I had a great phone discussion with Scott at Canyon Bicycles in Draper and decided to make the 80 mile round-trip to visit their store for some test rides.
The first was the Transition. Beautiful bike. But sizing wise they didn't have exactly what I needed. Even though I had a lengthy discussion and we talked about the 54 cm bikes they had in stock, once I got there I was further educated.
It turns out 54 cm doesn't really mean the same size. I understand every manufacturer has different ideas on geometry, frames are not all created equal, blah, blah, blah. Turns out for time trial bikes I should look into sizes closer to 51 cm, which I believe translates to small in Specialized terms, and Canyon had a medium. Being stubborn, I tried the medium to feel it out anyways, and asked to drop the saddle as low as it went, which was our first indication of trouble because it was still way too high.
I took a short one-ish mile ride on Pioneer street just south of 12300 south. First I stood up on it to get going quickly. It didn't feel very responsive. I immediately wondered how heavy this bike was and later found it is 20.0 to 20.1 lbs without pedals. Then once I got rolling the bike felt skiddish to me. I mean even if I wasn't pushing it felt uneasy through potholes or any uneven road up to the point of making me nervous. The ride also felt sloppy, meaning I didn't feel very comfortable the bike was listening to my pedal strokes or even my handlebar movements. Compared to the P2C - my only point of reference - this bike is huge, bulky, sloppy, and skiddish. Even if price was a large concern, this bike comes in at $2600-2700, same as the P2C. No deal.
Unfortunately most or possibly all of this may be due to the wrong size bike. I really wanted to be impressed by this Specialized product because again, if you know me, you know I seem to have a bias against Specialized. I really don't, really. This experience was truly a bummer.
My theory that time trial bikes come with basic wheels stands. This bike comes with Mavic Aksium wheels value priced at around $250. Canyon is definitely open to replacing these with a better set, and they are a CycleOps dealer so PowerTap is a good option there.
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