CrankAddictsRich wrote:
Was that response meant for me? I'm not from Australia at all, not sure where that came from.... and yes, I'm agreeing with you that Specialized made some choices in terms of materials and design that in order to meet their goals to make an inexpensive, aero, crit killer bike. The idea actually was a morph form the Venge Lunch Race bike, but I think they realized that the carbon Venge wasn't a hugely popular choice amongst the crit cows due to price when/if the bike gets crashed. In terms of your racing experience, I was bringing it up because to me, someone that has gotten to a Cat 3 has put in a fair bit of miles and race time and is usually in pretty good shape. They're more fit and flexible and able to adapt pretty easily to riding a more extreme position... compared to someone that is just a general rider, doing a group ride on the weekend and maybe 1 or 2 fondos a year.
It was but I got your usernames mixed up. I question what you're saying simply because your approach contained a personal jab that was contrary to my point, which agreed with yours. There is nothing inherently "crit" about it's geo. It is aggressive, but a Felt F1 and Speci pro geo used to be as well. The geo is well within what bikes have been made around for decades. It's more aggro than the Tarmac, which has a decently tall stack in many sizes. Nothing about it has anything to do with fitness, crits, or comfort unless one slams too much.
This whole idea of crit rider or crit bike seems to be a phenomenon that has taken place in the past few years as riders that are too unfit/heavy to actually contend any race that requires them to be out of the draft, climb, or have fitness thus pigeonholes them into one style of race. Speci picked up on this nicely and made a bike designed for American racing- even most RRs are just really long crits.
