What's Old Is New - Refreshing a Race Bike
Really the operating title of this article should be “I talked about getting a new bike for the last 4 years but didn’t and had my best season ever”. I first purchased my trusty TCR back in April of 2016. A couple of other road bikes have come and gone but I’ve always held onto the yellow beast.
We’ve done a lot kilometres together, over 40,000 in fact. But as I was gearing up for another race season, well my first since 2019, pandemics and marathons to blame, I was looking to change something that would make me excited to train again. I thought that was maybe a new bike but with supply chain issues still wreaking havoc, I decided to do something silly instead. You see I have always loved the original SRAM Red 22. I think it stems from this team in Melbourne (an iteration of Drapac or Pat’s Veg) and they would rock up on these Super Six Evos, dripping in SRAM and Zipp parts, they just looked cool. I wanted to be that cool one day. I remembered the noise the bikes used to make as they clunked down the cassette ready for the sprint. The way SRAM wrapped around the levers. The red or green accents on the derailleur cage.
You see the problem was, I was scared of SRAM. I had it before but didn’t love it. A little comes from my lack of understanding of derailleurs, and you need to understand them to love SRAM, it requires constant tinkering. But over the years I have learned a thing or do so I wasn’t as scared anymore. So I decided rather than get a new bike I would hunt down Red 22 pieces and make what was old new again (at least for me).
I sourced a bit of a mish mash of eras. Red 22 levers and rear derailleur (thanks eBay), Force callipers (thanks Gabe) and newer Red 22 front derailleur and chain rings (thanks Pabs and King Kog). The first ride out the shop, my TCR felt alive, lighter and just looked cooler. Look good, feel good, all that stuff, together we had my best road season ever, 2 wins, 5 podiums, a FBF series win and a Cat 2 upgrade. It felt even better getting the results on a bike with old technology.
When the road season ended, teamie Lucia sold me a set of 404s when my wheels needed replacing, making my bike lighter (~6.8kg with pedals, cages, mount and a bunch of alloy stuff) and cooler. Zipps are very cool but SRAM, please bring back the white logos.
I am a New York City based cyclist formally from Melbourne. Races of less than an hour are my jam and I’m @wheresscott on the gram. You’ll find me taking photos to escape the accountant life and running through winter to escape the cold.
