That’s a very low reach / TT / FC bike …
FC ?
Is the bike just too short in reach? Kanute needing reach extenders, Jason West as well, Indie Lee the same and she cannot go 1 size up as she would almost run out of seatpost to fit in the frame/standover height issue
Jeroen
I like it but yes I am wondering about the stand over. For me reach would probably be OK in a medium, I just have to worry about “the boyz” down there. I want/need a 2nd and 3rd bike for testing between me and biz partner. I do TT so UCI is a must, he does long distance. I want to finish up my PSeries project and move on to another one, so this may be a candidate. It meets the criteria of reasonably price bike with potential.
It has extremely low reach, short top tube and front centre for a Tri / TT bike. Aside from potential fit issues, it’s going to be a handful on bad surfaces and in gusty wind.
I’m a bit over 6’3. With 175s, my cadence was pretty high during race/interval sessions (mid to high 90s). I like the fit advantages of the 172.5s, but I would not want to go shorter. I do occasionally get right on the edge of spinning them out which only happened with 175s on downhill efforts. I’m also fairly heavy for a triathlete at 200 lbs (former college offensive lineman --300 lbs then). I still have a bit of that leg strength though which might be factor.
Thanks Barret. I get it. I like the bike and am on a Ventum One now. But since none of these things are cheap, I think there’s always some sensitivity to an upcharge for typically standard items. Appreciate your responding. Like you said, you can’t spec it for everyone.
What tends to happen is that each of us has a preferred foot speed (circumferential pedal velocity for short) - that gets turned into cadence by the size of the circle you move your feet around (pi x crank length x 2) and your gear ratio.
Shorter cranks give you a smaller circle, which needs to be compensated for with gear ratios. Where most people get this wrong is shortening the cranks but not putting on easier gears.
In your case, it sounds like you’re not a fan of high cadence, so choosing higher gear ratios might be a good idea.
As an example - I have a 37" inseam and am quite happy on 162.5mm cranks for the tri bike. Yes my cadence is higher than on the 175s on every other bike I own, but the foot speed is the same. I just tune the gear ratios for the course and my level of fitness.
As an extra bonus, we can get into calculating optimal ratios for drivetrain friction for course/cadence/speed. But that’s beyond scope right now.
The main point is that crank length is less of an impact on spinning out than your gear ratios are.
2 Likes
Hi Marcag,
Just like you, at 5’7 , riding a 54cm Pserie for reach, but since Pserie has a bit of sloping it doesn’t look weird at all even at ~70cm seat height and stand over is not at all an issue.
Tempus seems very nice, but almost has a “down” slope for the top tube, stand over is super high, seat post would be almost inserted fully in the frame. Then the smaller size would be too short.
So that’s a miss on the geometry, otherwidse it looks super cool and a very good alternative to Pserie when it fits !
Very cool to see you back pyf
Last year I bought a PSeries with the idea of building it up to be as fast as a high end bike. While I only documented part of it, I did hit my goals with still a few tweaks to do
My biz partner signed up for IM Canada so said “hey let’s build up a bike for you”. He is a typical AGer still in a rim brake bike and I saw this as a potential candidate, mostly because it’s reasonably priced. He is on an Argon E119 rim brake model.
He can afford just about anything, but this is about setting a budget and getting the most bang for the buck. We have allocated part of the budget to beer for weekends of testing up at the cottage, so there goes a quarter of the budget 
There is something about this bike that gives me good vibes, so I want to pursue it.We need these setups for other types of testing so we will pull the trigger on something.
Nice catch. There was a min pad stack error on some of the product pages that has been fixed. Size Large pad stack min is 637 and now corrected.
I’m sure there are exceptions, but this bike isn’t “short” compared to most TT bikes currently available/sold in US market. If you compare to Speed Concept, P-Series, QR PRI, and the new Giant Trinity, there is our course some variation but ours is generally lower and in-line with reach or a bit longer. Our Pro’s are riding in positions that frankly most of our customers cannot, or will not, ride in. So while you are correct they are pushing the envelope on reach, the bikes are designed to balance fit needs of widest variety of riders
Since you mentioned Kanute, he was on a Large Trek Speed Concept (541 stack/426 reach) and moved to a Large Tempus (521 stack/431 reach), so he actually gained frame reach in the move. We’ve done wind-tunnel and other aero testing, most pro’s have done testing, and usually they want smaller frames with more pad stack and then solve for the reach they want. I will leave it at that.
We weighed a stock Medium Tempus with Sram Red and it was 19.3lbs. That comes with the ASC52 bars with 35mm of pad spacer stack, Zipp 808FC, Red AXS 2x groupset and sealant in the tires. No bottle cages or pedals.
They (pros) only want to solve for the reach themselves as current bicycle manufacturers are not providing what they need. I’m a 54 year old athlete, who is by no means a pro, and who’s fit is longer than what is available. I end up sizing up and then maximizing the reach on that frame. Just because Ventum chose to ignore that segment of the population, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, or that it is a big outlier.
Swap a pair of lighter wheels and you’re coming close to aero road bike weights!
I thought Kanute was on a Medium looking at his height and looking at the pics he posted online. Seat post sticking out of the frame, the amount of spacers he uses, etc.
I should have chosen my words more clear in the reach-thing. What is meant more is that when you design a bike around 82 degrees of seat angle there must be a thought behind that so you expect riders to ride that steep forward. Let’s say that is on average a degree or 4-5 more then a lot of other bikes with slacker seat angles. So if you move the saddle that much more forward at default and expect that riders will ride that much further forward you would have expected a certain amount of extra reach as well to accomodate that much steeper seat angle.
Taking that in consideration I think the bike is short if we look at where the positions are going with athletes. And how much we see they are in need to use all kind of reach extenders incl. your riders now on the Tempus.
That trend of wanting longer reach has been going on for some years now so I expected more reach in the frame or default ‘somewhere’ in the cockpit design that would eliminate the use of after market extenders.
Jeroen
2 Likes
I think what a lot of you have forgotten is that… It takes a couple of years to produce a new bike… These pro’s have been LEANING super forward for about 6 months now… It wasn’t until just before KONA when we really started seeing these guys extend forward like they are trying to do now.
Not when you’re talking the entire PRO field like I am…
Kanute rode a medium Trek Speed Concept, I was looking at it in Tremblant last year. He also recently sold one of them (the chrome colored one) on the buycycle site and it was a medium. Did he move to a large SC before going with Ventum?