I am going to try to give a review of the Cannondale Slice, and let you guys know the good and bad of the bike. Please bear in mind that I have ridden quite a lot on my Cannondale Synapse, but I have NEVER ridden aero before.
Last year I rode in the Healthy Newton Omnium. Well, actually I rode in the time trial on day one and the road race on day two. I did not do the crit. In retrospect I should not have ridden in the road race because I was not ready. The distance was fine but those guys were a lot faster than me. I entered the cat 5 race but I need some more training to even compete at this level. However, I did not do so bad in the time trial. I have not actually seen the results because I THINK that I did fairly well (not last place) but I could be completely wrong. I choose to live in ignorance.
The thing that I noticed was that, in addition, to being less fit than my fellow competitors, I had the wrong equipment for the time trial (TT). I was excited to go there and race and I knew that I had good equipment. Was I ever wrong. I had the wrong bike, helmet, wheels, stationary trainer etc...
This year I want to alleviate some of those problems. I have been reading several reviews online and doing a fair amount of research to determine the best bike for my TT endeavors. As it turns out, all of my research was in vain because it seems that Cannondale was the only company that made a bike to fit me properly. Most of the companies show models in their catalog that would work, but no one had stock and even the factories had a 6 month lead time. Good thing that I was favoring the Cannondale before hand. I went in to my local bike shop and they ordered my bike. It only took one week for it to come in. I went today and had my fitting session.
First impression during the fit was that the aero position was as uncomfortable as I had feared. I finished up at the shop and headed to the Silver Comet trail for a "quick" 30 miles. The ride was great. The aero position was a little shaky at first but I got used to it within a couple of miles. It is going to take some time to get my neck used to looking up from that position. That is the only negative thing that I have to say after my first ride and that is not the fault of the bike at all. The bike performed flawlessly. I purchased the slice with the Ultegra group set and it is awesome. My Synapse has 105 components with an Ultegra rear derailleur and it shifts ok but nothing like the crispness of the indexing shifters on this bike. I am not sure if it is the Ultegra group or the fact that these shifters are not incorporated into the brake levers like my road bike.
As you can see, I added on the Adamo seat and that is going to take some getting used to as well.
The Ultegra brakes work great. I included these photos so that you can see what the wind sees. This is the front profile of the bike and it is very slender unlike the rider.
The bike handles a lot differently than my road bike. The steering is more quirky. It is not anything that is insurmountable just different responsiveness.
I plan on adding some different components and accessories and I will update you here with some pictures. The main thing to do for now is to get some saddle time.
Stay Tuned!!
