A big congratulations to Chris Froome for taking the final yellow Jersey and the polka dots. After 21 days of racing, and quite a few ups and downs, it all came down to l’Alpe d’Huez. Froome limited his losses to Quintana on the final climb, and while Quintana made it close, Froome still gets to ride down the Champs-Élysées in Yellow.

While we spent most of the week watching the live stream of the tour (and then watching the replays), we still had a chance to share a First Look at the Quintana Roo PRfive and our Final Thoughts on the Specialized Evade. Next week we are going to take a look at the new Trek Madone that Trek Factory Racing spent the past 21 days on, as well as the Canyon Speedmax that sat under both Valverde and Quintana for both the individual and team time trials.

For those visiting for the first time—welcome! One of our favorite ways to showcase our readers is our Readers’ Rides album on Facebook. You can check it out at http://on.fb.me/12jEqE3. If you would like to have your bike featured in our album just tweet us at @AeroGeeks, Facebook message us, get us on Instagram or email us at info@AeroGeeks.com.

This Week’s Posts

Wednesday – Specialized Evade – Final Thoughts

Thursday – Quintana Roo PRfive – First Look

The Swiss Side Instrumented Bike

For the past few months, Swiss Side has been teasing one of their newest projects: on-bike testing in real-world conditions. The goal of the project being to get out of the wind tunnel and onto the road.

The Instrumented Bike features an array of sensors on a time trial bike for measuring and characterizing the aerodynamics of the bike and rider system. This is the fourth cornerstone in Swiss Side’s arsenal of highly evolved aerodynamic development tools. Its purpose is to answer fundamental questions, key to aerodynamic development with a simple goal: “to produce the best-engineered products, offering the ultimate in ‘real world performance’, measurable out on the road where it matters.”

You can check out http://www.swissside.com/the-swiss-side-instrumented-bike/ to see a complete breakdown of all the sensors and technology Swiss Side put together to build their Instrumented Bike.

Current Reviews

Bontrager Ballista

We hope to be sharing our review of the Ballista in another two weeks. Since we unboxed it, we have had it protecting our noggin on every one of our training rides, and while it doesn’t have the ventilation abilities of the Giro Synthe, it doesn’t cook your head like a full aero helmet – this is compromise at its best!

power2max Type S Road

We installed the Type S on our Cervelo P2 test bike a few weeks ago and are just starting to get miles under it. So far we have spent most of our time on the trainer in combination with Trainer Road, but this past week we also spent some time out on the road. While it’s too soon to share any notes, keep an eye out for our initial thoughts soon.

Speedfil Retractor

We love simple products that make racing and training easier. We have been using the retractor in conjunction with a Speedfil A2, but you can use it with any hydration system with a long tube that you don’t want to worry about having to tuck in after every use. Just let it go and the bite valve ends up where you want it every time.