Wednesday 20 April 2011

Catching Up

This blog has been on my guilt pile for a while so here I am back with a few instalments. It's not even as if I have the excuse that I've had nothing to write about. On the contrary! I guess a point comes where you get so many things happening one after the other that it becomes difficult to find the time to write about stuff in between events!

It would be easier if fewer things happened to me, so that I could have more time to write on this blog. But then I'd have no events to write about, just aimless ramblings that wouldn't actually be worth writing about at all.....! OK enough.
In early March Ryan from Brands 2 Life kindly invite me to the Futures Gallery near Covent Garden for the launch of the latest Boardman Elite and Performance Series range of bikes.
At the event, which had Chris Boardman himself in attendance, was a presentation of a range of the usual range of suspects - road bikes, triathlon bikes, mountain bikes etc. What really caught my eye though was the CX Comp cyclo cross bike, which has the new UCI approved disc brakes.

Purists will probably still trying to get their heads around this, but it looks like manufacturers have quickly caught on to the UCI lifting of the disc brakes ban and have raced to have these modiications incorporatd into their models in time for the 2011/2012 season.
It remains to be seen what difference exactly this will make when I do a cyclo cross race, but I know there will be a difference for me when I take the cyclo cross bike on a cycle touring trip. Descending an alpine climb with 10kg of panniers, sometimes in the wet, with just my cantilever brakes has always been a bit of a bugbear for me. Knowing that I can have a bike with more powerful brakes will give me much more piece of mind.

The equivalent versions of their fi (female informed) range of women-specific bikes had not been launched at the time of the presentation, but I was reliably informed by Mr Boardman that these would follow in a few months. I look forward to trying those out.


All in all, a good evening.

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