Tour of Road Bike

Looking at colour schemes before the start of last years season, Stevens asked us which one of two colour options we would like. Either Black Gloss of a Silver/white two tone option. As much as black is close to my heart, and probably the colour of it, and having as many as 13 black bikes in my house at one time, I kind of liked the white look. After my first year with the team, having white bikes was a drag, especially with greasy mechanics hanging on them all day. So with three of us decided, white it was to be, but they made a huge mistake, and when they arrived, they were fortunately black. After the whole season with black bikes, we extolled their virtues all year, they always looked clean, and were easy to keep them that way. So a full season with the white and silver look is going to be interesting. I have already had to clean up my cleaning of the bikes (if that was possible), and take a little bit more care to rubbing my greasy prints off before the start. But they do look hot, now to get rid of the orange (sponsors colour unfortunately) tyres and get black ones, then it's done.


The almost stock standard, and most common setup for the year. And yes, she does like her bars in that position, low hoods and high drops.

We are still using the same model of Stevens this season as well. With a few small changes to the frame to make them a little lighter and stiffer, why change too much. Here is a good quote stolen directly from the Stevens site. "The SCF is classy, lightweight and reliable. The High Modulus Fibre technology allows for light and high strength frame designs. The SCF captivates with its rounded and fluid frame tube connections and the carefully tuned sizes. In racing the SCF convinces easily. Latest examples: the Buitenpoort Team won the Tour de l´Aude as well as the Tour de France Feminin." And what a great mention of our team. These frames are light, with the smallest we have 49cm weighing in at about 790gm with fork under 1000gm, thank god we have some stuff hanging on them to keep them on the road here in Holland.

You can check out the Stevens Website here. If you want to see more of the SCF1
you can check it out. As ours was a custom colour, it doesn't look as though there are any pics of it here. But once they get there shit together, you might see a few of them here on our racing site. They love getting all the photo's after a stage race, seems he has no limit as to what we can send them, they print it all.


The rear triangle, with Bontrager Carbon 5.0 rear wheel.

A full 10speed Dura Ace Groupset, for the running gear. Our same sponsor from last year 'PRO' is looking after all the handle bars, stems, and seatposts for the road bikes, and the carbon TT bars on the TT bikes. Topped off with the saddle of the riders choice, and we are almost ready to ride. Saddles range from the SLR, in three versions, mostly carbon, a few of Specialized Jett's, a few flights and a couple of Arione's and Vitesse's from Fisik, more on these later. Pedals are mostly the new Dura Ace version, though there are a couple of exceptions, with Amber and Susanne riding something special (more later).


And the front of the bike, nice headtube, beautiful legs.

Wheels are all from Bontrager, with almost all wheels they manufacture hanging in the store. Ones here are some of this years newest models, this is the Carbon Aeolus 5.5. This is a new one form them this year, the first race we have for them is this weekend, so more on this later. But we have enough set for a whole team of eight, and a car full of spares as well. This will be the wheel of choice for the season, and most of the races from now on (cause all the bad cobbles are almost finished). The hubs are DT Swiss, so we expect to have very little problems again this year with these. And the tall rims add such a nice bit of speed to the bike, but watch out in high winds, they will through the smaller riders around a fair bit.

Other wheels used for various situations, riders or races include, low carbon (for climbs), disc wheels (for TT), High carbon front wheels (for TT), high alloy rims (for Dutch Crits and Cyclocross), and some low alloy rims (good for spares, or climbs on shit roads). All of these for racing are Tubular rims, so calls for a lot of glueing, which I love. A few clincher carbon rims we have been testing, and use these for various races as well as needed.


If you have not seen them yet, the new (even though I saw a prototype pedal two years ago) Dura Ace wide platform pedals.

Cateye supplies all the computers for all the bikes that are not running the SRM system (at riders own cost), this we use the wireless version. But we are about to receive the latest units available, but more on this later. Cages for the bottles are supplied by Tacx, and the bottles as well. Sweat and tears supplied by both the riders and the mechanic, these are very good quality, only the best used.


The line up for a cobbled race, low alloy rims with 25mm tyres. Not as cool looking, but safe for bad roads (if thats what they call them).

Any questions you have, you can always post a comment below. Next up The Chrono, Stevens, brand new carbon, Timetrail specific machine. This you are going to love, just have to wait till I get one of the discs installed, then it will look hot. We have a few TT's coming up soon, so plenty of photographic inspiration coming.