I’m sure he would. And with great respect to his opinions, they are influenced by the reality that he benefits from you buying a Canyon. I don’t benefit from you buying anything.

Weight is a useless metric in evaluating apples to apples triathlon bike comparisons. It has about as much impact on performance as the color of the bike.

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Trent Nix
Owned and operated Tri Shop
F.I.S.T. Advanced Certified Fitter | Retul Master Certified Fitter (back when those were things)

Given those 2 options I'd be on the fence and would need to check the adjustability of the QR to see if thay swayed it.

Coming from a Trek SC owner who just sold his I'll offer this:
Trek:
- proven top class aero
- great feel and ride
- the integrated cockpit was alright for a while, then became a pain.
Why?
I like to tweak position as best I can. And trying to lower stack even 5mm when no spacers means swapping out riser spacer and is a full recable job.
Reach is easy enough, and the 15degree angle also easy as are pads (get rid of standard ones asap).
Another part I disliked was the extensions. As its integrated its fixed. I always wanted closer extension bars and hands but couldn't. You can swap out the monobar now for a stupidly priced standard option but even that doesn't clamp well.

Travel. Alright but not great. Had a few bolt issues but learned to live with it. Perhaps only the p3x/wilier split basebars can aid this by enabling less breakdown requirements.

I loved my trek don't get me wrong, but glad I changed.
I switched to a disc brake tt bike, and will follow with road bike soon.
It's the future. Get onboard or accept your choice of rim brakes for a few years with lower resale value in the future (much like tubs fell off a cliff in my opinion).

I would not buy a 2019 trek right now.
I'd wait a few months and get the 2020 version. Aero is unlikely to improve much but disc brakes are almost guaranteed, and also rumours of something radical like beam apparently. Then your 2019 trek will be less attractive immediately.

In fact, you may want to just wait a few months to see the canyon and Scott disc versions whilst you're at it.

Right now I think cervelo is streets ahead.
I expect the others to near match with their newer models this year.

I've always seen the QR as a trek copy.
Looks very similar, not quite as good cockpit or aero but close. Now with added disc brake benefit though.

Tough choice, but I'd probably wait if I were you if you can.
At least till 2020 trek comes out and the 2019 model will be cheaper as old technology if you've decided on that.

The bar system is the one thing putting me off the Trek. It seems to be both great and a bit of a faff at the same time - particularly for aerotesting. I want a rim braked bike as I don't feel I need discs. The Cube Aerium is kind of calling but no idea how it stacks up aero wise (should be ok with Swiss Sides development of it).

Hopefully he'll chime in, but if I remember right, desert dude has done some testing with them and while he didn't have any definitive results, I remember him saying it's not anything special.

And the cockpit adjustability and configuration options are some of the reasons why the wife and I each have a Speed Concept.
We're both running Zipp 808/Super9 for races.
She's the current 40-45 USAC road TT champ, and has broken the tape at USAT Nationals, riding the Trek en route to the win.
So, it's not holding her back, even with a lack of disc brakes. ;-)

It's a phenomenal bike, unless you want to frequently break it down for traveling.
That's my only complaint. It's a real PITA to disassemble/reassemble.

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I would go with the Quintana Roo PRfive over a Speed Concept any day.... Trek's BB90 bottom bracket is an unforgivable abomination unto man. Even if somebody gave me one, I'd sell it right away.

The Cube is such a sexy bike, too. Few bikes make me drool the way that bike does. Should be fast if this post is any indication:

This exactly describes my Speed Concept experience with my LBS. I rode the high-near for two years, and then a few months ago, Tommy at the TriShop flagged the problem when I drove to Dallas for a new fit. I swapped out the stem, reconfigured to the coordinates from Tommy's fit, now have the best bike fit I've had since starting this sport, and love my Speed Concept more than ever. Except for a stupid rattle that I picked up after swapping out the stem, and which I complained about in an earlier thread.

The SC is just such a great bike. (And Trent and Tommy are great bike fitters.)

The BB is the one thing I hated about my gen 1 SC9, and kept me from buying a new gen 2 SC. I'm very interested to see what trek comes out with, if anything. Though the only thing I've seen with regards to that are a couple of people saying 'there are rumors'........so I'm not holding my breath for anything anytime soon.

SC is definitely more aero, but they're all so close that really shouldn't be the sole determinant factor when considering most modern tri/tt bikes. Canyon is middle of the road aero-wise, but it's a narrow road we're travelling down at this point.

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Jim Manton / ERO Sports

Good point. When you say narrow, how narrow is the gap now between middle of the road bikes like Canyon vs the gold standard P5 or SC?

I have 3 Treks: the one I got in 1983 to do the new triathlon race that was becoming popular, my H1 Domane everyday road bike and the 2018 Speed Concept. I'm still in love with them all but I agree that the BB90 situation is not satisfactory. The Domane has been sent back to Wisconsin for a bottom end redo after both sides getting the oversize bearing "fix". It's not all bad though, it's forced me to ride the SC everyday and it is really making a difference how I feel about TT bikes. My neck doesn't hurt any more, I can dial in my position much better and I'm a whole lot faster than I was last summer.

Get the SC.

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"They know f_ck-all over at Slowtwitch"
- Lionel Sanders

funny you mention that. 2 lads in my tri club bought SC's over the past year and both have high near stems. Whats sad is the shop bought from has retul, which goes to show how important a fitter is compared to a computer.

Thanks for info. Yep it's one lovely looking bike. I expect the tri version will have discs brakes soon so I will have to make my mind up. My Plasma 3 is a fast bike but it is looking a little battle scarred.

So what stem didd Tommy switch you to?

The computer just measures. A fitter knows how to use those measurements effectively.

All the power tools in the world won't make me a good carpenter. And by the same token all the bike fit tools in the world won't make someone a good bike fitter. But you would expect a good bike fitter to use good tools in the same way you'd expect a master carpenter to use the best tools of his trade.

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Trent Nix
Owned and operated Tri Shop
F.I.S.T. Advanced Certified Fitter | Retul Master Certified Fitter (back when those were things)

Mid-far. I may be mis-remembering this (it took me a while to settle on the right answer while figuring out the chart) or misunderstanding, but I think I could also have fit on a low near, but would have had less room for future adjustments.

Side note: Trek makes it hard to find its fit chart, and that is stupid.

Other side note: Tommy angled my extensions significantly upward. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that does not alter the geometry of the fit that the machines spit out. But it made a pretty significant difference in my comfort on the bike. To Trent's point above, the fitter is more than the machine.

Well the rumor mill has something SC related for sure, but maybe more bontrager....

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http://www.TriScottsdale.org

Out of curiosity, what do you like about your disc brakes over rim brakes? Fwiw, I have had disc brakes on my MTB since my Hayes original on a Gary Fisher X-caliber in 2000. And I don't have a road bike, I have always had a road commuter that is more like a typical gravel/cross bike, but I have had disc brakes for many years on that. I love them on the MTB and they were a nice upgrade to the road commuter which often has me biking in sloppy conditions, but TT bikes, I still don't get it and I can't see why we need them, but I want to learn why others are going this route and the benefits that exist. Would you expand on this?

At this point, for me, I still look at the frames as areas of improvement aerowise and the brakes themselves as changing so I am hesitant to sink a lot into frames/brakes that will likely be improved in round two. My decision might be a used SC in this case. Likely ride it and sell it for little loss and wait to see what Trek has in the pipeline.

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Sure, my decision to buy a disc brake tt bike was not made primarily on the disc function but it was a requirement.

I wanted a tt bike I could adjust position easily, including stack and the trek just wasn't that.

Regarding disc brakes, I'm new to this as I was a non believer also. But having now experienced a proper braking feel of hydraulic brakes, with proper stopping power I wouldn't look at anything else for either road or tt bike.

Now sure, we don't have that many braking zones in triathlon but we do have some.
And we also like to train on our tt bike outside where hopefully there's some hills and so on.

Surely I'm not alone in having experienced that moment when you're descending fast or turning fast and need to brake hard for whatever reason. When you do with your rim brakes, even with on off or progressive approach you just aren't slowing fast enough and you pray you don't ditch it and somehow get around?

Well the risk of injury in that situation is greatly reduced with disc brakes, and for a hobby that I'm passionate about but also don't want to over risk my health or ability to do the day job then this is something that is important to me.

I guess that paraphrase you don't need disc brake performance until you do...

I expect in 1-2 years every road bike sold will be disc brake.
We know that's the way the industry is going, and rightly so imo.
So be an adopter or wait it out, avail of bargains with a somewhat compromised braking performance and accept to use it until you can write it off as resale value is likely to fall off a cliff similar to tubs.

Disclaimer don't get me wrong, I fully agree for most triathlon experiences disc brakes are not a requirement. But there are other considerations I've mentioned above as reasons to change.

PR5 w/ Alpha One aero bar

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

I am guessing the Cube Aerium is a bike you see much for testing in the States? Looks to have a few design clues from the P5 and Felt so with Swiss Sides input would think it is decent aero wise.

That's (nearly) the decision I came to. I just ordered a prfive to go with my alpha x. Way more adjustable without needing to buy extra components. I am still working on my fit so I wanted ease of adjusting.

I'd like to point out that Cancellara and Martin both dominated on Shiv TTs... and kinda sucked as soon as they went to Trek and Canyon. Cancellara eventually pulled out a big win with that Olympic victory though.

I'd go with the PR5 (or PR3 even), and Alpha One bar and Omega front brake, and any aero difference would be nil. The BB on the Trek sucks, and position adjustments are too involved. You can go low Q on the QR bikes, and the hidden direct mount rear brake should be easy to live with.

I remember when I was a newb bike racer and had the old Campy Record single pivot sidepull brakes. Maybe you can't relate, but compared to any brake on the market now, they sucked. You know what happened the first time I really tried to stop in a hurry? Flipped over forward... header into the pavement. I've seen several other people do the same thing. It isn't rare. Does that change your perception of braking safety at all? If grabbing the front brake hard has this effect, then how much better do brakes need to be?

The only time I'd like better brakes is on long switchback descents where my hands can get quite tired. That is a situation that MTBs face frequently as well (plus mud), which is why discs make sense on those.