel EX8 has been delayed - Trek are now quoting the 27th of Nov.  Just in time to be able to ride it, maybe ...

How many of you have noticed that of late (maybe the last 2 years or so?) there's been a big surge in interest in LBS's (local bike shops) in the women's market.  Many LBS's are now stocking bikes designed for women (with varying philosophies behind the different designs) and many have a seperate section for womens bikes and seperate sections for women on their websites and so on.

It seems a pretty good idea.  Around 50% of the population are female, and there's no reason for women not to ride as much as men, and from my rather limited look at it, in other countries there's a far greater proportion of women cycling than there seems to be here in Melbourne. It seems like a pretty good market to try and tap into and to encourage and even maybe a bit of positive discrimination in some areas to build momentum until it's a bit more self sustaining.  I think that in the racing arena positive discrimination re use of resources etc is worthwhile - Lawrence's efforts with the women's intro to track days etc will hopefully pay off with enough women staying around to maintain a critial mass of female riders racing.

So how about bike shops?  Should there be a seperate section in a bike shop, or even, a whole seperate shop? At what point does this become patronising or even limiting? Does it at all?  I don't know, but something about it makes me a little uneasy.  Why?

If you take a look at the majority of the womens specific road and MTB bikes, they're mostly in 'girly' colours.  Pale blues, pinks ... because ALL women like pale blue and pink, right?  (and for some imaginative reason, almost every manufacturer calls their women's range 'diva', good-o ...) The big difference in roadies and MTB's is a shorter top tube, but with hybrids etc often there's also a lower top tube (which, funnily enough, is great for older riders of both genders, they're a lot easier to get on and off if your flexibility isn't what it was), there's also a significantly smaller range of roadies and MTB's in the womens designs (of course, Trek customers can get Project One bikes, but they cost a premium and are only on the high end bikes, and lag behind the current models a bit ... where's my P1 '08 Madone?! I WANT!).

That's a reflection of demand though, if there was demand, there'd be more range, and if the range was there, maybe there'd be more demand?  Chicken, meet egg ...

That's not really the issue though, at least, not what I'm writing about anyway.  Women have as much ability to ride as men, apart from at the elite racing level, there's plenty of women who can drop me in a road race, that's for sure!  We race together mostly, certainly at amateur club level there's generally no gender separation, and we ride together, so why should we not also shop together?  Why should women's bikes be banished to the 'girly section' of a shop?  Apart from the fact that WSD bikes aren't necessarily the right fit (all women are not the same shape!), sometimes a WSD bike is a better fit for a male rider (just remove the women's logo etc off it so no-one knows!).  By seperating the bikes out, perhaps that creates a barrier, and I'd rather see riders try bikes with an open mind.  Trek did this with the '08 Madone's 'performance fit', where the penny dropped that very few riders actually ride a bike that's set up for a euro pro rider, but they all want to look like it, perhaps the same can apply to shorter top tube bikes also.  I guess what I'm trying to say, in a roundabout sort of way, is that by seperating out the bikes by gender, do we limit the choices that riders of both gender then have? It may be only a mental barrier, but is that a bad thing?  What are the pros and cons of a gender-segregated bike shop?

Between sniffles, coughs and other 'flu related symptoms, it's done, I've written a review of the '08 Madone.

Read it here if you're interested.

I haven't had time yet to write up a report on Trekworld or finish my '08 Madone review, but that'll be this week, I promise.  After yesterday's DFL in the eastern combine club champs road race (results here) and struggling to maintain 150 watts on the flat(!) I woke up today with the explanation - it's either a pretty wicked cold, or the 'flu. I was always going to come last, but I expected to be able to hold on until the hills. Nope!  Slept in for a while, watched Dr Who episodes, blew my nose, coughed, blew my nose again, then decided I could at least do something with the day.  So I cadged a lift with Vanders to Cycle Science and I put together the rest of my tow bike and used the shop rags as nose-goblin catchers.

The tow bike is a 20" Trek 7.2 FX, with a trailer and pannier rack (and the suspension seatpost removed!  urgh ... get rid of it!).  You can see the final product.  A gallery is here and Vanders is the model posing with the bikes.  At speed it's quite unstable, the instructions on the trailer say 'no more than 10m/h' which is about 16km/h.  I had it at around 25km/h before the tail started to wag.  Ok, we'll take it easy on this rig.  It's only to get the bike and my kit to Blackburn for summer track races, which is only 5km away, but is quite hilly, so the triple on the 7.2FX will get used.  Who needs a car?!

I'm going back to bed to watch more Dr Who and submarine videos, until the codeine kicks in and I get to sleep!

Trekworld - eh?  Trekworld is a two (or three, if you have the luxury of an extra spare day) day Trek Bicycles 'love in' (to use the IT industry term for a conference/marketing brainwashing session).  Stuff to be covered is details of the '08 range of bikes and bits that Trek do - including all the other brands - Lemond, Gary Fischer, Giant (heh ...) and sales training and so on.  I'll miss the demo day, I can't afford three days during the week, that's for sure, but I'll get the rest of the stuff.  This time I hope Mr Sales Guru from Clarence St Cyclery (the company/LBS that is Trek Australia) who is the same bloke who came down to Melb last year or early this year,  spends a little less time talking about how he used to be a twat but is now a Really Nice Guy, and a bit more on actual sales techniques.  Last time, from a two hour talk, about 45 mins was useful, and the food was good. This time, it's costing us Real Money to go to the talk, so it'd better be high on content and less on hot air! And, the food had better be good! And (Mark G, if you're reading this?) I EXPECT a t-shirt!

I'm hoping to finally be able to take an '08 Madone for a thrash, due to a minor comedy of errors I missed out on riding the one that was down here for a couple of weeks - got to look at it, but not actually ride it.  And yes, it looks pretty snazzy, but how it rides I can't say yet.

The demo day will also allow LBS people to play with a Powertap, I bet they don't get the chance to look at the way 10 speed cassettes dig into the alloy freehub bodies!  And I bet also that TBA don't know if it'll work with a Garmin 705 or any other ANT+Sport devices.  That could be a good question to ask the techies if any of them know much about Saris's stuff.  Here's a free tip, get CyclingPeaks, and ditch the Saris power software unless you have to run it.  Cyclingpeaks has a crap licence (you have to pay twice if you have two PCs, which is wrong) but it's way more advanced than the Saris Power software.

I may get a chance to ask someone who knows about the protocol, but I doubt it, it'll probably just be Trek people saying 'look at the new dualie, it's got ubershockers and megabearings  and is better because we moved the pivot....' or something.  MTB'ers are still lucky in a way, their equipment hasn't matured to the point where road and track has - we know it's not the bike that makes you faster, but MTB riders aren't there yet so they get to get really excited about some new feature, and think it'll actually make them faster or better riders etc.  Us roadies have no such illusions! Our bikes make gradual improvements, they get a little lighter, a little stiffer, a little more compliant where we want comfort in one direction but stiffness in another, but we know they are no faster or significantly better handling than the good bikes from 20 years ago.  Of course, the marketing people will spin otherwise, but that's the truth of the matter.  The big changes in road in living memory was the introduction of carbon as a frame material and the STI lever.  Other than that, most roadbikes are essentially the same as they were 20 years or more ago, the geometry that works, works and the differences are minor.  Tom Leaper won most of the A grade track races last summer at BBN on an ancient steel dunger and Jamie Goddard wasn't far behind, on another old steel dunger.  Legs and lungs ... that's what matters. 

I'm amazed (not really ..) that Ride magazine and the other road cycling mag have pages and pages of new bling that will only make riders faster by lightening their wallets and letting them pose more at Cafe Wanker, but they've never thought to do a review of coaching services - something that can actually make a real difference.  Maybe if they did a survey of what's around, who offers what, and at what price etc. Maybe if they did a dummy coaching client and found out what the different coaches offer?  That would be of real value to aspiring cyclists, I think.  What're the odds?

You can feel differences in frames and bikes, of course, but they rarely make a real performance difference, just a comfort thing, generally, but sometimes at the expense of handling, soft forks may be comfy for example, but on a high speed descent ... scary ...

So what else is going on?  While up in Skid-yer-knee I'll catch up with Hari and we'll go for a ride (matching powertaps, what fun!) and hopefully he'll be able to find me a reasonably flat place to put in an hour or two and a few little sharp hills to do some sprint training on. Maybe on an '08 Madone, maybe on mine - it depends on how generous TBA is with their '08 stuff.  I'm hoping that Trek have some posters or other material we can use to show punters why Trek bottom brackets are better (cutaways, and cutaways of other brands to compare - that was an eye opener at the tech talk we got last year - Scott BB's are full of foam filler, for example) or other such things.  I'm a fan of hard data and testrides, not marketing spin and bullshit!

DISC tonight, after Tuesday's sprint training and a reasonable chunk of more targeted training I think my kick is improving.  I'd really like to get a power meter on the track bike so I can see what's really going on.  Nath's using my Powertap at spin and it's been great to guage his improvement, we've found 200 more watts in two months, and much better duration and it's let me see what we've needed to target and see if we're really making any differences.

On a side note, Spinopsys is going away - Phil Gomes is going to a video blog on poo-tube.  IMO, a mistake, but time will be the judge of success or failure of that venture. Once the novelty of video production wears off, will Phil have anything interesting to say and will he have an audience? Most of his blog consists of commentary on lifted stuff and links to other blogs, how he goes with video, where that's much harder to do, will be interesting.

UPDATE I'll get to ride the '08 Madone on Thurs morning for a bit, but not Thurs night, so I'm taking either my old 1400 or the P1 up with me to get some riding done. 

ANT+Sport.  What is this?  I'm glad you asked (go on, you've been dying to ask for years, right?).

It's a standard.  On your bike, you have many standard bits and pieces - this is a Good Thing. It means you can put on any tyre you want (clincher, 700c standard, MTB clincher, 26" standard and so on), use any groupset, mostly, and any pedals (standard thread in cranks).  Mostly we have standards for most bits and pieces, so you have a choice about handlebars, stems, saddles, seatposts etc etc - you get the point and I'm labouring it.

So, along comes your new bike computer, but you have an existing wiring set - will it work?  NO!  Will your new heartrate monitor work with your old HRM, or the speed sender, or the funky wireless cadence sender you bought (and it wasn't cheap, was it?). If your bike computer has a power recording feature (eg Polar S72x) will it work with a PowerTap, or SRM crank?  No. A wireless cadence sensor from VDO?  Nope ...

Until now.

Or, to be precise, until a year ago or so when ANT+Sport started cropping up.  The few of us who have Powertap or Garmin computers may have noticed there's a logo on the HRM strap that says ANT+Sport.  You didn't notice?  Shame!  That's what it means, so now you know.

The new Polar CS600 uses ANT+Sport, I think, the new Garmin 705 GPS bike computer not only uses it for the HRM, but also can work with suitable power sensors, including the (unreleased, this is vapour at this time) new SRM cranks and the quarq power meter.  Maybe the Polar CS600 (wild guess-o-meter when it comes to wattage, but that's not the point of this) will work with the quarq sensor or the Powertap SL 2.4 (so you -can- get accurate power readings from a Polar!).

What does this mean to you?  It means you can buy a computer that has ANT+Sport (eg the Garmin, or the quarq 'Qranium' or maybe the CS600) and be reasonably confident that you'll be able to get sensors for it in future that will work with it.  You should be able to mix and match - say you like the way a particular manufacturer's cadence sensor works with your bike, you should be able to get it to work with your other manufacturer's computer.  The big bonus is for those of us using power meters.  We should be able to use different computers with different power meters - say for example you were me (stop screaming, this is only temporary) and you have a Saris PowerTap SL 2.4 on your road wheelset.  You can then use the new SRM cranks or the (hopefully they do their sensor for track cranks, they plan to, according to emails I had with them today) quarq power meter on your track bike, but use the same computer for both - this simplifies uploading training data to your copy of CyclingPeaks WKS+, for example.  You also know by now that the Powertap computer is a bit sucky, but the Qranium has much nicer features, but you want a hub as the power meter, not your cranks - no worries! It'll work with a Powertap hub. Say you have the new Garmin 705, you'll be able to use the Garmin with both your track and road bikes with other branded sensors, and for a reasonable definition of forever, be able to replace bits as they break without having to throw the lot away.

This will probably only happen at the high end of town, K-mart bike computers won't support this standard (the cheapies are generally not wireless anyway ...) but I expect that in a year or so the smart manufacturers will all do ANT+Sport for their wireless stuff, which gives us choices to mix and match.  Good! I'm a little excited.  Now if there was a standard for wired computer wiring mounts ... don't hold your breath ... break a wire, chances are you can't get the right wiring kit anymore, you have to throw it away. A pox on that.

My Truvative Omnium cranks should arrive in a day or two, so I can ditch the old and bent Bontrager (Truvative) 'track' cranks on the T1 at last. I'm hoping that the quarq sender will work with these cranks when it ships, that would solve my power meter on track bike problem without having to get the hacked PowerTap Pro from wheelbuilder.com or forking out $fartoomuch for SRM cranks.

I missed DISC tonight, had to replace a hard drive at my real job.  Next week ...

I'm a Trek fanboy, I make no apologies for this.  I have 5 of them, and many of my friends ride them, and when I give bikes to people, they're generally Treks ... Why is this?  My first roady was a Trek 1400 and it's still going (after some 65,000km or so) and I love the ride and handling, and when I went up to a carbon bike, the Madone 5.2 with Project 1 graphics just seemed 'right', and I wasn't disapointed by it, to say the least. It rides like a real bike should ride, it handles high speed decents with confidence and predictability, even with my lardy backside on it, and it looks like a proper road bike should look , even with the tail on the seat tube and the bulgy down tube on the '05 Madone.

They're not perfect (nothing is ...), and the T1 track bike in particular has some missing things that a track bike at its price point really should have - the most glaring missing feature is replaceable rear dropout surfaces. It really should have them, but it doesn't.  At least, unlike the Specialized 'Langster' it does have stainless dropouts, but at a RRP of around $2,600 in Australia, it has less real track features than the Raceline 'Record' at a thousand dollars less. It also comes with some pretty ordinary road cranks, not track cranks, and the wheels are servicable but the bearings are low end Bontrager and mine haven't survived a summer's racing all that well.  A service will probably fix them up, but now I have high end wheels (Bonty Carbon track, yum!) it's not urgent.

Their roadies in particular, I do love, the traditionally shaped top tube, the feel and poise on the road, the handling works for me.

Until now.

Trek have just released their '08 (it's June '07 ... this US marketing stuff is crap!) Madones, and there's a -lot- of new stuff in them.  New to Trek anyway, long time Cannondale fans will see a few borrowed features, and, shock/horror the new shape looks very similar to a Giant TCR! Sloping top tube, seat masts.  I don't like, mkay? They've also obfuscated their OCLV carbon, instead of knowing what the frame is made of, now you get a rather insulting 'red, white or black' to signify the three 'levels' of frame material used.  Huh?  I'd actually like to know what's in there, please.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding, and until I actually get one under my backside for a ride, all the above is based purely on not liking the look of the sloping top tube and the obfuscation of the carbon grades used.  If Mark G from Trek wants to lend me a 56cm '08 Madone to test and review, then I'll be able to make up my mind about if it's a better bike, despite the Giant TCR looks and the rubbery seat mast.  Does the huge BB shell (90mm, with integrated bearing seats) keep the bottom bracket more solidly in place?  Does it weigh significantly less than the '07 models?  Enough to justify the sloping top tube?  Enough to justify the 1.5" lower headset bearing. The UCI limit for weight starts to make weight loss a waste of time anyway, we can't race a 6kg bike, it's illegal. Does Chris King make something to suit the new headset or do we have no choice with bearings? LBS's will have to carry (or order in) different seat 'post/mast' bits for different saddle heights, which is a PITA. We already have a pile of seatposts and stems, now we might have to carry these bits, and for how long until the trend swings back?  Will Trek Aust have stock of these in 5 years time?

You can read a less biased review at Cyclingnews.com here, or see Trek's own marketing spin here. Make up your own mind, but have a testride first, I'll be riding one as soon as I can to see if I'm full of it and the bike's a real winner, or if it's a pile of gimicks and slick spin. I'd like to see it tested and some hard data, weight, flex at the BB etc.