Category Archives: Equipment

Everyone should know about their equipment.

Its been a very long time….

Dear Rouleurs,

Its been nearly 6 months since MMT last wrote a blog. MMT is not sure how that time slipped past…so fast. So a quick catch up is in order. MMT rode 11,000+ km in 2021, which is awesome. COVID enforced work from home agrees with MMT. MMT is not looking forward back to the office. Booooo……

So the other big news was that MMT’s oldest bundle of joy is now riding her bike to and from school and is off training wheels. MMT is a very, very proud dad and is looking forward to short rides to the park and school for the next 12 months.

There are two other cycling events that caught MMT’s eye in the past 6 months. The first was the classic underdog victory of Austrian Anna Kiesenhofer in the 2021 Olympic Women’s Road Race.

Here's....Anna...
Dear God…how much further to the finish line??

The Austrian attacked from the gun as part of a five-rider break that managed to build a lead of 11 minutes before she dropped her breakaway companions on the Kagosaka Pass with 41km to go and held off the entire bunch to take gold. For further details about how the race was won and in the case of the Dutch women’s team, lost read the following Cycling News article.

The second was an astonishing piece of daredevilry from the forgotten Slovenian Matej Mohoric who won the 2022 Milan-San Remo. Mohoric attacked on the descent from the Poggio with a winning combination of his impressive (bordering suicidal 🙂 descending skills and a mountain bike dropper seatpost.

Spot the dropper post
Its so light I can pick it up with one hand…

It is well worth watching the last ten minutes of that race on replay on SBS or GCN. If not you can read about on Cycling News here.

So that’s it from MMT. Enjoy the spring classics and ride safe until next time.

MMT

Normal transmission has resumed…with fury

Dear Rouleurs,

It has been a while. MMT has been decompressing from an awful AFL season, work, 2 weeks of non-COVID respiratory illness and child induced deprivation. Much to his surprise he’s discovered that nearly 2 months has passed since his last blog entry. It really does seem such a long, long time ago. In that time, the La Vuelta, Olympics, UCI World Championships and….finally an actual Paris-Roubaix with rain and mud, have occurred. MMT will spend some mulling that over in a future blog.

However what is really on MMT’s mind is bicycle maintenance, bike shops, Shimano parts and COVID…again. MMT took his beloved Trek Domane SLR 6 in for a service, after an irritating creaking noise started a 3 month old replacement bottom bracket. MMT figured that some crud had flicked up off the road and strategically landed in the bearings. Sadly this turned out to be worn out crankset that simply wasn’t sitting on the bearings correctly. Mine you it took MMT to chase up the said bike shop to find that out.

Whilst chasing up bike shops to do their jobs, isn’t a new experience for MMT, being told that he had no hope in the short term of replacing the Shimano Ultegra 50-34t with similar model. Shimano has no available parts in Australia and there was no indication when they would be come available. Surprise!!! its been seriously impacted by COVID. A quick Google seemed to confirm that no one local seemed to have them either. Instead the said bike offered a silver Durace 53-39t….WTF. The good news is that crank is $400 and could be resold, the bad news is that it doesn’t match the rest of the group set in brand or colour and will be an absolute bitch to pedal up hill….sigh.

So with had recent experience MMT returned to the solace of the wonderful cycling cartoonist Dave Walker. Here’s what Dave drew that exactly capture the ripped off feeling MMT has.

MMT seems to be practising acceptance in lieu of the alternative which means putting the Domane up on a rack in the garage until parts become available. Levels of fury indeed.

Until next time, stay safe, ride well.

MMT.

MMT’s gotta a new bike…woo hoo!!

Dear Rouleurs,

After many frustrating hours of window shopping MMT has finally purchased a new bike. Woo hoo!!! MMT has joined the ranks of cyclists that now own something loosely referred to as a gravel bike. MMT will revisit that theme later. The new bike is a 2021 Giant Content AR1. The AR bit stands for ‘All Road’.

Essentially was looking for a better quality commuter road bike that could handle more sedate offroad paths like railtrails. The other key requirement to The Giant Contend provides this via its relaxed geometry aluminium frame that can fit tyres up 38mm on 700c rims. The Contend comes with 32mm tubeless tyres, which MMT is having to get used to. MMT is struggling with the idea of running tyres at 50-65psi and not being able to easily fix punctures.

The other main requirement was for the bike have a drive train compatible with MMT’s Tacx Neo 2 trainer. MMT has Shimano Ultegra (50-34 and 11-32) on his Domane and trainer and wanted similiar groupset for reasons of compatibility. Happily, the Giant Contend is equipped with 105 (50-34 and 11-34) and not the more gravel popular GRX. Its also has hydraulic disc brakes…hooray.

Here’s the spec details plundered from Bikeradar.com

  • Shimano 105 11-speed groupset with a non-series RS510 chainset
  • Shimano 105 hydraulic disc brakes
  • Giant P-R2 Disc wheelset
  • Giant Gavia Fondo 2 32mm tyres
  • Giant D-Fuse carbon seatpost
  • Giant D-Fuse D-shaped handlebars for increased comfort
  • 9.62kg claimed weight (medium)
  • note: that that its also has carbon fibre forks
  • £1,499 / $US1,550 / $AUD $2,499

It took MMT a long time to track down this bike. It first appeared on MMT’s radar late last year and has had generally favourable reviews. This one by Dave Rome at CyclingTips was one that convinced MMT, this was the correct choice.

Independant reviewers of the Contend have had consistent gripes.

a) The 105 shifters seem to rattle quite loudly on uneven surfaces – this is completely true. In fact, after riding super quiet and smooth Ultegra, its quite unnerving. MMT felt like that some bit of the bike was going to fall off.

b) The standard Giant tyres are a bit crap – the Gavia Fondo 2 tubeless aren’t very supple/grippy. Not sure about that one, they look more like commuter tyres than out and out gravel. So as long as they last and don’t puncture MMT can live with them.

c) The standard Giant rims are heavy – this is also true, the rims are heavy and the spokes are steel. A quick Google search suggests they weight just over 2.1 kgs. Hopefully this means they are indestructible and if broken cheap and easy to fix.

MMT’s other two gripes are that:

d) The Approach saddle just feels weird. Its quite hard and wide compared to the Selle C2 or quite firm Trek Montrose that MMT has placed his posterior on recently. If MMT could find a replacement Selle that was sub-$150 he would have bought it by now, and

e) The Shimano 105 shifter hoods are significantly bigger than the Ultegra hoods and feel quite bulbous to grip.

However this is all part and parcel of deciding which compromises you can live with on a sub-$2,500 bike. Coming back to Dave Rome’s review, fundamentally the bike is sound, has great quality running gear, a few minor quirks and is a bit heavy. It also only comes in a single colour…midnight blue. That sounds like a fair trade to MMT.

Until next time, ride safe, stay safe

MMT

And we are back in 2020…. with Hope HB-T

Dear Rouleurs,

Its been a while since MMT put fingers to keyboard on this blog. So much has happened since December 2019, that MMT doesn’t even know where to start. So MMT is starting with a tangent…track bikes. Yep, those two words have never, ever been been put together in an MMT blog before. To cut a long story short, MMT has been listening to the Cycling Podcast and heard about the radically different track bike that some (MMT will use the quaint English term) boffins at Lotus and Hope Technologies have developed for Team GB.

Its called the HB-T and it looks amazing.

Here’s a whole bunch of photos MMT stole…err…requisitioned off the web.

Its the front on photo that hints at what these wide forks and back stays are for, optimized drag. Effectively the rider’s leg is sitting in line with forks and stays. MMT is guessing that laminar flow across the side of the bike, is vastly reduced.

MMT wonders if this kind of bike might cross over into professional peloton for time trials? If Team GB clean up the gold medals on offer for the indoor track events and thrash competition, that might happen. MMT can’t wait to see this machine in action at the Tokyo Olympics this year.

Hopefully MMT will start churning blogs on a more regular basis in the coming months.

Until next time, ride safe.

MMT