Sorry if this has been brought up before, but here goes. I’m looking at getting a 2004 P3 (love the new colors) and am wondering if its worth the extra seven or eight hundred bucks to get the 10sp Dura Ace over the Ultegra Package, or if I should just put that cash towards a set of wheels. I’ll be moving up from a 650cc to a 700cc, so unfortunately I’m going to have to get new race wheels. Thanks.
Mark
Yup. It is worth it. It really is. And the P3, prepare to be impressed. It is a very, very impressive bike. If you are set up carefully and correctly I think you will really enjoy it.
Jeez man, you do make my skin crawl when you say “Love the new colors” You better paste this in your browser and read it. A lesson well learned about appearances:
http://www.bikesportmichigan.com/editorials/0000048.shtml
One of the funnier things that sometimes happens in here is a person coming in and saying “I’ve been researching bikes for three months and I’ve decided to buy a P3 with Dura-Ace 10 speed…” I have to bite my tongue, I want to say “Sir, it took you three months to figure that out?” To me, it is so glaringly obvious… But then again, I do work in a room filled with 100 triathlon bikes and 4 triathletes.
Holy crap Tom…that’s the funniest damn story I’ve read in a long time. I always fantasize about hot waitresses, bank tellers etc. Glad to know it’s best left to my imagination. Hey…heard anything new about our P3 orders?? Can’t wait for mine.
Doug Campbell
I’m told the frames are becoming available… It’s dependant on size.
Here is a fit related question for you as you mentioned that you personally own a 51cm P3. It appears you and I are very similar in build and stature, and I’m wondering if you have your seat post in the forward position? The reason I’m curious is I own a 54 cm P2K, seat post forward to make an effective 530 top tube. I’m comfortable with the 78 degree seat tube but I’m a little concerned I may be on a bike that is slightly too big. Mike Healy of Gateway Bicycles set me up and I had the choice of both bike sizes; maybe I’m just second-guessing myself. I have nothing but great things to say about his shop. Steve Larsen, who is my new neighbor, offered to fine-tune my fit as he thought I have the bars up a little high. Going into my second season on that bike I’ve agreed to try to work into a more aggressive position. I’m 5’8", 160 lbs, 51 and had a very successful first season racing in Oly distance events.
If you’ve got nothing else to do with your money then by all means go for the 10 sp for fashion purposes, but in reality 10 sp is nothing but marketing. As if 18 gears aren’t enough already. Drive train wise you’d get better performance by switching to a 50/34 compact crank. Buy the Stronglight or Ritchey version because paying extra $$$ for the FSA carbon to save a few grams makes little sense performance wise. Put your money towards a Renn disc and a secondhand front Hed trispoke on ebay. Costs about the same as the drive train “upgrade” and you’ll get a lot more extra performance out of the wheels than you will with a tenth gear.
Mark, how is your knee feeling? I did purchase the Pain-Free Triathlete, used it a bit, but I don’t think my knee problem is ITB related. Julie Donnelley is an angel, if you ask me. Getting MRI’s done tomorrow, and seeing FSU’s team doctor next Wednesday.
Hope the P3 purchase is a sign of recovery for you!
I agree with Cerveloguy - get the Ultegra and put the extra money into something that will actually make you faster.
Why on earth do I hear people say, get a P3, and in the same sentence mention going cheap on parts. You do not get a P3 to sacrifice a nip here and a tuck here. The P3 is a great bike that should not be used with almost good enough parts. You might as well go with the P2k. But everyone has their opinion and I am on my soapbox with mine. So if you want to buy a bike designed strictly for speed and put a 50/34 on it that will let you get up to about what 25mph, then so be it. It may be the best solution for some people.
Mike, thanks for asking, and remembering. My knee is getting a bit better…I’ve been back in the gym for about 5 weeks, have been slowly getting back on the bike (1 ride of 35 - 40mi each weekend), and have even done 3 or 4 runs. Getting some orthotics this week and am hoping they will help. Never realized how jacked up my feet were. Good luck with your knee…Julie is definately the best 
I just hope I can stay healthy enough to enjoy it!!
Mark
“get a P3, and in the same sentence mention going cheap on parts.”
A P3 is just a bike and nothing else. Don’t forget the frame is made of aluminium not gold. Ultegra is not cheap parts. In truth there is no practical performance reason why you can’t put Sora on a P3. On most courses it wouldn’t make the bike any slower than using 10 sp Dura Ace.
I’m a very practical kind of a guy. I research diligently and then make my purchases on performance value rather than what is the most expensive. That’s why I have $59.95 CH Aero disc covers instead of a Zipp disc. Aero testing in a windtunnel demonstrated they perform the same, so why spend extra for a Zipp. Ditto with my suggestion of buying Stronglight/Ritchey compact cranks over the FSA. It’s not that I can’t afford to buy the more expensive stuff, I’ve got a got credit limit on my Visa, but why pay more for the same performance?
Maybe I’m a bit different. When a guy shows up at a tri with a very expensive bike most people will probably think to themselves “man, that guy has a real cool bike”. I tend to think of how much money he coud have saved for the same performance and think to myself “man, that guy is a real dope for spending that much”.
Sorry, that’s just the way I am.
Thanks for the reply and the story Tom. Sorry to make you shudder with the ‘colors’ comment, but from everything I’ve ever heard about the P3, and my measurements, it will be like a Melissa with a PhD Thanks again!
Mark
I just spoke to one of my friends at Cervelo and learned that my new P3, 51cm 650c with Dura-Ace 10 speed, is on the way now. This replaces my silver one from last year that I loved also.
Consider me stoked.
Now there are certainly folks on this site that are much more qualified to answer your question then me but from my point of view the DA 10 spd is awesome. I picked up my P3 the week before Christmas as had it outfitted with the DA 10 spd. I went from a QR with Ultegra. There is a world of difference in how smoothly it shifts and just the feel of the components. However, as others have said the DA will ultimately not make you faster as a new set of wheels will. The bike itself is awesome! Could not be happy. If you have any questions feel free to ask especially since I am just down the coast from you. Good luck.
I agree wholeheartedly. Ultegra is not a cheap groupset. To say that it is sounds like bike parts snobbery again. I tend to go for practicality myself. I don’t have a super expensive bike (although it is probably more bike than I need for the level at which I ride). I usually stay midrange – I try to cap it at a Shimano 105 groupset, although I have ridden Tiagra and Sora bikes as well. In fact, my fastest bike split last season came on a Tiagra bike, and my half IM PR was set on the same bike. So it’s not about the groupset. Spending the extra money on 10 speed Dura Ace for the P3 is fine if you have that kind of disposable income. But you won’t go a mile per hour faster with 9 speed Ultegra over the 10 speed Dura Ace.
I applaud you for getting the CH wheel cover. I did go a little more expensive on my disc wheel – I got a Renn – but I didn’t know about the CH wheel cover when I bought my disc. Had I known, I’d probably have gotten that instead.
RP
As for the fit question, I am 5’8" by a hair and ride a 54 650 P3 quite well, actually got lucky and won state TT two years ago and had fastest o/a bike split in 3 tri’s the same year at 47. But all this forum talk about tiny P3’s made me panic so I put mine up for sale and got several offers immediately, went to a shop and spent 2 days trying every way possible to fit a 51 P3. In the end it was like trying to fight Mike Tyson in a phone booth, no matter how terribly long or high we made the stem and pushed the seat back my knees kept hitting my elbows. I thought I would pass out from claustrphobia. Finally my fitter said, you already have the right bike, fortunately I had told those wanting to buy it to hold off until after my fitting. I really enjoy reading Tom’s posts and he has forgotten more about bikes than I ever knew but just don’t be so quick to downsize.
Re: "I agree with Cerveloguy - get the Ultegra and put the extra money into something that will actually make you faster. "
The other option (if you can still find one) is to get a 2003 P3. Granted you won’t get the cool new team colors, but you’ll get 9sp DA instead of Ultegra for even less money. I just picked up a 2003 for 15% off, which came out to ~$500 less than a 2004 with Ultegra or ~$900 less than a 2004 with DA 10sp. I already have a Renn disk, so that savings will nicely cover a Hed trispoke and a Hed aerobar.
“I applaud you for getting the CH wheel cover”
Well they may not be a status tri item, but since they work as well as anything else, it made a lot of economic sense. With a daughter in college, a son coming up behind her and my other hobby of scuba diving also being fairly expensive, especially as a boat owner, my toy money has to be spread as far as possible.
Most everybody has some sort of a hobby or interest that makes no economic sense. You only live once, so enjoy. As Tom posted, he has some customers who can drop a couple of grand as if it was twenty bucks to the rest of us. If that’s the case then why not spend it without much thought to performance value. I know I wouldn’t, even if I was that rich, but that’s just me.
Hey Cerveloguy
I thought that the whole point was to show up with the coolest bike at the race? Just wait until next year when they publish the Kona bike count and I’m the only one there with a Wheeler Ti (I picked it up from Chuck’s Bikes for real cheap!) In this year’s Kona bike count there were no Wheelers at all so all the posers with their fancy Treks won’t be as unique as me I remember about 7 or 8 years ago when the Trisport race in Peterborough was Olympic distance instead of a half IM that there was a bike in the men’s 50-54 rack that made me drool. It was a Calfee Tetra with new (nobody had anything like them anywhere in Canada) Profile Carbon X bars, a Flite full-carbon saddle and carbon almost everywhere else. While I was looking at this amazing bike the owner wandered over sporting about 30 pounds too much around his midsection. I was thinking that he’d be a lot faster on a bargain Shwinn with some Profile Century bars clipped on if he went on a diet As you say, an extra gear won’t make anywhere near as much difference as some good race wheels.
I wholeheartedly agree that extra gear will not make you faster, but inferior gear can make you slower through bad shifting, chain drop, etc. If you feel comfortable with what you have, that is great. A P3 is “just” a bike the way a ferrari is “just” a car. You do not get a ferrari and outfit it with medium grade tires and wheels, even if they are comparably the same.