Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

TECH NEWS

Even more from CORE: Oval Concepts, Fizik and CycleOps

New 'bar, saddle and turbo trainer unveiled

Oval concepts were at CORE bigging up their R 9-10 Aergo integrated bar and extension system, which is certainly very versatile. The main system is the bar – with ergonomic drops and a super-wide flat section at the top – and stem, which comes with a choice of stem caps. There are five in all, one standard and four that give different mounting options for extensions depending on your normal bike position. You can mount the tri bars above or below the main bar, and the elbow pads can be either attached to the extensions or the extended stem. There's even an aero carbon stem bolt cover for saving that extra 0.002 seconds...

fizik

 

Fizik's Arione saddle has been somewhat of a revolution with its longer, flatter profile and they're now building on that success with a new model, the Antares. In terms of shape it's pretty much bang in the middle of the Aliante and Arione. Fizik have re-engineered the chassis (there's no wing flex) and claim that the Antares has 3 times as much padding as similarly feathery (145g) saddles from competitors. It's available with Carbon and K:ium (Ti) rails.

cycleops

 

CycleOps were showing off their Powerbeam Pro trainer. They're mighty proud of it and with good reason, as from first impressions it looks like an excellent machine. The heart of the system is a clever constantly variable magnetic resistance unit which uses the same strain gauge power-measuring technology as the Powertap hub and can adjust its resistance to smooth out fluctuations in rider input. Sound complicated? What it means in practice is that if you set it to 200 Watts, it'll take 200 Watts out of your legs no matter what (within reason) you do. It really works, too: increase the cadence and it slacks off the resistance to compensate. There's a wireless control unit and HRM strap, and the Powerbeam Pro features CycleOps' new wider, stiffer chassis. It's quiet too, and capable of massive resistance, up to 1600 Watts.

cycleops

 

You can create your own workouts, and it's designed to work with the PowerAgent software that CycleOps have been developing for a few years. It's not VR, but all the elements are in place: I wouldn't be surprised if the Powerbeam was the platform that CycleOps use to make the jump.

Dave is a founding father of road.cc, having previously worked on Cycling Plus and What Mountain Bike magazines back in the day. He also writes about e-bikes for our sister publication ebiketips. He's won three mountain bike bog snorkelling World Championships, and races at the back of the third cats.

Add new comment

2 comments

Avatar
DaSy | 15 years ago
0 likes

Unless Cyclops are planning on making the POwerBeam Pro a lot cheaper in the future...

You can use Catalyst program in Fortius to do exactely the same, power based intervals that are monitored by the software and keep you to your prescribed power output regardless (within reason) of you gear or cadence.

Fortius' way of measuring power is possibly not as accurate, but you can calibrate it via the software, so borrowing a Powertap wheel to check and calibrate it has worked well for me.

Avatar
ourmaninthenorth replied to DaSy | 15 years ago
0 likes

I have neither, but I'm not sure £1000 represents such good VFM compared with the Fortius....

Latest Comments