Bikes

My road bike is an Ambrosio.

It's an aluminium frame with carbon fibre seat stays and forks. The groupset is Campagnolo Record, although (since the photo) I have changed the chainset to FSA carbon fibre, which looks even more 'the business' (or in my part of the world, 'the dogs', which will be inexplicable to anyone non-English).

Note the Lightweight wheels. A pure indulgence for which there is no justification whatsoever; if my bike weighed nothing I don't suppose I'd win anything. Mine are also the Campagnolo version, made of just about pure Unobtainium. Jan Ullrich used them on the mountain stages of the Tour this year (apparently he had to get this written into his sponsorship deal) but all the others I've seen have been Shimano.

They don't make any difference, either. My legs still hurt like the bejasus.

I favour Campagnolo on my road machine for two reasons

thumb shift

Which I think is much superior to the brake-lever Shimano shift. In the heat of racing, the up-shift thumb click is, for me, faster and, because my hands don't move, safer. Under normal riding, one can do a double-shift easily; thumb shift left hand to go from big to small ring, right hand to go up a few gears. The chain never derails if set up properly.

durability

Shimano wears out, Campagnolo wears in, they say. I certainly think that the gearchange on my bikes improves with age.

Other components include an ancient Rolls Titanio saddle which I find very comfortable. Everything else is pretty much standard apart from the power pedals.

These have the unique features of being remarkably heavy and quite ugly, as well as being ridiculously expensive.

So why..... ? ?

They only turn one way. This means that as you pull up on the pedal, instead of just lifting your heel, the pedal transmits force to the cranks. It sounds like nothing but it adds greatly to your pedalling power, especially if you use very high gears as I do.

The time trial machine is a Principia. It's an all aluminium frame, very strong and rigid.

The wheels are Specialised Trispokes, ideal for TTs on Essex roads which are all reasonably flat. A lighter wheel would be good for hillier courses, but the aerodynamics of the tri-spokes are as good as any. Ciclos Uno sourced these for me second-hand; I waited several months (during the off-season so no problem) for the right ones to turn up, but it saved me hundreds of pounds.

My only bike not fully Campagnolo is this TT machine. The reason is that thumb shifting is not required on this kind of bike and the slight gain in smoothness of gearchange is helpful. So orginally this machine was Dura-Ace throughout.

But I am a sucker for gadgets. When Mektronic became widely available, I Had To Have It. The key advantage is that there's gear changing on both the side and centre grips of the aero-bar setup.

Of course, it didn't really make me go any faster.

An aerobar set-up for a TT bike is essential, in my opinion. Combined with an aerodynamic head fairing (or 'silly hat', to use the technical term) I reckon a 30 to 45 second gain at least can be made in a ten-mile TT. And that's at (maybe) 25mph. The gains are proportionally greater the faster you go. The Cinelli bars you see here originally only came in aluminium finish. You guessed it, I had the silver-finish ones to start with and had to trade them for the black, just for the colour.

The Mektronic computer sits on top of the bars between the elbow pads, the HRM at the end of the bars next to the shifter (the yellow buttons). The adjustment on the elbow pads and inner grips allows any kind of tuck position you need. These bars, unlike clip-on aero bars, cannot move no matter how much you heave on them; this gives great confidence, because Murphy's law says the one time you're going to pull clip-ons free is during an important race.