Litespeed Blade Geometry

Triathlon Forum
1

I’m in the market (or hope to be soon) for a new tri-bike. I ride a Litespeed Blade from about 5 years ago, and happy enough with the experience to consider another purchase. Back when my bike was made, I recall the Blades were made for 650C wheels except for the very large sizes. Now, as I see the specs for the new Blades, they all have 700C wheels except for the smallest size frame. I am wondering why Litespeed (and 650C pioneer QR as well, for that matter) has gone to primarily 700C wheels for their tri-bikes. Is it because they now have cut-outs in the seat tube which allows for a long enough chain stay to accomodate 700C wheels while maintaining a steep seat tube angle? If so, which can be considered a better solution over a typical rolling triathlon course, provided the seat tube angle is the same; 650C wheels (better acceleration, lower inertia) or 700C wheels (higher inertia, worse acceleration)? By the way, I ride a 51 or 52 size frame depending on the exact dimensions. I’m tempted to stay with 650C, which I guess would require it to be specially ordered/made. Any insight or advice anyone??

Fatso

2

Hi there,
More 700c wheels is really a result of consumer demand, that is pretty much it in a nutshell. In my opinion both wheel sizes have their advantages and disadvantages, but 700c wheels just became more popular. Many people seem to have a road and a tri bike at home and they just appreciate having one set of spare tubes and tires and not two varieties. This also allows people to use their racing wheels on either bike if they so choose. In small sizes, 650c wheels are still the way to go because they are more proportional to the bike, plus in larger sizes we offer it now as a custom option. Which is the reverse of what we did before, when we had for example a 53cm 650c bike and people had the option to get a 53cm 700c custom bike. For awhile we overlapped the sizes in 53cm and 55cm and even 57cm, but then the 700c bikes would always clearly outsell the 650c ones.
I hope this finds you well.
Herbert
Litespeed/QR