Now I know 2012 has been and gone, but it was interesting to hear the response from a new local to town, William Debois; after we let him borrow Matty's Trek Madone 6.9.
You
can usually tell the quality of a bike by the sound it makes when rolling down
on a smooth road. The characteristic "buzzing" noise of a modern
carbon bike can be as horrid as the sound of a plastic crate being dragged on
the road or as soothing as a piece of ambient music by Brian Eno. The Trek
Madone 6.9 sounds like the razorblade shaving your legs the night before a
race. It is stunningly smooth, yet instantly responsive, thanks to design
features such as the massively oversized bottom bracket, integrated headset and
innovative seat mast. These characteristics help reduce the overall weight of
the frame and increase its stiffness to the point where no power feels lost or
wasted, allowing effortless acceleration and incredible efficiency on even the
steepest hills. Equipped with the right wheels (the one I tried was fitted with
excellent Bontrager RXL Scandium hoops), the dynamic handling and efficiency
will inspire the kind of brave moves that can win a criterium.
Although
it no longer feels right to mention the number of great tour wins the Madone
series has to its name, since most of them have been scrubbed off the history
books, it is obvious that this faultless design is the result of countless
refinements, drawn from taking part and succeeding in the toughest races in the
world. All this is very well, but would a middle aged mere mortal like me not
be better off riding a bike half the price and work a little harder? Well, the
whole point of such a high cost / high performance bike like this is that it
will make you instinctively want to go faster, for longer, up steeper hills
than before, and ride much much faster down the very hills that used to make
you shiver and slam the brakes on. I fully experienced this last year, when
riding up some insane gradients in the English Lake District on a Trek Madone
(Hardknott Pass, 30% in places) as part of the brutal 180km Fred Whitton
Challenge. The bike behaved like a well trained thoroughbred, correcting my
mistakes in the steep descents and converting every last bit of my sub-standard
energy into forward motion on the ascents. This is clearly a bike for all day
riding, smashing your personal best over a double century and not finishing
your rides as dribbling mess, unless that's what you seek, of course.
William
Debois, March 2013
