Saturday, December 27, 2008

Guru Geneo Blood Red/Black






I am fortunate enough to have great friends and some of them are even fast. One happens to be a former State Crit Champ (P,1,2) and Time Trial Champ and just all around bad ass on a bike. I am honored to have her racing for the Shama Cycles race team and of course she wanted a new bike to support the shop and have a new secret weapon for the 2009 season. So began the challenge. How to build a bike with "pimp" parts that are race day strong. First we picked the Guru Geneo. All carbon, fully customizable, super smooth ride while maintaining incredible power transfer. Next...well picking the colors of course. haha
Part selection was key. She has ridden Shimano Dura Ace for a couple years and wanted to stick with what she knows. No worries there. Shimano DA shifters, Front D, Rear D. The rest is up for grabs. We chose Zipp SL handlebars with the Ergo Short and Shallow reach. They weighed in at 158grams. Then for seat post and stem we went with a 96gram New Ultimate 90mm stem that is CNC machined for lightness while maintaining strength. New Ultimate also was used for the seat post...at 130grams for a carbon post its plenty stiff. I even did a seated effort on this bike and the post was solid. Both are simple and elegant. For the brakes we chose the KCNC road brakes, they are CNC machined and weigh exactly HALF what DA brakes weigh. 15ograms for the pair. The saddle is a Specialized Toupe...it matches too good to care if it feels good or not. Just kidding, it does happen to work for her since she had this on a previous bike and liked it. The power is taken from her shoes and put into the KMC chain via the Rotor crank set up. Agilis 516 gram cranks, Compact 50/36 Qrings, and the bb is the SABB Ceramic. The cranks are VERY stiff and light due to CNC machining of the arms and having the arm hollowed out as well. The red anodizing ont the BB and cranks gave a great play into the KCNC bolts, ceramic Pulley wheels, and other bolts on the bike and rear D. Not to mention the Nokon cables. Those are black eyelets with red ones every 5th black one. Doing that on a Guru with internally routed cables requires about 2 hours of time to get it right...can you say NetFlix?
She has a power tap wheel set for training and a Zipp 303 tubular set for race day. The bike with the Zipps comes in at 14.3lbs. Look out for posts on results from the rider/rig combo in 2009.

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