Tonight we’re taking you to France, it’s 2011… a sleepy village, somewhere south of Nantes, not much is moving in the mid-afternoon heat certainly not sensible pros who are about to spend three weeks riding around France at an average speed of 39.78Kmh.
Some things are moving about though - your intrepid road.cc tech team, and the Garmin Cervélo mechanics who obligingly whip out Tyler’s brand new Cervélo S5 for us to take a gander at.
So new is the bike that it’d only been offically launched the day before.
Back then nary a year went by without Cervélo upping the bar in the aero-road bike stakes. The S5 was no different - think Cervélo P4 TT bike crossed with the S3 road bike and you wouldn’t be far wrong. It was - and indeed still is - super-skinny, everything that could get in the way of air flowing past it as fast as possible was pared down or tucked away - check those brake callipers.
Of course Cervélo said the S5 was faster than the legendary S3, indeed so fast that at some point in the development process it must’ve overtaken the S4. The S5 was all about being aero ALL ABOUT (sorry, didn't mean to shout). So much so that dare we say, that it looked like it might be a tad on the stiff side - we didn’t envy Tyler doing an entire Tour on one.
What did we know though - a few days later he won stage 3, and came second on stage 11. As for the S5, the original version went on to enjoy an illustrious racing career before being revamped in 2015.
Fancy some further S5 related reading to speed to the land of nod* - there’s lots here including our first ride review of the 2015 revamped version.
*or get you too excited for sleep. Sorry
I think the status on that is "pendig further investigation":...
I've lost count of the number of times I've been swerved at or seen a driver swerve to knock someone off in London. Managed to dodge most of them....
The first few seconds of this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GTqGr6X42M
In the meanwhile on the roads the average frontal height, initial acceleration and mass of motorcars relentlessly rises leading to ever more likely...
I was going to say "don't mention side-roads!" - although I presume the response is "but people can can hear the cars coming but not the cyclists"...
They werern't cycling for pleasure when that was taken, but many did in those days. Those bikes were often out and about in the local countryside...
I think looking at the frame pictured it is immediately obvious why it is a harsh ride, very steep angled rear stays directly to the short seat...
Also, isn't......
Given that its 12-14nm and the torqwrench in accurate for 5000 cycles up to 12nm its going to be perfect for doing up those bolts
Surely half the point of doing sessions on the trainer is to build up mental toughness. Making it less horrible defeats the purpose of the exercise.