Rooting around for pics of the prototype X0B belt drive ‘crosser (see below) on Trek’s website we came across this… 
The Big Apple Madone a specially tricked out (well paint-wise) bike for Lance who spends a lot of time in New York these days and is well known for his famous alleged apples-related put down of Jan Ullrich – which gets a reference on the bike. Although they are at pains to stress that this bike is not for sale (and that the paint job won’t be an option either) this might give a hint of what is to come in Trek’s Project One, a new system by which the company hopes to able to offer Madone buyers the option to customise the paint job on their bikes. Once the potentially fearsome logistics of this have been worked out the program will be rolled out first in the US, and then in Europe. More Madone Big Apple pics
Trek took the opportunity offered by the Interbike Cyclo Cross to test out this little beauty, a belt drive X0 ‘cross bike, the X0B. 
Apparently Trek are looking for different ways of applying belt drive technology – it’s already on some of their ’09 commuting bikes, this they stress is very much a prototype just to see exactly what the belt is capable of. Applications are going to need to be singlespeed, or possibly run off hub gears for the time being. The X0 cross prototye has tension adjusters built into the dropouts to accommodate different gear choices. Trek’s test pilot, Travis Brown selected his gear after inspecting the course. 
According to Trek’s website “The bike was built off a standard XO2 platform and had the rear dropouts and chainstays replaced to accommodate the belt. The chainstays are off a Trek T900 tandem; their heavier gauge minimizes lateral flex and compression loads that could make the belt skip”. Can’t find any mention of Travis on the Cross Vegas results sheet, but then it is only an experiment.
Trek specials: Belt drive ‘crosser prototype gets a run out + Big Apple Madone
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Please spear us the jousting puns - it's just throwing down a gauntlet for some greaves abuse of the comments section, and there's no excuse for tilting things in that direction.
@eburtthebike some cyclists already wear black shorts, we really don't want the Blackshorts joining in...
@theslowcyclistxx Carbon wheels correctly built for their intended purpose can take a tremendous amount of punishment, as can be seen from downhill mountain biking where carbon wheels survive massive jumps, high speed crashing over rock gardens et cetera et cetera. If this wheelset is not designed for that that's fine but then it should not be falsely marketed as being as strong as XC MTB wheels when clearly it isn't.
@Rendel Harris Carbon is not designed for crashing. It should be able to withstand small jumps and rough terrain, but to expect a lightweight carbon wheelset to withstand direct impact from a rock is a bit optimistic - even for a wheelset marketed as XC ready.
@theslowcyclistxx As I said above, the manufacturer claims that these wheels are "as strong as XC MTB wheels"; XC MTB involves a lot of crashing through tree roots and over fairly gnarly rocky sections, if these wheels can't cope with that sort of punishment then the manufacturers shouldn't make such claims about them. If they are only designed for well packed fine gravel roads then so be it, but they should be marketed as such and not with claims to which they clearly can't live up.
As a Bath cyclist, all they really needed to do was to make the short spur of road at the NW corner 2-way for bikes (currently one-way going S; cars and bikes) and use the funds elsewhere (for active travel). Bikes could then just follow the clockwise one-way around the park; the SE corner feeds you into the cycle route that goes through town. I'd have more sympathy for the opponents (with their usual "I support active travel, but what about the children playing" platitudes ie I don't want to lose my cheap parking/rat-run) if the recent (small) protest wasn't heavily promoted by the 'cycle-haters' who regularly rage against the new bike lanes on Nextdoor. I'm conditioned to Bath traffic, but if it encourages some people out of their cars, then build it. As someone who pretty much walks or cycles around Bath all the time, I've been 'beaten-up' by Bath drivers for long enough (18 years) that anything that sticks it to them is fine by me.
"Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria told media, “These are some of the busiest streets in all of North America. We need to restore them to vehicle lanes to stop the congestion." It beggars belief that in this day and age, a 'transportation minister' can spout such incredible lies. Anyone with the faintest appreciation of transport knows that cycle lanes don't cause congestion: in fact, they alleviate it. Still, it's nice to know, well, not that nice, but interesting, that the utter incompetents aren't restricted to the UK. Is Doug Ford the Canadian equivalent of Trump or Nigel? Full of fake news and excrement. We could learn a thing or two from our Canadian cousins though, and start organising protests to stop the removal of bike lanes. If we can present some convoluted reasoning which showed that cycle lanes were bad for asylum seekers, we'd get lots of blokes wearing black with balaclavas supporting us.
Just go for 32/34 tyres instead - a lot cheaper.
@Rendel Harris I don’t agree that a light gravel wheelset is expected to withstand impacts from rocks. Yes, it should be able to withstand potholes and also a cross country track, but if ridden directly into a rock, I would expect any carbon wheelset to be finished.
Something worth a mention in indoor cycling accessories is a rocker plate. Long rides on an indoor trainer can start to hurt after a while, and a decent rocker plate gives enough side to side and fore/aft movement to help prevent this. I acquired a TurboRocks Realplate React a year or so ago, it's very well made and the service from order to collection was excellent. It took a few weeks to get used to it, until the motion felt natural, but after that, longer sessions became much more comfortable. My current setup:
3 thoughts on “Trek specials: Belt drive ‘crosser prototype gets a run out + Big Apple Madone”
Muddy belt drive?
Belt drive around town i can kind of understand, but belt drive off-road? one of the great things about a chain is that the teeth effectively clean it by pushing mud through the holes. There’s no holes in a belt: where will the mud go?
That NYC trek is beautiful.
That NYC trek is beautiful. Hmmm, custom paint jobs on a carbon bike. Methinks I might start saving now…
The trek is beautiful but
… not sure about that particular paint job though. That said those new Madone’s are really nice looking bikes – some of the earlier versions looked a bit odd IMO. Mind you, maybe one of the reasons I like the new Madone is that it does have a certain look of Orbea’s Orca about it, particularly around the top of the seat tube.