I beseech the collective wisdom of the Forum. My lady friend (51, very fit) bought a Cervelo Caledonia. The fit is really good for her, which was a difficult task given some issues she has. However…she feels it’s too heavy and slowing her down. She wants: light, aero… and comfortable. The caveat to …

I’m thinking if the caledonia feels too heavy and slow, it’s going to be very difficult to get something lighter and as comfortable - given you’ve already said it’s a good fit. Comfort is really about larger volume tires, which adds weight and won’t be as aero.

i just want to add the quality a good set of carbon wheels with supple tires does for smoothing out the ride quality. I have a pair of dt swiss aluminum rims set up tubeless with a not great 30c tire that measures 31.5 versus a pair of old flo45 disc wheels with 25c gp5000 tubed on them. The flo whe…

What you need to do is use elastomers like the eesilk seatpost and stem, or redshift stem. That and tubeless tires at moderate pressures.

Yea that’s the nuclear option haha, you’re not going to get softer than 40c at like 25-30psi. But theres a lot of room to play with a proper road setup. Tubeless 28-30mm tires, run 50-60psi, that will probably be dramatically more comfortable than any 25mm tire setup she’s tried. Also…obviously I’m…

Wow the domane can take 38mm tires?? Newer bike tire clearances never cease to amaze me. One of these days I’ll get a road bike with bigger clearance as a do everything cross/crit/gravel bike.

Yeah. Unless you’re riding a lot of hills and mountains, my opinion is that wheel set and tire choice will make the biggest difference in how fast it feels to her.

I bought my wife a domane and while there’s not a lot of clearance around the tire it can actually fit a 40c. I put a kenda booster in the rear triangle with the only concern being mud clearance.

Yup, they made it quite capable and a bike that can edge quite close to a “road/gravel” bike for some use cases. FYI, Trek is great in that they list the max tire size in the specs section for all the bikes I’ve ever checked on their site. Worth a look anytime to see what each offers.

Yea that’s perfect for me. 40mm for dry gravel races (I’m not going 60+ miles in rain and mud lol), 33mm for cross races with plenty of mud clearance

Find a Parlee, easily the smoothest riding bike I have ever been on.

In search of.........the Unicorn Bike

Equipment

AustinPT March 24, 2023, 10:56pm 41

thanks for all the input. info overload but that’s the beauty of the forum. will sift through all this over the weekend

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In search of.........the Unicorn Bike

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