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Hate Volume 4 here
Hate Volume 3 here
Hate Volume 2 here
Hate Volume 1 here
Schwag list here

Accelerade
@##=#<8,L>@##=#This year I’ve taken the sports drink bait, hook, line and sinker. In previous years, I would only carry one bottle of whatever drink I would be drinking at the time and the other bottle would be water. Sometimes at the end of a ride, I would find myself feeling a little bonky. Our team was able to get a team deal through Accelerade, so I ordered a case of the stuff as per their instructions. A large box of the Accelerade arrived at my doorstep, a box so large I could’ve filled the bath tub full of water and had a lemon lime exfoliation – which I did immediately.

Accelerade is a carbohydrate/protein mix drink, the theory being that the protein helps prevent muscle breakdown and therefore speeds recovery afterwards. The carbohydrate/protein mix is a 4 to 1 ratio. Thus ends the science portion of our review. The drink tastes surprisingly well, compared to other sports drinks, it might seems a little “thick” at first, but I got used to it quickly. Since I ordered a metric ton of the stuff, I started filling all of my bottles with it on every ride, and I can say that it has made a difference. I feel less tired after a long ride than in the past, and while it may not be entirely from the drink, it has to play a role.

Time for hate…
The residue from this drink in our bottles can turn to a sports drink equivalent of concrete very quickly. You have to wash your bottles right after a ride or risk a sludge coating your bottles. If you choose to not wash on the other hand, perhaps you could try and discover another life form in the primordial, protein ooze – your choice.

Where does this leave us?
Enjoy a thick, protein mixed drink and enjoy your schmalz longer. Does that sound like a subject line from a spam email or what?

Pedro’s Hatchback Blowout Bag

@##=#<6,L>@##=#First off, did try the bubbles from last week? C’mon be honest, you know you’re curious about that one. This week I’m looking at my saddle bag (that sounds kinda dirty). I have a bag from Pedro’s that is called a blowout bag because they use recycled bike inner tubes in the construction of the bag. That’s about it – one less tube in the landfill. Granted, it’s not like buzzing a whaling boat in a Green Peace raft, but it is something.

The bag holds your stuff well; you can open the zipper while it’s attached to get at your valuables. It has a strap that attaches it to the bike and one that wraps around the seat post, so it stays put. It’s not revolutionary by any means, but it’s a saddle bag for crying out loud!

Were does this leave us?
Hold your junk while you save an inner tube from the landfill. If that makes you sleep better at night, fire away.

Time for hate
What, do you hate the earth?

Foaming Bathroom Cleaner

@##=#<5,R>@##=#Yes, that is not a mis-type up there. This week I’m looking at foaming bathroom cleaner (some know it as “Scrubbing Bubbles”, but that, I believe is a protected brand name or something of that ilk, so let’s just go with the generic term). Foaming bathroom cleaner is the greatest bicycle cleaner I have ever come across. It is easy to find, it degreases surprisingly well, and if you are one of those folks who have to clean their bikes in the tub, it cleans up that mess afterwards also. It doesn’t harm the finish on your bike, either. I pair the foaming goodness with an orange cleaner in a bucket to make my bike minty (or orangy as it were) fresh. I also clean off my greasy hands with it after I’m finished. I also have the pleasure of being the leader of the local bubbles cult – all hail the bubbles!

I spray the bike all over with the bubbles and scrub with a big brush from the bucket of orange cleaner. That’s it, the bubbles get into places that are hard to scrub and do a lot of work for you. I use smaller brushes to wipe off the little gritty places, rinse off and I’m done. I can clean my bike in 15 minutes flat. I shouldn’t even be telling you this. Although I’m sure many people know about the bubbles already.

Were does this leave us?
All hail the bubbles!

Time for hate
All hail the bubbles!

Polar Bottle

@##=#<4,R>@##=#Now that I’ve committed to doing a review a week, sometimes it’s hard to come through with products to review sometimes. I’ve sorted through the bike junk in the house and this week, I’ve decided to do – a water bottle. Call it a “bidon” of you will – and I’m sure some toolboxes out there will – the water bottle occupies a relatively lowly place in cycling. Often discarded along the road by professionals, lost on the way to races or even thrown at competition in fits of pique (are you reading, Frederic?)

Perhaps my favorite use of water bottles is the so-called “sticky” or “speed bottles” we spy on TV coverage as riders fall back to the team car and back hand the bottle offered by the team director as the car speeds up and sends the bottle carrier on his way. The team cars – everyone’s favorite teammate!

Which brings us to the Polar Bottle; it’s a technically advanced water bottle. It’s insulated so it keeps your fluid cold. That’s it. But it also has a secret use that Andy Shen (do you know how hard it is for me to type that?) shared with me after I made fun of him for having a sissy bottle – in cold weather, your water won’t freeze. The insulation keeps the liquid inside at a constant temperature, which means cold in warm weather and warm in cold weather.

I realize that this information is about 3 months to late, but I wouldn’t want to give away a competitive advantage. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Were does this leave us?
Cold in warm, warm in cold, but don’t tell anyone.

Time for hate
It’s a water bottle – love/hate accordingly, but don’t throw it away by the roadside. That’s just silly. And I just pulled 300 words about a water bottle out of my backside – that’s journalism!

FSA TriMax Racing Bend Integrated Aerobars

Ric Hjertberg of FSA was kind enough to send Schmalz a set of aerobars for testing. Given Schmalz’s hate/hate relationship with the race of truth, the bars were quickly kicked down the line to me. Now, the ML team is sponsored by Oval Concepts and I love my Oval bars, but this is A LOT OF CARBON. I quickly whipped off my Ovals and spent three lathered up hours doing the internal cable routing jig.

@##=#<1,L>@##=#The Bars
FSA makes integrated bars in alloy or carbon, with standard upturned extensions or s-bend extensions, which they call Racing Bend. The wings can be flat (TriMax) or swept down (Pro). FSA considers the TriMax bars to be tri bars, while the Pro bars are road TT bars. But a quick look at the CSC TTT lineup shows that it’s more about personal preference. All bars are available with a 9 or 10 cm stem. We received the TriMax Carbon Racing Bend bars in 9cm. 

Construction
The bars have a cast aluminum core incorporating the stem, steerer clamp, armrest and wing mounts. The extensions and wings are bonded to the core, and the armrests are bolted on. The armrests are carbon reinforced injection molded plastic. The wings are compression molded carbon. According to Ric, the higher pressures of compression molding yields stronger parts than bladder molding, but don’t permit hollow shapes. In order to have internal cable routing in the wings, a solid steel rod has to be inserted during molding, then withdrawn and replaced with an aluminum tube. The aluminum tube wouldn’t stand up to the pressure of the molding process. The wings are exceptionally thin as a result, tapering down from 12.5 mm to 8.5 mm (the Oval’s wings are 21.5 mm thick). You can’t make a comparable metal bar that thin. Overall finish quality on the bars is excellent.

The handgrips are 22.2 mm in diameter, which means you can only use FSA’s levers. These levers slide over the outside of the grips instead of using an expansion plug, and are very light as a result.

Geometry/Adjustability
There isn’t much you can do to alter these bars. The armrests have three sets of mounting holes, which allow three different elbow widths. The holes are off center, so there’s 3 cm of fore/aft adjustment to be had by switching the left armrest for the right. Two sets of risers are provided for three different pad heights (no riser, short riser, tall riser). The only other way you could customize these bars is to cut down the extensions.

@##=#<2,R>@##=#FSA positions the armrests farther back than most setups. With the 9 cm stem bars I received, the armrests, in the forward position, are 11 cm ahead of the steerer tube. With my Oval setup that distance is 13 cm. The FSA bars puts the pads almost directly below the elbow joint. I was concerned that this would provide a more direct path for bumps and vibration to travel up the arm, but Ric insists that the carbon armrests do a fine job of damping vibration, and the fact that they’re mounted at the edges allows them to flex and absorb shock.

Some people like to slide back on the saddle and grab the s bends for more leverage when climbing. With these bars that’s not an option – the bends are too far back. Ric’s response? The design was hashed out with the input of CSC, Davitamon, Cofidis, etc. So I’ll shut up about the bends.

The handgrips are pretty far forward, more so than my Ovals. With the steep STA of a TT bike your weight is already more forward, so I prefer to keep my hands back a bit. The Ovals are more secure wending through midtown traffic, but lets face it, these bars are for going straight, really really fast, not for weaving through cars.

At 52 mm, the steerer clamp is very tall, tall enough that I had to swap out the top cup on my headset for a shorter one to expose more steerer. If you’ve already trimmed your steerer tube flush and aren’t using any spacers, you’ll need to check if you have enough steerer remaining before investing in these bars. Also, the stem is attached to the upper part of the clamp, which is the equivalent of having almost 2 cm of spacers under your stem. This limits your options if you want to get really low. It would make more sense to have either a shorter clamp, or attach the stem lower on the clamp.

On my 72 degree HTA bike, these bars sit with a 4 degree upturn. Since FSA believe that aerobars should never point down, they’ve angled the stem so that the bars won’t point down on bikes with steeper HTA’s. Being integrated, you can’t adjust this angle to suit your position. But you won’t have to rotate the bars back up every time you hit a pothole, either.

@##=#<3,L>@##=#Details
There’s internal cable routing for the shifters and the brakes. The shifter cable routing is pretty straightforward – slide the housing in and out of a couple of slots in the extensions. The brake cable routing is pretty cool. Instead of routing the housing through the wings, there are housing stops at either opening, so only the cable goes through the bars. My front brake snapped back with minimal friction.

Ride
I was able to replicate my aero tuck with these bars, so the ride was pretty similar. Having the armrests directly under the elbows took some adjusting to, but my concerns about vibration and shock turned out to be unfounded. I went hunting for rough road and small potholes and found the bars to be very comfortable. Not having the armrest mounts directly under my arms really seemed to make a difference. Steering seemed slightly less secure (I like being able to guide the bars with my forearms), but I was still able to control the bike well enough to do some quick swerving. I did get the feeling that this configuration would be more comfortable for longer races, since the arms are more directly supported. Ultimately, this is a matter of personal preference. The more I rode these bars the more they became second nature.

The wings are super stiff and solid, and they made hammering out of the saddle really fun. The rigidity contributed a real feeling of quickness to the front end. I would’ve loved to test the Pro bars with their downswept wings – you could transition from the aero position to some sprinting without lifting your upper body. They’d be real cool for an ITT, but I’d imagine they’d be a little scary in a TTT.

Weight/Price
Compared to two other popular aerobars, the Oval A700 and the Hed, these bars ain’t cheap. Adding levers and stems where necessary, FSA comes in at $640 ($550 bar, $90 levers), Oval $390 ($295 bar, $70 stem, $25 levers), and Hed $565 ($495 bar, $70 stem). The FSA bars are a claimed 850 grams, 950 grams on my somewhat suspect fish scale, 1025 with levers. My Oval bar/stem combination is 970 grams. I don’t have a real weight for the Hed bars, but claimed weight plus a stem is around 980 grams. That makes the FSA’s the most expensive AND the heaviest. Of course, a couple of grams is pretty meaningless in a TT bike, but I had to ask Ric how they could justify the price/weight ratio. Says Ric, “They are the most aerodynamic by far. I haven’t seen or heard rumor of a test (public, private, team) that had any other bar threaten these. As years pass, other makers will narrow the gap. Then it’s our turn to raise the bar. That’s what our designers are doing right now. When it comes to pure speed, no other bar is so detailed (aero stem and steerer spacers, aero arm rest risers, bullet shaped rear end of extensions, minimized protrusions throughout, fully internal cable routing, the levers, the wing thickness, and most importantly: loads of wind tunnel time with every one of those features).”

Conclusion
It’s my humble middle of the pack opinion that aerodynamics isn’t the most important feature of an aerobar. The bars must first put the rider in a good aero position, and then be so comfortable that the rider can stay in that position as long as possible. More time is lost twitching around in the aero position than is gained by super slippery bars. Unlike Hed and Oval, whose bars are like Lego sets with their multiple parts and infinite adjustability, FSA seems to have a definitive opinion on aerobar geometry. I was able to replicate my position with these bars, so they’re as adjustable as they need to be for me. They isolate road shock wonderfully, so I had no trouble locking in and focusing on pedaling. Out of the saddle sprints were a treat with the super stiff wings. The fact that these bars are very aero is, for me, a bonus.

And while the price tag is high (but not as high as this), the quality of the bars seems to justify it. Ric likens them to Leicas and Porsches, which is certainly an apt comparison.

Time for Hate
Couple final thoughts. Did I mention these bars are SEXY? I’m a sucker for aesthetics, and these bars instantly made my bike look faster. That’s gotta count for something. But how could a company that designed such a beautiful bar put Christophe Moreau on the box? Not only that, the link for the aero section at the FSA site is none other than…SALVATORE COMMESSO?!?! Is there a prosciutto holder on the extensions? Guys, did you forget that you pay CSC to ride your stuff???