Polar Bear White and Mediterranean Blue…
My race bike for the summer is built! Based on a lovely Yeti ARC frame, I’ve gone uncharacteristically to town with trying to get everything to match. And, with white being this year’s ‘hot’ colour, we’ve also had some test products sent in in the right colour too. Brakes are Avid Ultimates, which go rather well with our test pair of the new SID forks, if not with the Centre-lock splined XTR hubs, but that’s something to upgrade in the future, eh?
Syncros make the white stem and bars (a little too upright for my racer-boy ambitions for the bike, so the bars have already been swapped out for some ‘What’s the point’ 1/4in Truvative risers. I’ll give the stem a little longer though). The white saddle and black post are Syncros too.
Seeing as all the weight-weenie racers still go for Gripshift, I thought I would too and, as a user of Gripshift since they were the size of tennis balls, I’ve had no problem adapting. We even had some short LizardSkins lock-on grips left over from our grip test to match. Cranks are the wonderfully crisp looking Race Face Deus XC
I happened to have an old white SP 9.0 mech lying around too, which looks great on the bent tubes of the turquoise back end
It all looks pretty neat and the shake-down road ride went well too. The real test will be tomorrow at the Bristol BikeFest, where I’m racing in a team of four. At least the bike’s going to look good, even if the rider is red and puffing.