Bike Check: Nate's Specialized Allez Sprint

I spent the past couple of seasons insisting that my 2014 Cinelli Zydeco cyclocross bike is a more-than-adequate road bike. It has relatively aggressive geometry, and the 30 minutes it takes to swap my gearing, tires, and stem padded me with confirmation bias. After a good few crits and road races on it, I was smugly proud of my shitbox against a backdrop of aero-optimized, store-bought race machines. I probably have some kind of complex stemmed from collegiate cycling, bike shop work, and a years-long semi-ironic Durian Rider YouTube subscription. If it works and is cheap, I’m usually adamant that it rules. 

When I recently waved goodbye to my tenure in bike shops, I knew I’d reward myself with a new bike. I waffled at first over whether to build a ‘cross bike or a road bike. Cyclocross will always be my favorite discipline, but I didn’t like the idea of having one modern ‘cross bike and one rim brake bike. Besides, ‘cross is probably the discipline with the fewest marginal gains per dollar to be scrounged up. While I was beginning to admit that my Cinelli might not be a dazzling road bike, I maintained that it was still an awesome ‘cross bike for my purposes. Equally, I wanted to dive a little more earnestly into road and crit racing, and a new road bike would put me back in the field of play with wheeling and dealing bikes that actually have used market demand. It’s an investment, people!

I had some pretty strict criteria. My hierarchy of needs when it comes to a road bike are as follows: aggressive geometry is at the top, then no stupid steerer tube or bottom bracket standard, an aluminum frame, rim brakes, and tire clearance sufficient for 30s. I know my goldilocks bike just doesn’t exist, so I was prepared to make a few sacrifices. Early research was pushing me toward Standert’s Kreissäge and Giant’s TCR Advanced Pro, two of the last race-worthy production rim brake models, with the latter being removed from B2B sales just this year. I was turned off by the small tire clearance on the Standert, and the price point of the TCR put it out of reach for me, so I went back to the drawing board.

I simply repel the idea of hydraulic brakes. First of all, I'm not super into the lack of modulation they offer. I don’t want to lock up my wheel ever, especially on a wet descent. And before you ask, yes,  I have experienced a carbon brake track in the rain. Additionally, bleeding brakes has to be my least favorite maintenance ever. I admit it’s a skill issue, but it always takes me more than one try. It’s messy, stressful, takes too long, and feels like a huge departure from the metaphysical simplicity of the bicycle. And then there's those clunky lever shapes. With the future resale of my to-be-built bike in mind, however, it seemed more and more like my first sacrifice would be to go with a disc model. Still, I knew I would want to lay out some conditions for this concession down the line. 

Fortunately, going disc put a few more models on the table. Longtime readers know about my predilection for aluminum as a frame material. It is unrivaled in response, and quality alloy is almost as light as carbon with far improved resilience in the event of a crash. The longstanding triopoly of fast alloy bikes lies in Trek’s Émonda ALR, Cannondale’s CAAD, and Specialized’s Allez Sprint. I wasn’t about to hand Trek my money, and with the CAAD’s fall from classic geo grace to a high-stack, slack-tubed endurance bike, I knew I wanted to go with the Allez. It would also give me a chance to buy through The Bicycle Shop in State College, PA, the guys that took care of me throughout college. Shoutout Grant, Sparky, and Fireball! I owned a disc Allez once before, and I remembered loving how aggressive the 56 cm felt under me. When Fireball told me the only 56 available was in the ‘Copper Multicolor Blurred Impasto’ paint job, I was kinda like, “aw man, that sucks, take my money.” Say what you will about Specialized, but their designers kill it on the graphics.

With the frameset out of the way, I returned to groupset considerations. I remembered hearing high praise about the Growtac Equal mechanical brakes in several alt-bike outlets, which reported the brakes to be on par with hydraulic competitors in stopping power while delivering better modulation and tons of goop-free adjustability. I decided I would grab a pair of those, then the rest of the groupset would be dictated by availability. Bryan at Unison informed me that silver flat mounts were out of stock, so because of my impatience I landed on gold. It’s a little gaudy, but tell me, who else has gold brakes on their crit bike? I’ll wait. I enjoy the Equals so far, even though the recommended compressionless housing was unable to make the tight bends that the Allez demands. 

Please ignore the barrel adjuster situation. I'm still figuring out how to adjust these things.

Until now, I have never owned a bike with electronic shifting. Similar to my gripes with hydraulic brakes, battery-powered shifting seems sacrilegious. I wanted 12-speed for modern relevance, however, and with Shimano and SRAM employee purchase codes needing to be spent, I could only find one available 12-speed shifter which would accommodate my shiny new brakes: Shimano Ultegra Di2 ST8150 ‘rim brake’ shifters. Electronic it was, then. To my dismay, the ‘rim brake’ shifters do not get the same wireless treatment that the hydraulic ones do. I am very impressed by how svelte they are, but I would be willing to use a bigger, dumber lever if it meant they were fully wireless. If I had to guess, ST8150 is probably the last Di2 lever that will ever be made with mechanical brakes in mind, so I’m not holding my breath for a wireless update.

I know hydraulic levers have gotten smaller over the years, but these just look (and feel) so much better to me.

Ultegra is the starting point for a derailleur with actual bearings in the jockey pulleys, so I went with RD8150 to match my new shifters. I saved a few bucks with a 105 front mech, grabbed an Ultegra 8100 crank set in my preferred 170 mm and did some guess work on the wires, battery, and junction box(es) I would need after some help from the guys at Pathfinder in West Virginia. A cassette, a chain, some rotors, and a bottom bracket later, things were starting to come together. 

I opted for engine suspension tape to tidy up the housing and Di2 wires, but I didn't do a very good job.

I dug up a Dura-Ace 7900 Stages first-gen power meter, which will hopefully read accurately until I can get something more current.  I'm coping with the millimeter of Q-factor difference between Shimano 10/11-speed and 12-speed cranks in the meantime.

There’s no way you will ever catch me on an integrated bar/stem combo. I enjoy tinkering with my fit way too much. More importantly, however, I wanted to go with silver for the cockpit. A friend had a pair of 38 cm Ritchey Classic bars, which I gladly snapped up. I knew I’d need a long stem based on the fact that I was downsizing, but I struggled to find anything longer than 120 mm in silver. I eventually resolved to buy a PRO Vibe stem in 130 mm and attempt to de-anodize it. That went pretty well, but I didn’t have gritty enough sandpaper to fully remove the heat-treated graphics. I noticed there was some interesting discoloration, but thinking it would complement the paint job nicely, I clear-coated it and called it good.

I wish I could source a higher-quality aluminum bar and stem in silver. I’d be afraid to de-anodize anything super lightweight. Black bars and stems— especially matte black— are just so aesthetically played out in my opinion. I know carbon has the industry’s heart right now, and that painting plastic is a treatment reserved for frames and forks, so if  you are a CNC wizard or precision tube bender, please, please, please consider making long stems and narrow bars and then polishing the fuck out of them. There’s your break-even idea.

The one stone I left unturned was wheels. Grabbing something fast (and quickly) was more important than going deep custom, so I bought some used Boyds off of a teammate. They rip, but I really want to lace up a set of chromed-out alloy wheels to train on so I can save the Boyds for race day. Specialized lists the Allez’s tire clearance as 32 mm, so I decided to max out on some 32 mm GP5s. I now know that the tan sidewalls are around 1 watt slower than the black sidewalls, but they look 10 watts better, so fuck it.

I want to give huge thanks to Unison for helping me with the wiring and spending at least an hour machining my top cap so it didn’t bottom out on the compression plug. Big love to Pathfinder for picking up some crunch-time service while I was loading the U-Haul to move back to Pittsburgh. Again, the guys at The Bicycle Shop rule too. Shoutout to bike shops, and I will miss working in them (for now at least).