Crossing Over For Fall

I blame Damien Rice for tainting my return to cyclocross after an 8-year absence. How did “Blower’s Daughter” get stuck in my head for the whole race? It is hard to get the game face on with such gentle music. I wanted Pantera to provide the theme music for my crushing return! Sure I raced once last year but that doesn’t count as I had just arrived in Colorado 48-hours earlier and I was trying to hold my own at 7,000 feet on a borrowed bike! I might as well have punched myself in the stomach with only a straw in my mouth to catch my breath and jumped on an angry horse without a saddle…that was pretty much the feeling I had racing cross at Pike’s Peak.

Well this year is different! I have my own new carbon Tommaso cross bike and some good fitness left over from Ironman. Of course I don’t know how much help the endurance fitness will be since racing well below one’s aerobic threshold for 11+ hours is not drooling down one’s chin at 20-beats over one’s aerobic threshold while sprinting out of every corner and jumping 18” high hurdles for 45 minutes! I don’t think I could find another cycling sport the exact opposite of Ironman…but there I was toeing the line 20 days later no aerobars or pointy helmet.

Luckily I am on a team with 14 great guys all dressed up in VeloNews team gear. It helps when you are suffering to see a familiar face or at least a blur of red and black through tears…I mean sweat during a race. The Velo boys are friendly, supportive and very fast. I hope to learn from them as the season progresses. More so I hope to prove that the new Tommaso carbon bike is a strong bike that can handle the tough conditions of cyclocross.

If it is going to break…cross will break it. Just ask the bulge sticking out of my shoulder neck area…it is the end of my clavicle detached from my sternum…thanks cross! Actually I mean that point more to the bike itself. Round one went very well and the Kore wheels (same ones found on the Velocita SRAM bike) held up great and the carbon frame felt like a custom bike made just for me. It loves the climb on the Hutchinson tires and it accelerates really well on grass and dirt. Even with too much PSI in the tires the bike behaved well and was easy to control.The SRAM Rival components were spot on and the internal cable routing kept the shifting crisp. While it was not a podium performance for me it was a great day of testing for the bike.

This weekend the bike gets to go for another race test in Boulder. I hope to have some video footage to share or at least some pictures. The best part of this job is the fact that my riding and racing today will make for a better bike for the customer next year. So when it is time for you to buy a Tommaso you will know it has been ridden, raced (crashed) and put through the ringer on the way to you! We want our customers to enjoy cycling as much as we do. We want you to over-play not over-pay! And if my performance doesn't improve soon can we throw in a marathon at the end so I can catch up?

IRONMAN

Well…The Tommaso Sixth Sense carried me to the highly sought after words all triathletes want to hear: “You are an Ironman!” Sure my legs carried me through the run and my arms (with a little steady kicking) pulled me through the swim but the big question mark is always the machine and the carbon Tommaso Sixth Sense rocked!
Late in 2008 we started thinking about a tri line for Tommaso and I thought it would be great to take our first bike straight to the big leagues of Ironman…The true bike test. As the product manager I put myself in the ring as the athlete to go do an Ironman. The months of training with a 112-mile final exam is a great way to test a bike.

As mentioned in an earlier post the first plan was to rip it on the bike and suffer (walk) though the 26.2 mile marathon if need be. The idea was to rock Ironman with a top ten bike time so we could have bragging rights. As the training progressed I realized that Ironman isn’t just about the bike and people soon weed out the dummies that burn the bike only to go up in flames on the run. People think the homerun hitters are so great for hitting balls over the fence until they hear the same hitter usually has the highest strike out percentage. The distances of the Ironman (2.4 mile swim, 112-mile bike and 26.2 run) are also very humbling and deserve the respect of the athlete no matter what level.

I can say without hesitation that the Tommaso Sixth Sense is a great triathlon bike. I’ve ridden a lot of tri brands before coming to Tommaso and I would put this bike at the front of the pack with Cervelo, Scott, Trek and Quintana Roo. It really is that good. It is light, handles like intuition and because it is a Tommaso will be far more affordable than the rest. I know this because I have lived on the bike for months and raced it as hard as I could without one (and I mean it) complaint.

Some bikes I’ve raced before were wind tunnel tested and looked sleek but once you removed your hands from the bars became a jackhammer gone crazy! The bike would shimmy and shake on descents and take away any confidence you had in the machine. Other bikes I’ve owned like to go straight but when the corners came up they needed to be coaxed like a kid with broccoli on his plate. The Tommaso Sixth Sense loves the gas, corners like an Indy Race car and I can eat, put on/take off a vest or arm warmers and move bottles around without a wobble.

If you need numbers to be convinced I can give you two. I moved up roughly 600 places during the bike leg of the Ironman and I ran a negative split on the marathon. That means I ran the second half faster than the first. Most people fade from fatigue during the run. I started out steady and built on that with energy towards the end. When you consider the 112-mile bike ride to get to the marathon you know the bike is comfortable.

Now that Ironman is over I am looking forward to the next race where I can get the Tommaso back out on the streets to show it off. The production models will arrive in a couple months and soon the rest of you can experience what I have had the great fortune to experience. The Tommaso Sixth Sense is going to carry a lot of us to productive training rides and well deserved podiums along the way! Thanks for following Tommaso’s Road to Ironman. I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did.

TR Maloney
Tommaso Product Manager / Ironman