Full disclosure: I don’t ride dirt. Wish I did, but I don’t have the funds or time to do it now. Come ‘cross season though expect to see some mud on these puppies. I see a budget single speed MTB in my near future as well, if I can somehow convince Ashley that having a road, commuter, track, cross, and mountain bike, along with her bikes, is realistic in our one bedroom apartment. Maybe when I graduate and get salary we can get a two-bedroom place and have a bike room.

I use MTB shoes for commuting on my trackmuter IRO, but not for racing it when it is in track mode (I swap pedals, track racing on SPDs, phbbbbpptt! Wackos!). So my MTB shoes see minimal, but daily use (on average 5-10 hours a week). Any brand-name shoe should be able to stand up to that for at least a year in any conditions. My Shimanos are still running strong, though they show some signs of potential failure at the Velcro straps and some coming undone at the seams – they got good use for well over a year of daily use including being crashed, dragged along curbsides and the street while sneaking past MUNI on Market, rain, lightning strikes, blending, etc…MTB shoes are pretty damn tough.

Upon receiving my pair of MX230s I didn’t expect anything less than a sturdy shoe. Even before riding them my modest expectations were well exceeded. These are tanks, yet light, comfortable, and red. Very red. I thought my silver Sidis were flashy, but these win by a few bike lengths.

The top and sides are a super supple (even more so than my Sidi road shoes) yet substantial layer of full-grain leather – these things are comfortable. Read: no break-in period. Two hook-and-loop closures and one micro-buckle. The same as my Shimanos and Sidis, so a plus, but not out of the ordinary. Paule said that one of his minor complaints was that the short tongue could dig into your ankle – the leather is soft enough not to bother me yet though, but then again I don’t do eight hour mountain bike races.

The full carbon fiber sole, visible through some spots of the beefy rubber tread and the Mud Stud ports, is very stiff. Not stiff like your new bike that climbs like a rocket and descends on rails. These are stiff like trying to break two-by-fours with a wiffle-ball bat. My Shimano shoes were stiffer than your average walking shoe, but these are almost hard to walk in. They make my pedaling more efficient, I feel a little more powerful on the road, but jogging up and down stairs at school and BART has taken some getting used to.

Lakes are somewhat notorious for needing sole repair after some use. Time will tell, but mine will receive light use compared to what these were designed for so I don’t anticipate any quality issues anytime soon.

Verdict: wow. And they are red. Red!

Dreaming

Saturday morning Ashley, Ben, and I drove down to Mountain View. This is what I came back with.

It’s a 51cm Beyond Fabrications Think and it is a freakin’ beast with wings. Spec’d with Full ‘06 Campy Record Carbon and Eurus wheels I couldn’t have asked for a lighter, stiffer, or nicer spec’d bike for even double what I actually paid for this beauty. This is a dream bike.

Sometime back in December Ben worked out a deal with Jim from Beyond Fabrications to get us a new bike sponsor. Jim was more than happy to help us out with screaming deals not only on his frames but on groups and wheels. Sadly few takers from the rest of the Mouse crew, but Ben had already placed his order for a Think with Dura-Ace and Mavic Ksyrium SL Premiums as well as some of Jim’s carbon wheels.

Before the deal got settled I was all set to buy a Felt from the shop, but the Think was too cool to pass up and I waffled back and forth between Shimano and SRAM for the group and which level Mavic wheels to get. A tighter than expected budget lead me to leap back from Force/Red to Ultegra and I sent in a order for an Ultegra Think with Ksyrium SLs. The next day Ben called me too excited to talk and forwarded me the message from Jim saying he had a left over show model, full Record, Eurus wheels. The next day I was standing over it in Jim’s living room in Mountain View with my jaw on the floor.

After getting the shifting dialed later that day and having the rest of the crew drool over it at the team party I managed to get out for a few hours this afternoon with Ashley. We did a short ride, Barber Shop with a bonus up the bottom of Conzelman and a sprint through the Presidio to the Arguello Gate. It was short, but it was enough to get some first impressions and get comfortable on my new steed.

The Frame

These pictures hardly do it justice. For some reason the naked carbon frame is so much more impressive in person. The tubes are massive. The head tube and bottom bracket junction are huge.

Still this is a light bike by any measure! As pictured it’s 15.5 lbs, that’s with cages and pedals. The frame is sub kilogram, the fork a little beefier than some flyweights at 340 grams, but it still lighter than the EC90 SL. Even with a computer it’d be a 16 lb bike. Not that I’m counting grams, I could stand to lose 5 lbs, but it’s hard to not be a weight weenie owning this bike.

I’m a new racer, new rider. People talk about stiffness that and stiffness this and I always wrote it off. No more. This is stiff! Every little bit of power goes straight through the cranks, the frame, and the wheels. It’s solid. On the flats it seems to move even before I pedal. Descends like a bat out of hell, counter steers incredibly smoothly, and takes little direction to take a smooth line through a corner. Climbing, it’s light, spinning up a hill or jumping out of the saddle the frame seems to translate energy very efficiently. It doesn’t creak or sway unnecessarily, it just flies. More miles will reveal it’s strengths and weaknesses but after a few hours in the saddle today on a variety of terrain I’m very pleased with how it performs.

The Group

There isn’t much that needs to be said. Campagnolo is an institution and Record is indisputably about as good as it gets. I’ve been riding Shimano 105 until now and my only experience with Campy up until this bike had been test riding a Veloce equipped cross bike. This mass of carbon practically fell in my lap, I had otherwise written it off as too extravagant.

The shifting is night and day. Campy is much more organic. Being able to chain dump basically the whole cassette is awesome and something that I’m still getting used to and figuring out how to exploit, but I’m extremely happy with it. Rear shifts are extremely precise.

Moving to the big ring took a little getting used to, the degree of trim and the length of the throw is drastically different. It could be that the FD could use a little more dialing, but I got it down and the front shift is fast and smooth.

The Wheels

Again, Campy, not much that needs to be said. The Eurus wheels aren’t as light as the Ksyrium SLs that I picked to build with my Ultegra spec, but at 1550 grams they are plenty light and incredibly stiff. I can’t speak too much to aerodynamics, but the spokes are much beefier than I imagined and the G3 pattern is certainly unique though there is some dispute to their efficiency. Either way I’m sold. They spin up fast and smooth and maintain excellent momentum flat, up, or down. Very pleased.

The Saddle

Jim gave me a Fizik Aliante with the bike. I thought I was going to just swap it for my Specialized Toupe, but once I got my butt on it I was intrigued.

It’s an entirely different shape and ride than the Toupe but it’s nice, hard to articulate, but very nice. Just the right amount of flex, and little more padding than the Toupe but still very firm. The Toupe is very flat with a big cutout. This is very rounded with no cutout. The Toupe provides an excellent platform that the butt bones just rest right on top of perfectly. The Aliante seems to just fit right in, even with no cutout there’s very little to no unnecessary pressure. Time will tell but I’m going to keep and see what happens.

The Build Kit

The Deda Newton Bars and Stem are nice. Apparently they are lighter than many carbon counterparts and they are plenty stiff. No flex at all in the bars in a hard sprint. The Record seatpost is very bling.

On our ride today we stopped by Mike’s Bikes to pick up some bottle cages and I used a gift card to buy some Bikesmart carbon cages. I Sharpied out the lame Bikesmart logo and they look pretty slick. The seem pretty grippy too, but I’ll have to hit some major bumps to see if they keep from ejecting a bottle.

Summary

Overall I am incredibly happy and grateful, not only for the quality of the bike but for the incredible deal I got. I’d like to thank Jim at Beyond Fab and Ben (and Ray Storm) for this finding me this deal and I’d like to thank Ashley and all those in my family that helped out and chipped in to get me this incredible gift. I’ve got some pretty big shoes to fill in order to do this bike justice. I’ll post more and I put some more miles on it.

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