My New Cervelo S1

It’s been almost a year since I bought my Specialized Rock Hopper. I love that bike, and last summer I put just about 2000km on it. I also used it for for the 2008 MS Ride in Niagara Falls, which was a pretty great experience. Despite the hours of fun and training that I got with that bike, I realized pretty early on that I’d be doing relatively little off-road riding and started getting a bit frustrated when people on road bikes would fly past me almost effortlessly. I decided that I would get myself a road bike for next season, and here I am.

My main concern when making this purchase was to make sure that whatever I got was going to last me a long time. Cycling has become a major hobby of mine and I plan to do as much of it as I can this summer, including some longer rides (like the 200km MS Ride) and I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t quickly outgrow whatever bike I ended up getting. I know that if I would’ve bought myself a $1000 road bike, that by the end of the season I’d be wanting something better. So I certainly wanted to avoid that.

Cervelo is a relatively new company based in Canada (Toronto, actually) that has rapidly earned a pretty great reputation for building some of the best bikes that the cycling world has seen. In fact, Carlos Sastre won the 2008 Tour De France on a Cervelo, the first time in history for a Canadian bike. For a relatively small, 13-year old company, this is a pretty big deal.

I went over to Duke’s last friday hoping to get a look at the S1, which is a new model for 2009 (updated from the Soloist Team). I was kinda keen on getting it early because I knew their production runs were on the small side and that the frame size I need (51cm) would be even less popular. As an aside, I’ve had such great experiences with the staff at Duke’s and they keep outdoing themselves. Mark helped me with the bike, Alex was the mechanic who assembled it for me (and gave me some excellent tips on bike maintenance) and Michael helped out with the fitting/tuning that we did before I took it home (Michael also sold me my Rock Hopper last year). They’re all great guys, very knowledgeable and friendly. Mark especially was awesome, I felt like he was talking to me as a friend more than a customer. Anyway, I put a deposit on it that day, and it was a good thing too because the next day a girl came in looking for the exact same bike/frame size and she was out of luck. Fortunately they were able to put a bit of a rush on their next shipment and they’ll be able to hook her up.

Mark spent a lot of time ensuring that the bike fit me properly, checking my posture and some angles. Then he scheduled me for a more indepth fitting before I took the bike home. We did that yesterday, and it was pretty fancy. They measured several angles between my hips, knee and foot to make sure my seat height was good, and they also used some sort of laser-guided alignment device on my legs as I pedaled. Finally, we tweaked the angles on my handlebars and then I was good to go (and much lighter in the pocket).

Despite the horrible cold I had (which I’m nearly over now), I rode my new bike home and was blown away by the difference. I was flying across Queen Street so fast I had to slow myself down a few times out of nervousness – I still need to get a feel for the bike, braking, turning, etc. It was great though, and the thing is practically weightless. Riding my Specialized will feel like driving a tank now.

I’m still going to ride the mountain bike until the weather gets better, so it’ll be about a month (hopefully) before I take this bad boy out again. But once spring starts coming in, I plan on getting my money’s worth out of this thing ;).