Cyclocross and gravel riding are the latest trends in cycling and like many people you may be trying to discern the differences between gravel bikes and cyclocross bikes. They will both generally have wider tires than a road bike, they will both be likely to be running disc brakes, they can both have knobbly tires, and they will both be looking great.
2019 is the year that road bike aero really took off. Yes, Cervelo claimed the first aero road bike in 2003 with the Soloist and yes many manufacturers have followed suit. But for 2019 every manufacturer has jumped on the aero bandwagon or gone full aero for their high-end bikes. We haven’t jumped on the aero bandwagon, and we have been working through our aero designs and very shortly the pinnacle of our aero designs will be released, the ICAN A9.
Spokes, they are the least glamorous part of a wheelset, no one ever talks about their spokes. They are pretty integral to the quality of your wheels though. A lower quality set of spokes can ruin a quality rim and hub combo. That is why we at ICAN take a lot of care on deciding how to spoke our wheels.
Wheels, we are always told that wheels are the first upgrade we should make to any road bike. As a rule of thumb, all road bikes come with wheels that need an upgrade in order to unlock the true performance of your bike. There are some notable exceptions to this rule, have a look at our road bikes.
The problem with upgrading your wheels is that there is a myriad of options. “Do I go with a mid-price alloy wheel?” “Should I go carbon?” “What rim depth should I buy?” “What sort of warranty do I get?”
We at ICAN are very proud of our carbon fiber aero road bike wheels. We felt our FL series carbon fiber wheels were a pinnacle of aero wheel design. For 2019 we have taken that design and pushed the engineering to bring you a lighter wheelset with all the same great qualities. For 2019 we bring you our Aero series of carbon fiber road bike wheels.
Aero road bikes have been around for a while now. They had a little dip in popularity, but for 2019 they are back with a vengeance. Many of the big name companies are busy updating their aero frames or some, such as Cervelo, are entirely overhauling their aero bike range.
As you ramp up your speed on a bike, more and more of your power is used to overcome aerodynamic drag. That may seem to be an obvious statement, but if you are a slower rider, you can still make big savings by going aero. In fact, your gains may even be bigger than those of the fast riders. So aero might be good for Peter Sagan, but it could be great for us mere mortals.