By Jay Prasuhn
Photography by Mark Shimahara/bikezen.com
June 29, 2007 -- As they do each year, Specialized invites the press to play with the goods they’ll be showing at Interbike for the next year. First crack at the new goods? Hard to pass up. This year meant Navacerrada, hub for Specialized’s Spanish base, with industry writers afforded the opportunity of testing on the roads the Vuelta a Espana rolls on. Of course, our expectations were thrown.
We expected the rains in Spain to fall mainly on the plain (that’s a fallacy; it was 85-degrees, the Specialized sag vehicle passing out water bottles like a grocery checker). We expected matadors (but had to settle for a few happy longhorns grazing in the valleys, since bullfighting is slowly fading into obscurity despite its history). We expected to see nobody aside from the other journalists (then crossed paths with Tour de France-prepping Discovery Channel pro Alberto Contador while we were out a post-ride run).
But we did get to see some old-world beauty as expected. Friday we were treated to a long ride with Ned Overend and Andy Pruitt, heading through the town of Soto del Real and passing the Castle of Manzanares el Real – an authentic fifteenth-century castle.
Specialized comes with the goods, rock solid, every year. Their slogan Innovate or Die is no joke. And 2008’s product line is proof positive to that end. And while innovations were in everything from bikes to apparel to helmets, the centerpiece for us was one bike that Chris McCormack rode to a 4:16 split in his fourth straight Roth Challenge win: The Transition Carbon.
We’ll go into more detail about our second ride on the new belle of the ball in a moment. We’ll take you through a rundown of the newest new stuff from Specialized we got to check out.
2D Helmet
Roadies might’ve noticed a new lid atop the head of Alessandro Petacchi at the Giro d’Italia finale this season. That helmet: the 2D, which was probably one of the most shocking debuts. Not because it has a heap of big vents.
No, the feature was bestowed upon us when it was laid in my hand; the thing weighs nothing. Like, seriously nothing. Like 184 grams nothing, to be exact. Lighter than a banana. In fact, Specialized product managers went to the lengths of a detailed slide show on the history of the Cavendish banana and why, while a necessity like a helmet, it’s much heavier at 230g than the 2D. Bottom line: The first helmet to earn Specialized’s coveted S-Works moniker, it’s the lightest helmet to meet CPSC certifications, by a landslide. How?
The 2D uses two separate foam densities. Since impact standards on side are different for side versus top, they made a helmet with higher-density sides and a lower (and thus lighter) density top. They used lighter straps and fittings to drop grams as well. The result is a decrease of 30 percent on weight.
It was a treat to ride, nary there and super-vented on a hot day through the hillside. A big feature we dug centers around the ProFit 360 retention device. Most just snug up the nape of the neck, fitting to the helmet at the temple. On the 2D, the device wraps clear around the front of the helmet, foam helmet padding covering its entirety. Not only does it create more airflow, the padding absorbs much of that brow sweat that typically run into the eyes. The thin straps didn’t stretch when soaked with sweat, either.
Roval Rapide and S-Works Tubular Tires
After a few “token” aero efforts, Specialized has a carbon tubular that triathletes ought to be having a look at. The Roval Rapide has a super-stiff 48mm deep dish rim and mates to it their proprietary Star hub. While I thought it was a gimmick at first, I am a believer. Riding this wheel last month at Specialized headquarters in Morgan Hill, the 1,587g wheelset has what we want: a deep section that handles beautifully in gusty crosswinds, and stiffness for climbs (thanks to the aluminum Star hubs and the ensuing short spokes resulting in less wind-up).
But most important to us? Aerodynamics. The deep rim is one thing. But due to its design, the Star hub allows for a narrower flange stance, allowing he spokes to be pulled in narrower to the hub. That makes for a more aero frontal profile, by 50 percent, Specialized says. When people start paying attention, this wheel ought to be getting more action at venues in Lanzarote, Kona, Madison, Pentiction. It climbs well, handles well in crosswinds and is super aero. What else do you want?
They also showed off their first Mondo Tubular tire, and are also debuting a Mondo open tubular that takes direct aim at Vittoria’s popular Open Corsa CX.
S-Works SL Road Shoe
While this editor ranks the Specialized TriVent as one of the best triathlon race shoes for its speedy, easy and no-straps or-fingers-in-spokes design and industry-leading Body Geometry sole, we still like a standard road shoe for our road bike, and the S-Works fits that bill. In fact, I’ve used the S-Works road shoe in tri races, simply because it’s fast enough (just a few dial turns and you’re cinched in) and the fit is much better than Velcro straps.
On the new S-Works SL, the Body Geometry fit with a medium width upper and a roomy toebox has been, of course, retained. The sole forefoot is emblazoned with key road races like the Vuelta a Espana, Giro d’Italia, Liege, Flanders, Tirreno-Adriatico, Pais Vasco, Paris Nice and…the Tour de California. Hmm. Not sure when “of” got replaced by “de.”
No big deal, considering this was the only fault we found in a shoe that was already our favorite and made a big advance.
The new catch? The Boa closure features a new release method; instead of pressing a release tab as before, now you just pull the dial out away from the shoe body. With a click it pulls away, opening the lacing for quick, easy shoe exit. The shoe fit and rode as well as ever, but was even easier to get out of at ride’s end than before.Specialized just needs a heel loop for pulling on and off and Specialized could have a tri shoe in the making.
Then they added the SL element; at 250 grams, they’re gossamer light on the foot. Not a big deal when standing still, but turn those extra grams over and over and over for five or six hours and it starts to matter.
The shoe will be available in black or white, but global journalists were presented limited edition blaze orange and white test shoes (imprinted with “Limited Edition” on the side) that select athletes will debut at the Tour de France.
While Specialized continues to promote its three aftermarket variable arch inserts for their shoe line, they also debuted new BG Shims which add very slight forefoot varus or valgus pitch to the front of the shoe for even more customization. Specialized Bike Components University fit expert Josh Rebol fitted me to my Transition and shoes with 1.5mm of varus shimming to help lift my medial foot and externally rotate my knee for a more linear pedal stroke while in the aerobars. It’s a very small move, but for most triathletes that tend to knee-in as they start to hammer in the aerobars it helps to keep the knees away from the top tube and maintain a linear pedal stroke.
Miura Sunglasses
While Specialized was the first to debut gradient-tint optics to the cycling market, its first offering three years ago was my only experience. Since then they’ve improved a ton. The press was presented samples of the new Miura and I left them inside my helmet on top of the aerobars of my test bike.
When I picked them up and put them on, something was wrong—they were smudged, or something. I took them off and looked at them. Seems as they were set in my helmet, the helmet strap fell over part of the lens. As it sat in the sun, the photochromic Adaptalite lens darkened—except where the strap had covered it. It was an impressive example of how much of the 12 to 39 percent of light transmission variance they provide.
The new Miura will come in two lens sizes and actually fit my pixie-sized head without looking large at all. While angle-optimized for cycling, they worked nicely for our post-ride run as well.
The Miura is just one of several new optics hitting for 2008. Specialized revamps the wispy Arc by debuting the Arc II with a light stainless steel frame and new shape. They also bring a new large road riding model in the Uracco, and their first women’s specific design (with smaller temple length and circumference) in the Kava.
Road Bikes
For your training rig, Specialized debuted new versions of existing rides. The road centerpiece is the S-Works Tarmac SL2. With a massive downtube and chainstays as well as a 1.5-inch oversize bottom headset cup (paired with a 1.124-inch top cup), the SL2 is one of the most laterally stiff bikes we’ve ridden—not that I’m putting massive watts through the cranks when putting in base miles. I guess they had to answer to sprinter Tom Boonen on this one.
The surprise came on the finish of Friday’s ride as we passed through town back to the hotel for a half-mile on real, old, gapped cobbles. While it nearly rattled the chain and derailleur off the bike, we just threw it in a big gear and motored over, fairly unfettered considering the beating below. In their own tests against nine other industry competitors, the SL2 was trumped only by its own S-Works Roubaix, in vertical compliance testing.
At 13.5 lbs for frame, fork and post, it’s also the second-lightest road racer on the market. Can’t forget that.
As the largest growth segment for Specialized, the women’s line has gone gangbusters, and Specialized has continued to feed its road consumers with truly top-end product. The new Ruby SL adds the Az1 sequential carbon curing system used by the Tarmac SL2 and applies it to. So yeah, the Ruby is no watered-down token product for the girls.
To complete the bike purchase, Specialized dealers will have access to one of the coolest bike fit computer programs we’ve seen in a long time. Using frontal and side-on cameras, bike pedal stroke will be videotaped. Customers will then be able to have their stroke slo-mo analyzed, with your fitter drawing a map of your knee movement through the pedal stroke on screen to track the knee’s path for cleat or shim adjustment.
Dealers will also be able to take measurements, determine knee angles hip angles, knee distance over bottom bracket, any pertinent fit angle, all provided on the program based on digital line drawings on the subject on the screen. Fitters can draw a line from hip to knee and knee to ankle to get leg bend at bottom dead center of the pedal stroke, for example. For Specialized dealers, this will be a premium offering, and for customers, a very, very detailed fit that gives you before-and-after takeaway that yes, the money was well-spent.
Fact Crankset
We were pretty excited by this one. Specialized debuted the Fact crank last year, but this was the first time Triathlete got a chance to play with them, and it seems they made a heap of improvements over last year’s version.
The reasoning Specialized used for creating the crank was, as John Swanson said, “we had these awesome bikes and wanted a crankset that complemented the frame.” A new spline interface that mates the cranks to one another helped the crankset gain a nine percent stiffness increase over last year. They also beefed up the backside of the crankarms to reduce torsional stiffness in the hollow carbon crankarms.
What we really like revolved around the chainrings. The S-Works rings are coated with a Ni Boron plating that hardens the rings, but also reduces friction between the ring teeth and the chain. While I was skeptical about how they would work, the pins and ramps in back were honestly every bit as good as the Shimano Dura-Ace standard.
The coolest thing about the rings? You can swap from standard to compact without changing cranksets. The rings and spiders can be pulled off a splined interface and swapped at any time. Going to hit the hills and want to ride compact? Just five minutes and you go to a Specialized 110BCD, throw on your Specialized rings or Q-Rings if you dig ‘em, and go.
Of course, weight was a big impression on the ride as well. Specialized’s listed weight of 623 grams is lighter than Time, Cannondale, Campagnolo and Shimano 2007 offerings.
The Transition
The reason why we were here continued to impress after our maiden voyage on late prototypes a month ago.
First, I was smart enough to just ride my tempo instead of getting caught up in group ride dalliance—attacks, sitting up, all that—to focus on the nuisances while in the aerobars. Our test S-Works Transition bike had the new FACT crankset, which is where we got giddy about it, as well as the stock Zipp 404 clinchers and the Vuka aerobar, finished with a SRAM Force groupset.
Also in its final version was the cable run. The rear brake cable ports out at the bottom of the downtube, and is fed along a guide externally for about seven inches until it meets the brake. As mentioned in my previous report on the Transition, the cable run is completely guided internally, which the mechanics here loved when putting the bikes together the day before the event.
After a few hours on it, here’s what I found:
It’s stable. This was our single biggest revelation after the trip. As a point of reference, I typically ride a 56-cm tri bike with a 77-degree seat angle and a fair amount of front drop. I rode a size large frame with the zero-layback post option (they have a layback option as well) with the saddle rails set in the middle of the clamp, which was set in its rearward position.
That meant to me that while I ride pretty aggressively, it could have gone further forward. Much further, up to and over 80 degrees, easily. Not that anyone would want to, but they could. A short head tube meant for the possibilities of a deep front cockpit drop.
Bombing down winding descents and roundabouts or motoring the flats in the aerobars with crosswind gusts nudging the Zipp 404s, this thing tracked beautifully and predictably. For those who want to focus 100 percent on power to the cranks instead of balancing to keep a straight line, this is the ticket. Likewise for newcomers to triathlon, the Transition is a bike they can handle with full confidence.
The Tritip saddle is for real. I rode the Transition Thursday and the SL2 Friday. Taking nothing away from the Toupe saddle on the SL2, but I wished I had the Tritip. Its looks are deceiving as clunky but it’s anything but. The nose, where triathletes do most of their riding, is a truly comfortable experience. Specialized has two saddle size options—40 and 50—based on nose width in millimeters. In the aerobars it rode every bit as nice as an Arione Tri 2, which heretofore has been my measure of standard. Specialized smartly is selling the Tritip aftermarket, and I reckon they’ll do well with it.
We also tried the saddle’s rear hook on the rack here at base camp. It works. Those with rear hydration systems won’t be able to take advantage of it, but if you run bottles on the frame or in an aero hydration system, it’s a fast-transition feature that saves you a second of unhooking, overhanding, underhanding and then leaving the rack. With this you just grab and go.
Specialized will be offering a standard version (290 grams with cromoly rails) and SL (245 gram with hollow titanium rails) version.
Now, back to the Transition...
It’s aero. Duh. This fact didn’t change from the first time we saw it. Wafer-thin top tube. Stays that draft the frame, only to flare out only at the last possible moment. Proprietary center-pull brakes, with the rear brake placed under the bottom bracket shell. A beautifully seat tube cowling. The clean aero cable run. From the front or back, this thing looks like you’re atop a razor.
It’s stiff. Despite the narrower stance of the aero stays, the frame climbed admirably through the drivetrain. Much of the frame’s front-end stability and confidence is due to the stiffness, aided, we think, by the downtube “wings” that straddle either side of the tube behind the fork and act as a torsional brace for the frame. Out of saddle, neither the front end nor bottom bracket yielded at all.
In the end it was very, very hard to find fault in the bike. When you spend a couple years on the design of one bike as Specialized engineer Luc Callahan did on the Transition, you tend to work out the kinks. And they did just that.
The cool thing is that while the S-Works will be the object of affection when it hits the market this fall, Specialized will be debuting three other versions of the Transition with gradually lower specs, and lower prices. The ground-level Transition comp, which will be the same carbon frame, Mavic Aksium wheels and A Shimano 105 group, will price around $2,500 complete.
For more info on the Transition check out the September issue of Triathlete. For more on Specialized’s newest goods, visit specialized.com