Some things I have never seen before
What say you?
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It’s probably plenty fast in this configuration, but it’s not much to look at with that giant in-frame water bottle and the top tube box. The front wheel looks a little slim, not a great call IMO.
The speedfill bottle looks interesting……
Looks like she should be on a PX if she wants all that integration. Should be faster than attaching that much stuff to a TT bike.
Having had little riding experience with P3X myself, I wouldn’t like to ride this course on P3X nor P5X. There’s something to the feel / stability of that construction that would make me choose ‘standard’ P5 over it.
Bet most of these mod make it faster, not slower.
You think bolting on hydration and nutrition compartments to a P5 will be more aero than integrating them in the PX? Unlikely
I have a very hard time believing that speedfill bottle makes the bike faster. That bottle is very wide and very likely wider than the frame itself.
Just a thought, but maybe is is not wider than the fork and front wheel whose wake all of the downtube and seat tube is behind, so not knowing anything specifically about the air flow, I’d like to hypothesize that the aero wide low bottle may fill all that gap nice and keep the air flow laminar. Just a hypothesis that perhaps they tested somewhere. Also you have all the turbence cause by legs around there, so maybe it helps move the air around the legs too rather in in between legs and having to re attack behind calf. I don’t know, but hypothesizing. Systems that are wide can be aerodynamic too, I don’t know if this is the case for this system though.
How to transform an good looking bike to an “ugly looking bike”.
Pretty strange that she need too much of water (saddle, bike, bento box, BTA) seems a lot. Don’t really understand why, if you use all it’s too much weight added and for 5 hours bike it’s in all case not enough, you will need to refill somewhere.
Found the bike of Nikki nicer !
Pretty bad that she doesn’t put co2 inflator into the xlab too, it come with space for 2 TPU and 2 co2
She said in her interview she had 2 and she used them both. She is criticised for carrying too much and for not carrying enough.
Think she was girl guide prepared!!
It can’t be a coincidence that one of the major trends in bike design is to ‘fill in’ more of the area above the bottom bracket. Now, whether this particular set up is faster is another question - but when a lot of bikes seem to be going in this direction…
We already know the bottom braket is wide. We also know the width between forks is wide. We also know the width of the rear axle. So minimally that width hits the air and air has to move around all of that. Perhaps it is better if more air is defelected around the legs (widest point) and then it gets narrower behind legs (rear axle) versus having all kinds of air pass between a narrow frame and legs.
So in an ideal world there would be a fairing behind the front forks that push air around legs and a fairing behind legs that tapers back to rear axle then to rear wheel then to rear tire (going from widest to narrowest).
Ages ago I had a softride bike with almost nothing between my front wheel and rear wheel other than legs, but a big hole between legs for air to pass through. But if you’re not going to have a hole between legs, intuition suggests to fill it up
Shwalbe prototype tyre and TPU tube hasn’t gotten a good wrap…